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Audition time: As usual, I'd burned three compilation CDs to reference familiar music against an unfamiliar system in an unfamiliar space. I initially prefer less complex material to gain my bearings and inspect specific performance parameters in isolation before mixing them up in any spectacular symphonic finale. As mentioned, Kevin's man had replaced their working clip-lead crossover board with a properly hardwired box for our visit. This involved new wiring, new solder joints and new binding posts. Without making any compensatory adjustments yet on the speakers which the pair of collaborators had meticulously dialled in over many months prior, Kevin launched into the first track. It was his favorite Schubert lied which sets Goethe's 1782 Der Erlenkönig ballad to impassioned song.


Utterly seamless and glowingly organic, the sound for my taste was overly fleshy bordering on the humid. 'Ponderous', 'portly' and 'cloying' would have been unfairly excessive descriptors but doses of overt richness and fullness were in clear evidence.


As it was late by then—we'd arrived in the afternoon and I'd already taken the tour of the premises and snapped the obligatory photos—we retired for the evening while Kevin let the system run overnight. The following day the sound had clearly settled down and worked through the virgin solder joints and posts but I still had some misgivings. As Kevin would do for any client, he asked in which directions I might want to shift the sonics to appeal to my expectations and tastes. I wanted more leading edge, sharper separation, more upper harmonics and leaner grippier bass. The first thing he suggested was replacing the Kondo speaker cable on the Vitavox 15" bass driver. This he changed from Kondo SPz to Living Voice's proprietary flat copper ribbon cable. It was exactly what my doctor ordered.

Translating ongoing instructions into electrical/mechanical equivalents, he next increased the output of the midrange and HF elements by reducing their series resistances by 0.5 of an ohm using the rheostats built into the crossover design. I was happy with the result which gave more leading edge and attack and reduced some of the earlier humidity. I now wanted slightly more upper harmonics so he next adjusted the output level and reduced the crossover point of the super tweeter by increasing its user-adjustable series capacitance. This improved the overall tonal balance but introduced a slightly desiccated bleached and frenetic quality to the tone and musical performance. Kevin therefore immediately repositioned the super tweeter on its user-adjustable worm drive by two small gradations to compensate. This neatly eliminated the dryness, slowed down the overall flow and introduced a more golden hue. Backing this off to a halfway point was spot on. At this point we switched in the high-current regulated battery power supply and waved goodbye to the national grid. Each step was unequivocal and far from a casual improvement. Next Kevin suggested we move the tweeter pod by 1 millimeter from 18 to 17 to compensate for the earlier crossover tweak. Asking frivolously whether by any chance we could revert to 17.5mm for an in-between value, he merely grinned and made it so. Suddenly something magical happened. We both agreed that it had occurred and thereafter refused to experiment with any further adjustments. Don't mess with perfection.

This meandering 4-hour journey through very distinctive sonic flavors affected the presentation profoundly. Whilst in the thick of chasing perfection, we'd settled on the Yasmin Levy "Me Voy" track from her La Juderia album. The center of gravity shifted from her throat into her diaphragm and back, she became more youthfully risk-taking and fierier, then less on edge, inherently calmer and plainly older - a woman with maturity rather than a somewhat affected young lady trying very hard to impress while clearly overdoing it.


Usual sound-byte reviewer talk of treble, midrange and bass had transcended into tracking how very fine adjustments—half a millimeter of physical repositioning!—impacted the emotive/compelling axis of the experience.


The Chinese erhu on Hassan Issakut's "Zindan" from the Hayat 1 Hayat album changed in timbre and texture. At first the sound was solid and dense, then it grew too twangy and flat. Then suddenly it escaped the either/or polarity and turned into something different altogether.

It became crystalline and remarkably fluidic. String and wood coexisted. Neither was shadowing the other. Deep inside this synchronicity, a secret window had opened up. This exposed something more real, dimensionally more potent, microdynamically far more expressive. Once achieved, this perfect mid-point balance translated to all the other tracks. While I initially assumed that this bull's eye was personal—referencing our starting point, I reasoned that Kevin simply fancied a thicker more opulent sound—it quickly became apparent that with my type of music, our perceptions overlapped perfectly.


