pdf - Albedo Audio

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Reviewer: Srajan Ebaen
Financial Interests: click here
Source: 2TB iMac 27" quad-core with 16GB of RAM (AIFF) running OSX 10.8.2 and PureMusic 1.94g in hybrid memory
play with pre-allocated RAM, Audirvana 1.4 in direct/integer mode, Metrum Hex, SOtM dX-USB HD with Super-clock
upgrade & mBPS-d2s, AURALiC Vega, Apple iPod Classic 160 AIFF-loaded, Cambridge Audio iD100, Pure i20
Preamplifier: Nagra Jazz, Bent Audio Tap-X, Esoteric C-03, TruLife Audio Athena, Burson Conductor
Power amplifier: FirstWatt S1 monos, SIT2, F5, F6; Job 225, ModWright KWA100 SE, Bakoon AMP-11R, Clones 25i
[on loan]
Loudspeakers: Aries Cerat Gladius, AudioSolutions 200, Zu Audio Submission
Desktop: Wyred4Sound mINT, Gallo Strada 2 + TR-3D
Cables: Complete Zu Event loom, KingRex uArt split USB cable optionally with Bakoon BPS-02 uninterruptible battery
supply
Powerline conditioning: GigaWatt PF-2 & Vibex Two 1R DC filter on amps, GigaWatt PC3 SE Evo on front-end
components
Equipment rack: Artesania Exoteryc double-wide three tier with optional glass shelf, Rajasthani hardwood rack for amps
Sundry accessories: Extensive use of Acoustic System Resonators, noise filters and phase inverters
Room size: 5m x 11.5m W x D, 2.6m ceiling with exposed wooden cross beams every 60cm, plaster over brick walls,
suspended wood floor with Tatami-type throw rugs. The listening space opens into the second storey via a staircase and
the kitchen/dining room are behind the main listening chair. The latter is thus positioned in the middle of this open floor
plan without the usual nearby back wall.
Review component retail in Europe: starting at €7.450/pr for Makassar Ebony; €9.380/pr in gloss graphite Ebony as
reviewed, €9.380/pr in high-gloss lacquer by request
Second chances. For audio reviewers those mostly don't come. Let
something get away—which happens; after all, how much hifi can one
really justify owning?—and opportunities to rekindle old flames are very
rare. One can't ask to review the same thing twice just because of
withdrawal symptoms. But at Munich HighEnd 2013 the rule book turned
to a blank page. I spotted a new model in the Albedo Audio booth. It
looked like the HL2.2 I'd reviewed four years ago. Except not quite.
Different drivers. Different plinth. Familiar but new. Improved. Dubbed
Aptica it'd since replaced the line's two smaller floorstanders which had
followed the HL2.2. Over last year's show (which I'd missed but not
certain reports) it had also grown a sturdier base to replace the interim
bumerangs on edge. But like a bumerang, the reborn HL2.2 would return
to casa SE. The designer welcomed my interest. Grazie, Massimo.
Italians do understand affairs of the heart.
Don't ask don't tell would be usual form. But I'll come clean. Not
only had the HL2.2 been the only ceramic speaker I'd ever truly gotten,
I'd also thought it exceptionally handsome. With the FirstWatt SIT1,
Bakoon AMP-11R and Job 225, my amps and their sonics had since
moved up and away from the valve sound I'd pursued previously. I thus
was most curious. How would Albedo's minimum-phase 1st-order 2-way
speaker with physical time alignment, the latest Accuton drivers and
resonator-enhanced transmission-line loading hit me now? A second
date. More maturity with both parties. Would sparks fly again and lead
to even deeper appreciation and insight than before?
Okay, stop! This isn't a romance novella. It's simply good form to stretch. I'm quite entrenched in paper driver sound and
ribbon tweeters. It was high time to be reminded again how the other half lived. But show exposure hadn't warmed me to
specific metallic or ceramic speakers. With Albedo I was on sound ground. No blind date. It didn't matter that their exhibit
had been static. Seeing the new Aptica next to the big 65kg twin-woofer Axcentia 3-way which I'd never get up my
winding staircases sealed it for the smaller lighter one. With my wide-bandwidth transistor amps, the superb Nagra Jazz
valve pre and quality digital options I'd test-drive non-ported—yes!—ceramics and reacquaint myself with the genre. Time
to shave and prepare for my date.
HL2.2 back then (and now as it turns out)
As the photos shouted all along, Albedo and parallel surfaces don't belong in one sentence. Think pointed wedge with a
hull-shaped narrowing rear and rear-sloping baffle floating atop a counter-weighted plinth. To this eye it's a geometrically
very happy—dare one say prototypically Italian style—confluence of lines and proportions. That designer Massimo
Costa's concerns extend far beyond pretty skins and becoming curves is attested to by a number of white papers on his
website. He's big on impulse response, timing, pistonic low-distortion drivers and minimal resonance. His Helmoline™
bass loading combines a TL with tuned Helmholtz resonators to linearize response. Specifics were calculated on
proprietary software (a novelty as predictive modeling of transmission lines in general is at a prehistoric state compared to
sealed/ported loading schemes whose functions are fully documented). As a hifi reviewer in a previous life Massimo had
plenty of exposure to the competition's best efforts. He got into speaker design with open eyes, pointy ears and a
developed sense of what qualities were most important to him and what solutions in their pursuit would work and which
ones wouldn't.
