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Drive
: A few words on amplifier requirements first. Contrary to the well-earned reputation for power hogs this Mark+Daniel seems rather easier on amplifiers. My 25/50wpc into 8/4Ω FirstWatt F5 for example was not only perfectly sufficient, it had the clear sonic advantage on resolution, finesse and speed over the more lumbering 130-watt Octave tube monos even when the latter were enhanced with their massive optional capacitor banks. I also preferred ModWright's KWA-100SE Mosfets over the Teutonic valve muscle. Low output impedance would seem important here. Since the Fantasia S is not an inherently lean harmonically bleached design, even more lucid solid-state amps of F5 caliber won't leave you wishing for more tone density. A current production $4.000 FirstWatt J2 would make a natural mate to upturn that other flagship speaker truism which demands flagship amps to match. That really breaks balls and banks. Not here.


Living Voice OBX-RW vs. Mark+Daniel Fantasia S: At £10.000/pr in its most expensive Bamboo veneer dress code, this British speaker is a competitor on price if not concept. Being deliberately optimized for valve drive and higher efficiency, the OBX-RW with its outboard crossovers mirrors the Chinese in being a 2-way effort, then diverges massively by embracing the low-mass thin-walled enclosure ideal also practiced by Harbeth, Spendor, Phy-HP adherents, Kiso and MicroPure. Where M+D and LV shake hands again is in offering quite unassuming statement speakers of compact size and low-way architectures. To minimize variables, amplification by way of ModWright LS-100 linestage and FirstWatt F5 remained unchanged. So did all cabling including the biwire Kondo speaker cables. To facilitate easy comparisons I set up both speakers side by side and offset. Moving the listening seat sideways and swapping cables was all it took.


Texturally the Fantasia was punchier and tauter, the OBX-RW softer and warmer. The OBX-RW let go of the notes more gingerly, the Fantasia applied greater firmness and speed. On perspective the M+D had greater separation, the LV higher blending. While on the transient/ambient balance this mirrors a closer/farther stage distance, the Fantasia was the clearly more astute on retrieval of backstage depth, hall sense, airiness and percussive energy. Its greater crispness and articulation suggested nearfield listening while its actual portrayal of space suggested greater farfield scale. This simultaneity of opposites was very attractive. It combined higher intelligibility with deeper more lit-up space. Dynamically too the Fantasia drew from clearly deeper reserves. More on that later.




The stone from Shanghai also had the weightier more extended bass. This was clear already on light acoustic fare, then moved into game-over gear on electronica. Finally and despite the Brit's considerably higher voltage sensitivity (rated at 94dB in room), the Fantasia's resolution was higher in general and most appreciably so at low levels.


This benefited filigreed classical fare like Claude Chalhoub's gorgeous Diwan just as it did high-energy percussive flamenco piano of Dorantes' Sur caliber, Three Tenor exploits with a Hassidic twist in Cantors's A Faith in Song [Benzion Miller, Alberto Mizrahi, Naftali Herstik] or José Cura's saucy Boleros.


I specifically tested anti-rock fare in this face off since we know Living Voice designer Kevin Scott to adore classical music whereas the Mark+Daniel rep on the street might say party animal, not black tie sophisticate.




Where the OBX-RW would come into its own is being driven from a £48.000/pr Kondo Gakuoh 300B amp. That—or equivalent more affordable valve amps from the likes of Art Audio, New Audio Frontiers or my own Trafomatic Audio Kaivalya monos—is what it was really designed for (and which would leave the Fantasia S out). It moves the Living Voice house sound fully into the voluptuous, sensuous, saturated and splendid. For transistor amps of my type however and listeners whose repertoire includes at least as much modern and electronic music as it does acoustic classics, I'd give the Mark+Daniel Fantasia S the triple nod. It seems to me a technologically more advanced design that relies less on ancillary sophistication to soar. To obtain top-level performance with the Fantasia does not require black AmEx cards. A $3.000 FirstWatt F5 already gets you there. That's very happy small print!.


As a brand-new model from a Pacific Rim vendor without the cachet yet of big mainstream brands, this comparison to the top iteration of a speaker which years ago made all the UK print magazines and figured in many of their publishers' private systems establishes that the Fantasia S has arrived. Let's briefly talk tech then. Gryphon Audio Design's €12.490/pr stand-mount Mojo runs a small Mundorf-sourced AMT. Burmester's €55.000/pr B100 flagship parallels two small AMTs to still be smaller than the Fantasia's unit. Ditto for Elac's €9.600/pr FS60CE which incorporates their Heil-based JET tweeter only above 3.700Hz. To get midrange coverage to 800Hz one must look at Adam's €13.600/pr fully active Tensor Gamma or the €5.200/pr passive Classic Column Mk3 equivalent with their accelerated ribbon technology midranges and tweeters. Wideband AMTs are still rare. Mark+Daniel's DM-5a appears to be one of very few if not the only driver of this kind that can reproduce 650Hz to 20.000kHz from a single diaphragm and move the crossover 'miles away' from the critical 2 - 4kHz window. That makes for bragging rights with true substance.


Said substance are brilliant dynamic contrasts and reflexes starting at very low levels. It explains why the Fantasia S sounds so fantastic already quietly. And why it seems to go loud so much faster. Its dynamics scale more steeply. The pictograph of Armonia's unique folded isodynamic driver shows how. That Italian driver is based on the same Oscar Heil principle. It squeezes air rather than merely pushes it. This increases propagation velocity and air displacement. It's what (air motion) transformer stands for. Exploiting this principle from below 650Hz to the upper limits of human hearing makes the Fantasia S a very dynamic performer.


Macho thinking routinely applies dynamics to loudness as though it were a measure of top speed. The far more relevant application actually occurs in the micro range. That's just like most car driving which happens in traffic under protective speed limits. Everyday home audio isn't about silly THX peak levels either. It's about transcending the primitive three steps of loud, louder and loudest which are endemic to so much dynamically compressed popular music. It's about unraveling a far broader and far more fluid multitude of values. Those begin at whisper levels. They require that we track not only a few demarcations of the loudness waves as though they were Mayan step pyramids or low-resolution digitized wave forms. It's about capturing something far smoother consisting of far more in-between values. It's also about the relative height of especially little crests and spikes that distinguish them from their surroundings. Tall peaks are obvious. It's the little ripples across a melodic arc, the inflections of breath, bow or finger pressure whose relief ought to be as high (contrast) as possible. That's where the real very usable magic of musical involvement, attraction and ongoing interest occurs.


Here the Fantasia S rules with real generosity to offer a compact alternative to horns or the very tall Armonia panels. The dynamic aspects of the air motion transformer equation also explain why despite its 86dB sensitivity rating this Mark+Daniel speaker can behave more dynamic, resolute and detailed than the 94dB Living Voice. Much of what gets generally referred to as detail resolution actually occurs on the shoulders of dynamic contrast and transient fidelity - and here the Fantasia S is a superb demonstrator for how those qualities translate as greater transparency.

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