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"With all that I did not forget about phase. This is one of the few designs where I could successfully eliminate any notch filters and corrective circuits which might help one thing but otherwise degrade attacks, details and small three-dimensional cues. The loudspeaker now works well on amplifiers with a damping factor of around 20. The Ketsus Special is factory tuned for neutrality to work equally well on electronica and classical in a medium-damped room but for a service fee a client can get on-site fine-tuning because our solutions allow for some voicing leeway at the frequency extremes. Remember that the final result always is a combination of the room, ancillary gear and personal preferences about musical genres and sound qualities."


Sound – recordings used during this review:
Audiofeels, UnFinished, Mystic Production, MYSTCD 198, CD (2011); Depeche Mode, Sounds Of The Universe, Mute/EMI Music Japan, TOCP-66878, CD+DVD (2009); Eva Cassidy, Songbird, Blix Street Records/JVC, VICJ-010-0045, XRCD24 (2010); Glen Gould, Bach: The Art Of The Fugue, Sony Music/Sony Classical, SMK 52 595, The Glen Gould Edition, SBM CD (1997); Jean Michel Jarré, Magnetic Fields, Epic/Sony Music, 488138 2, CD (1997); Jeff Buckley, Grace+EP, Sony Music Japan, SICP-2245-7, mini LP, 3 x CD (2009); Marek Biliński, Mały Książę, Bi.Ma, BiCD-09, CD (2010);  Marilyn Moore, Moody Marilyn Moore, Bethlehem/JVC, VICJ-61467, mini LP, K2HD CD (2007); Miles Davis, Seven Steps To Heaven, Columbia/Sony Music/Analogue Productions, CAPJ-8851, SACD/CD (2010); Nat King Cole, Love is the Thing, Capitol/Analogue Productions, CAPP 824 SA, SACD/CD (2010); Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here, Experience Edition, EMI Music Japan, TOCP-71169-10, 2 x CD (2011); Radiohead, The King of Limbs, Ticker Tape Ltd., TICK-001CDJ, Blu-spec CD (2011); The Doors, The Doors, Elektra/Warner Music Japan, WPCR-12716, mini LP, CD (2007).


Although in the Ketsus Special we might see a classic three-way loudspeaker perhaps a bit beefed up with somewhat different solutions than usual, we hear something different. This is not strange as there is all the treble, bass and soundstaging we’d expect from a traditional speaker. Yet it’s not the same. Our perception is clearly different. And that's different also from implicitly better or worse.


This design combines certain sonic elements in unconventional ways to make the final synthesis or assessment more difficult. First they produce a really big sound that’s not about point-source precision to be confined to a small defined area. This sound is far extended to the top and well outside the speakers even with monophonic recordings. On mono discs like Moody Marilyn Moore we get a big central picture which, while not suggesting stereophony, is still unusually big and wide but in a seemingly very natural rather than stretched way.


The instruments and various effects of standard stereo recordings are similarly large regardless of whether it might be Pink Floyd’s Welcome To The Machine from the newest remaster Wish You Were Here or Sounds of the Universe by Depeche Mode. Especially with the former’s pulsating synth bass alternating channels for individual attacks I could observe just how well these speakers created a broad cinerama scope without any holes.