If you do settle down with this clearly ambitious Titanium compression tweeter, you'll find much to love on things like Richard Strauss' Serenade in E-minor for 13 woodwinds [Frederick Fenell/Eastman Wind Ensemble, Winds in Hifi, Mercury SR90173]. This means separating out pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets and bassoons plus four French horns and a contra bassoon. That chicanery came off exceptionally well. But what makes this speaker special still transcended these particular virtues. For me the special attraction really was the marriage of a horn to a big hard-hung widebander. That's what equalled serious promise for exceptional dynamic reflexes.
 
To mine that, the recent Atomic B album by the Tobias Becker Big Band was perfect. Released by Neuklang, the label of the well-known Bauer Studio, I knew going in that radio-play dynamic compression wouldn't factor. I recommend starting out with the crowd pleaser "Joaquin". It kicks off with propulsive rhythms from the bass and percussion section followed by cascaded winds, then a sax solo and brilliantly percussive guitar. All along the Big Band escalates from peak to peak. If you mean to meet the Ichos in her native habitat, crank up da juice. The nearly instantaneous turbo boost of acceleration then reminds you in a flash. Hard-hat time. Horn system at work. Dynamics are explosive and capable of powerful punch on demand. Even legacy vinyl can trigger it. My German Pablo pressing of Dizzy Gillespie's Big 4 has the "Frelimo" opener in quasi slow motion until Dizzy's trumpet at maximal ferocity interrupts the Gemütlichkeit like a shock wave. It stops your heart for a moment which alone is worth buying this record for. I'm convinced that in the price class where these Ichos play, only other hornspeakers could compete on pressurization and speed. A warning for would-be auditioners seems only fair then: such greased dynamics can get addictive in a hurry!
Or take the Saint-Saens Organ Symphony with the Birmingham symphony under Louis Fremaux. The sections where the organ underpins the musical action are the obvious highlights of this work. With ubiquitous stand mounts and small towers, these appearances of the 'Queen of instruments' sadly reduce to so much hot air. Even the active Progressive Audio Extreme 2 which is astonishingly bass-capable for its size renders the organ more supplemental trim than main attraction. The Ichos meanwhile conveyed its monumental sonic character and processed the high dynamic swings without stress. Unlike the Extreme 2 activ with its text-book linearity in the power zone, a few added cubic inches with the Ichos better supported the organ's majesty which, during the finale, had the hard-hung drivers deliver glorious pressure without restraint. That's what Saint-Saens had in mind!


For Liszt's Dance of the Dead [Fritz Reiner/CSO/Byron Janis, LSC 2541/Classic Records, white pressing], Bryon Janis attacks his concert piano like a drum set to suggest clattering bones. The Ichos N°Two honed in on that with far more clarity than my Clockwork Event Horizon monitor which wasn't as separated on the impulsive tattoo of the hammered keys. Tweaked for the time domain, the Progressive Audio model was obviously predestined to do well here and didn't surprise by going even farther to sort out between string attacks and soundboard resonances.
But the back-loaded widebanders also surprised on smaller stuff. Only rarely have I followed the dynamic facets of Schubert's String Quartet in D-minor 'Death and the maiden' [Juilliard String Quartet/ LSC 2378] as clearly as with these Schallwandlern from Schubert's home town. The Ichos were masters at differentiating the constantly modulated play of microdynamic gradations. This included the crass unisono segments which bracket the thematic development of this quartet. Their dramatic effect escalated with the quick response of the horns. Even the no lesser demands on rhythmic acuity which competitors can iron out the N°Two were masters of. Fans of cinematic sound and the illusion of space won't be disappointed either even though the Ichos don't edge-limn objects as sharply as the Progressive Audio boxes from Essen do. Their coaxial drivers excel at sorting and focus. But the N°Two also did compelling staging like on the Strauss wind serenade where 13 soloists appeared in a semi circle with bodies in proper 3D. As in a concert, precise fixes dissolve only when two or three performers cluster too closely. Relative to venue scale, the Ichos were more factual than extra wide though still more specific about breadth than depth. But at least partially the latter could have been due to the already mentioned setup closer to my room boundaries. Moved out into freer space did roll out the stage rear but the concomitant reduction in bass authority left no doubt that the closer position was better overall.