Ping-ponging the presentation in first bigger, then progressively smaller squiggles between opposing poles of performance attributes, arriving at the still point where opposites become perfect complementaries and shift out of duality happened for both of us simultaneously. Whether that would be universally applicable I can't know. It's ultimately a very trite and only academic concern.

That's because the Vox Olympian's chosen driver complement and physical implementation work with such uncolored precision that the built-in extreme adjustability guarantees not merely the initial adaptation of transducer to chosen electronics and room for proper tonal balance. It then goes the very important extra mile—or millimeter—to match emotional persuasiveness to any customer's hard-wired preferences. While I didn't have sufficient time to deliberately upset what we'd achieved just to explore other possible flavors, Kevin assured me that with very little effort, he could shift the sound into something much harder, more charged and subjectively speedier should I wish to. After observing how he'd implemented my requests as though the speaker possessed actual dials and gauges for "a bit more steam here, a bit more pressure there, a click more heat over yonder", I was confident beyond measure. The Vox Olympian really is that true chameleon that can change its spots on a dime.


Rather than imposing his sonic vision on the customer, Kevin Scott has designed his most ambitious speaker to make its owners happy. You don't have to see eye to eye with the designer to get there. Just guide him to where 'there' is for you. Personalized magic time.


We spent a brief evening at the Scotts' home to listen to some Aavo Pärt over the resident top small Living Voice speakers with outboard crossover and a Kondo Ongaku driven from the top C.E.C. deck and Kondo's M-77. With the very first piano note hanging in space with maximal redolence and inner glow, I had my confirmation. If one were to whittle down Kevin's audiophile credo into one solitary word, it would have to be succulent.


Not being familiar with Kondo gear, that's likely a quality its owners would ascribe already to the electronics. It's surely far from coincidental that of all the choices of gear to import to the UK market, Definitive Audio has settled on Kondo. Now audiophile expectations would want descriptions of how Kevin's unusual bronze bugle affected the presentation.


That's assuming of course it wasn't invisibly nested in the totality of the sound to stand out as a definable separate entity. Alas nothing stood out in that sense. The only quantitative critique of Kevin's Vox Olympian presentation as I heard it was the lowest octave being merely hinted at.

While he owns the Velodyne 1812 subwoofer and had their engineers visit to demonstrate its own many adjustable features, he prefers complete hornloading for its textural continuity. Given space constraints, he built himself two still somewhat compact 2 x 15" bass horns whose physical dimensions are insufficient to generate full power below 35Hz.

With more time, it might have been fun to press the mighty Velodyne into service for some 20-40Hz reinforcement and run Mychael Danna's "Gold Dust Bacchanalia" from the Kamasutra soundtrack which sports truly endowed infrasonics. With more time, I would have wanted to extricate the Kondo M-77 preamp to drive the Gaku-Oh monos direct just to learn how much the famed preamp impacted specific qualities of the performance. Our cats and my empty editorial seat simply put a limit on the visit's duration.

My upshot and takeaway from this RoadTour were simply this. I've never previously met an audio designer with the specific set of skills and physically optimized facilities of Kevin Scott who wears the hats of system tuner, setup man, retailer, importer, designer and manufacturer interchangeably. This creates the very necessary bigger perspective most hifi designers sorely lack. Add to this a quite unusual resourcefulness to push artisanal aspects into luxury yacht territory and the Living Voice Vox Olympian as a custom production speaker has no equal at least in my experience.

In unexpected ways, it also is a teaching tool par excellence. With its designer on the controls, this well fussed-over inanimate subject can show us how measurable technical quantities in the amplitude and time domains translate into qualitative hues and aromas that alter subjective lighting of the scenery, slow or speed up flow, rotate timbres and textures, affect performer personalities and their apparent age. You'll shift tonal weighting, transient impact, vitality, energy, density and whether the performance is more intellectually abstract, otherworldly transcendental, here/now emotionally intimate or propulsively energetic. Any ultimate statements are in vain because this speaker can be so comprehensively tuned. Relatedly, this also becomes an exceptionally keen tool on optimum playback volumes. A click too high or a click too low and from track to track you know what's just right. At this level of execution, everything becomes relevant. (Note to Kondo: The M-77 needs a remote control for volume.)

