Today's headline is a nod at one of my favourite Jan Garbarek albums. Its gorgeous less-is-more minimalism parallels our feature's hardware focus. The concept is simplicity itself. If our actual not imaginary needs are really a teapot tempest not category 5 hurricane, we can hit peak performance with far simpler smaller cheaper kit.
Buying that monster Land Rover for the occasional amble down 4×4 country terrain when all we really do is smooth asphalt and the Tesco parking lot is mindless overkill. The same applies to kilowatt amplifiers and enormous speakers designed to play an oligarch's ballroom rave.
With speakers, ultimate loudness mated to a linear 20Hz is the final most costly barrier. If we never play as loud because we sit at 3m or less in a normal-sized room; if we don't insist on 20Hz; if we don't pick speakers with objectionably piggish load behaviour… what does the job can shrink dramatically.
If we shrink the honey down to the nearfield of 1m or less, we can make hay and hey with quite petite kit like Lindemann's Move Mini and matching Woodnote Combo. Now 25wpc suffice big time. Now a 4-inch widebander with no crossover or spider augmented in the top octave with a tiny AMT are the cat's meow. An RJ45 input on the integrated or dual WiFi antennae handle wired or wireless streaming. UPnP functionality allows WiFi-challenged fossils like our household's to use Audirvana Studio for wired library access of local or cloud files, no tablet remote/app required.
Sitting smack-dab between the brain implant of superior HeadFi and the wall-to-wall scale of classic free-space stereo in a larger room, the desktop's or snug's nearfield suffers few distance losses and toxic room interactions. We don't listen as loud. We don't need pants-flapping chest-compressing LF. What we can get in trade is resolution and directness that match good headphones whilst projecting the sound out of the skull across a ~2m expanse in front of us. All that needs is a point-source speaker that doesn't rely on greater distance for its vertically spaced drivers to cohere as one. We can buy the audio equivalent of a Fiat 500 and live in real style.
What could that look like? On my desktop, eliminate the Laiv DAC which just sat there taking up room. Whilst I ran a coaxial S/PDIF feed off my usual Singxer SU-2 USB bridge reclocked by the LHY Audio masterclock, those two components eliminate with a direct Ethernet link off my router as shown at right in Audirvana's UPnP panel.
In its most elemental form, my dare-to-dream-small desktop system would consist of the small Woodnote Combo beneath the Giannis Parios album cover; and the two small speakers on either side. That's it.
Granted, €4'050 for this particular 3-some isn't peanuts but a few bushels of macademias. This is what a hifi extremist of my stripes could end up with. More compact coin would reach for a streaming active coaxial speaker like a KEF LS50 and save 50%. Still more compact coin might shop at Audio Engine.
The point is, once you think nearfield, a whole world of possibilities opens up. Those get far easier on the eye and wallet than the kind of kit Jason Victor Serinus specializes in for Stereophile, Jonathan Valin for The Abso!ute Sound.
Theirs is a different audience. And it can be fun to read about hifi's Bentley and Bugatti crowd. But it can also misdirect about what meets our own needs; what's crass overkill that'd just sit there for shallow bragging rights but never would get tapped. Arnie and his Humvee; Jay Leno and his collection of two-and four-wheeled transport.
In a recent Stereophile thread, measurement royalty John Atkinson reminded readers that his version of KEF's LS50 does everything the big speakers do except play as loud or go as low.
That's as true as death and taxes yet the vast majority disputes it as though it were just the opinion of those who can't afford to or lack the desire to aspire to better. Not. Here's the reality check: state-of-the-art HeadFi. Compared to it, most big speakers come in a far second on linearity, bandwidth and resolution. In the nearfield of a desktop or snug, premium headphone status is within reach with small speakers.
So dare to dream smaller and smarter. Happy New Year!
PS: Thinking readers already recognized the option of nearfield listening in free space. For example, place your speakers at your room's longitudinal 1/3rd point then sit within 1-1½m from them toed-in face on. You can create an immersive bubble that's quite free from room interference, stages enormously and once again gets away with smaller speakers and lower SPL so a smaller amp and lower expense. After all, few of us have the expanse of Tobian Sound Systems here shown with their Signature 12FH speakers and full Tobian electronics except for the Garrard 301 turntable (photo by Simone Ragionieri).
