Quintet15 w/ Voxativ AC-X Field Coil Driver “The Best Investment in my Life”
Email from 6 February 2022:
“For more than 4 decades I have been searching for a way to make music sound believable at home. I grew up with the sound of music instruments so that is my reference. Furthermore my parents took me to the Berliner Philharmoniker and the Wiener Philharmoniker both playing in their own concert halls. I grew up in Amsterdam so I frequently went to the Concertgebouw Orchestra playing in the Concertgebouw. As well as other famous orchestras, conductors and solo musicians performing in the Concertgebouw. End of my teens I met with a guy whom I still consider my best pal and he was and is totally into old style jazz and playing in a band. So then I visited a lot of jazz performances. Long story to make clear what my references are. I play classical music mostly large symphonic works, but also rock, pop and reggae and I prefer live recordings and to play them at realistic levels. Loud.
I will skip my history of audio equipment, but my last set of loudspeakers were a pair Harbeth 40.2 chosen for their tonal accuracy. I truly believed they would be my last pair. Being an early adopter of digital playback and, as soon as they became available, ripping techniques I have owned a lot of digital hardware. I ended up with a heavily modified dac with a tube output and capable of playing resolutions up until 96kHz from a dedicated NAS not connected to the network and I thought I was happy. Just enjoying music without the nagging feeling that I needed other equipment.
Then I made the mistake accepting a few invitations to listen to classical recording professionals explaining how they work and demonstrating their own work on unaffordable systems. After a few of these sessions the nagging feeling had returned. Especially because they used Merging hardware with a network connection instead of USB. USB was never intended to be used for high quality audio, but it became fashionable and everybody tried to work around its limitations. I had promised myself to only start looking for another digital frontend when it would use a network connection.
After a long search I fell for a combination of a Grimm MU-1 streamer and a Mola Mola Tambaqui dac and realized my Harbeth 40.2 were not giving me all the goodies so I listened to quite a lot of loudspeakers, but none of them were so much better that the price was justified. To me, that is. Then I remembered PureAudioProject which I have been ‘following’ from the start. Although I did not have the opportunity listen to them I felt I needed to ‘get rid of the box’.
I contacted Ze’ev and he asked me what I was looking for. I wanted life size orchestra or band and it absolutely had to be tonally correct for strings, voices and piano. I also made clear I was not interested in another journey to fulfillment in other words an upgrade path. I have always preferred being in Rome over discovering all possible roads leading to it. Ze’ev offered to start with a Voxativ 1.6 and later upgrade if needed, but I ordered a pair of Quintet 15 with the Voxative AC-X field coil drivers, when I realized the difference in the way they are constructed compared to a standard driver and therefore their sonic potential.
After assembling and triple checking everything I switched the system on and then something remarkable happened. Literally within the first few seconds my love of my life HSP partner exclaimed: “These are going to stay!”. She was right of course. Gone were all the annoying distortions that you have learned to accept as being normal. The soundstage is wide open and accurate and stable. Instruments sound so believable. No edges, no grain. It is so clean. Voices are shockingly real. There is simply nothing annoying. In fact it was shocking and still is.
A very dear friend of mine is a highly regarded acoustics expert advising at recording sessions and specialized in optimizing recording studios and listening rooms. Last few years he is also a dealer for some carefully selected really high quality audio equipment. When he heard the set playing he really got emotional. After helping me perfecting the placement he cancelled his next appointment and stayed for over 4 hours instead of 1 hour as was the original plan. He still sends me messages about how amazing the set sounds.
We are still breaking the speakers in so apparently and according to Ze’ev there is more to come, but this is by far the best music reproduction I have heard. I do realize it is a lot of money. It is for me, but it is the best investment ever. I cannot say anything else. This is what I have been searching for all the time.
The fact that a person with HSP, who normally cannot stand loud voices or loud music is now asking for and enjoying for example live recordings of Pink Floyd or Dead Can Dance or a Bruckner symphony at realistic sound levels tells it all. It is truly amazing. Thank you Ze’ev!”
Customer, NL