The usual talk of bass, midrange and treble really is the most primitive kindergarten stuff. Soundstage breadth, width and image focus aren't far removed. What the Vox Olympian's expansive calibration palette adds is the necessary exactitude to 'stop time' and step outside the usual push/pull scenario of either/or. Where many designers are strangely incapacitated to set up and demonstrate their own creations to very best effect, this Living Voice speaker comes packaged with a designer in tow who clearly is a high-order setup master. He also has a well-honed sense of tolerance for personal preferences. Those could sharply diverge from his own. The more the merrier in fact. There's no my-way-or-the-highway petulance. There's no prerequisite to agree with his values. Finally add a very substantial music appreciation education which should be the backbone of anyone working in this sector but often isn't. All of this informed and endowed the Vox Olympian. As much as an inanimate object can be said to have life, this one has it.

This admittedly lengthy coverage conveyed hopefully what a personal audition at Definitive Audio might hold in store for you from lovely environs to a good palette of quality ancillary choices, from a huge residential music library to very gifted generous hosts who've opted to work far away from the high streets with their particular brands and publications. There are far too few such opportunities left where one is guaranteed meaningful encounters with what this entire obsession with music and better sound should all be on about. This was—and is—one of those few. While the Vox Olympian is for a terribly exclusive clientele, the £8.800/pr Avatar OBX-RW model I experienced in the Scott residence does speak with the same succulent voice. It's simply been scaled down in magnitude (likely perfectly appropriate for less ambitious spaces). For that reason, I've committed to a formal review of it later in the year already.

To inject an appropriately musical note, knowing of my fondness for Indian classical music, the Scotts whisked us off to Leicester's Curry Row where the UK Sense World Music label operates its own traditional Indian bazaar. I duly walked off with 22 new CDs recorded very well (which sadly can't often be said for Indian productions). If your audiophile upgrade budget currently doesn't stretch to new speakers, a few quid for new recordings should surely be on the menu. For Indian vocal and instrumental music, give this website a try.

Vox Olympian. It's a steeply ambitious name. In an industry filled with immodest claims, much chest thumping about nothing and robotically unattractive ultra-priced speakers with perfectly ordinary drive units, not living up to such an illustrious name could seem to be a foregone conclusion. My experience was quite different.


The quality of the drive units is truly exceptional across the board. The physical stature is smaller than expected, the different visual motifs are nicely integrated and balanced. The choice of materials is distinctly nobel and luxurious. Attention has been paid to the smallest of details as it should in these leagues. The choice of possible finishes is limited only by the imagination and wallet. Bespoke in loudspeakers for once means what it says.


The almost infinite adjustability is the finishing but most vital touch to insure that the speaker's performance matches the room, ancillary electronics and most importantly, the owner's requirements and tastes. Like a premium vocalist's free play with inflective nuances of subtle tone modulations riding on projection power to transcend concerns over technique and machinations, this speaker then makes one forgot all the 'how' and 'why' aspects which so endlessly fascinate career audiophiles. All considered, the name actually seems rather appropriate. Vox Olympian.

 
The final granite plinth will have Living Voice hand-cut into the front edge

Bridget Riley from the Op-Art School
Postscript: No visit to England would be complete without fish & chips, a proper afternoon tea in an arch-conservative shop like Fortnum & Mason's—their aromatic Lapsang Souchong was superb—or at least a passing glance at one of London's many cultural opportunities. Our day trip to the city included the Modern Art exhibits at the Tate Museum. Two images seemed fitting reminders for the parallel illusion of perfectionist hifi. With these paintings you know perfectly well how they're flatly and incontrovertibly - well, flat and two-dimensional. Yet your eyes would beg to differ. The longer you stare, the more motion there is.


Ditto superior hifi. We know it to be nothing but illusion conjured up by soulless machines. Yet properly set up, it creates its own undeniable motions. It's energy in motion. Emotions. Living Voice knows how to tap and deliver those...
Living Voice website