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I've never yet met reader-turned-retailer Fred Crane of StereoDesk/Audio Prana in Massachusetts but regular email
correspondences indicate we share very similar tastes in equipment. "Just thought I'd let you know that I rather love the
Albedo sound. You'll be seeing more of them on our site. One of our rooms at the Capital Audio Fest featured the HL2.2
and Crayon gear. It was a phenomenally spacious presentation. It had people looking for subs and so forth though they
really just stayed abnormally long periods of time listening. Thanks for turning StereoDesk on to them. They're perfect for
the urban dweller who can't settle in any department." Stereophile's listener Art Dudley covered the event. "A return to a
more traditional sort of high-end performance awaited me in one of two rooms sponsored by local distributor/retailer
StereoDesk and Audio Prana where I was impressed by the unusually open yet nicely fleshed out sound of the Crayon
CFR-1 integrated amplifier ($6.000) and CCD-1 disc player/streamer ($12.000) driving a pair of the distinctively styled
HL2.2 floorstanding dynamic loudspeakers from Italy's Albedo Audio ($6.600/pr)."
Photo compliments of Scott Hull and www.parttimeaudiophile.com used by permission. His comments on the room: "The Crayon gear sat on a
magnificent reclaimed wood table. A fantastic old-new combo there that Carol Taylor of Stereodesk tells me is a hallmark for them — great
sounds with great looks. Works for me. Music was rich, detailed and groovy. Nice match to the room."
Having figured that the very similar Aptica must have surely replaced them, I'd not realized that 'my' HL2.2 were still in the
portfolio. Or had the Aptica at Munich been an early sighting not ready yet when Fred's first order arrived in Montelabbate
a brief stretch inland from Pesaro on the Adriatic Sea? No matter, Albedo had clearly made a good first American
impression joined by another personal favorite that'd gotten away, Crayon Audio's integrated with Swiss SMPS. As I said,
Fred and I see ear to ear on gear. Massimo: "The HL2.2 are still in our line but as I might have mentioned in Munich,
Accuton is considering to discontinue their 5-inch driver. HL2.2 production thus will follow availability of the part which
until now remains available whilst obviously ensuring spare parts for units already in the field. Because Accuton isn't
planning on a 5" substitute, we started evaluating their new 6" equivalent. Then we learnt that to incorporate it properly,
we needed to make important adjustments to cabinet volume and other parameters even though the driver already
demonstrated improved performance on its own. So we discovered that rather than upgrading the HL2.2, we actually were
under development of a new model. The price increase reflects that and sonic gains are greater than the technical
specifications on paper between these would suggest. There's no supply issue for the tweeter by the way which remains
the same for both HL2.2 and Aptica."
Still from the HighEnd Munich 2013 show
As the eagle-eyed reader will have spotted already on the previous page, unlike the
HL2.2 the Aptica inherits from the 3-way Axcentia the baffle treatment whose pitted
surface resembles a golf ball as has been exploited by B&W's dimpled ports for years
(presumably for similar reasons, i.e. to scatter/randomize reflections). And the photos
settled something else as well. The Aptica is a simple 6-inch 2-way with floor facing
transmission-line terminus. Where two-ways enjoy the advantage over three-ways is
their all-important midband which isn't filtered top and bottom but only where it hands
over to the tweeter. Occasionally the very rare two-way avoids even a low-pass on the
midrange to handle its cut-off mechanically. Whilst adding to the Aptica my giant Zu
Audio Submission subwoofer would turn into a quasi 3-way job on just the number of
discrete frequency bands—the lowest in mono not stereo—it still wouldn't strangulate
Accuton's 6-incher with a high-pass as long as the sub connected line-level in
augmentation rather than filter mode. That's the pro argument for a 2-way + sub.
The pro argument for a 3-way is its more linear transition between woofer and midrange
because both are precisely mirror-imaged by filters. A counter claim for my 3-piece solution
is that active/EQ'd bass in a discrete enclosure will go louder, lower and due to
adjustments and placement options stir up less room modes than nearly all passive 3ways. To make mono bass work in my experience merely requires that the main speakers
reach low enough to restrict the sub's prime coverage band to the first octave. The Aptica
complies perfectly. 'twas prime candidate for sneaking in a true infra sub below where the
mains fade out in the low bass for just a bit of assist on extension and transient impact. It's
something Mercan Dede's latest Dünya album would appreciate for example.
Official specs are 45 - 20.000Hz response, 8-ohm nominal impedance, 85dB sensitivity, dimensions of 26 x 19 x 101cm
and weight of 19kg/ea. On paper those are identical to the HL2.2. Except for voltage efficiency. That's down a point. As
Massimo explained, these specs alone don't tell the whole story. But not having an HL2.2 for direct comparison, I couldn't
tell it either. But that was okay. I felt sure that the Aptica would speak for itself in no uncertain terms. Like the HL2.2 and
as such the exact opposite of a rear horn, its line narrows rather than expands towards the mouth. This lowers the
resonant frequency over an equally long line of constant diameter. Unlike classic TLs, Albedo's isn't progressively stuffed.
Acoustic resonators* address the line's first two primary resonance modes via anti-phase cancellation whilst open-cell
medium porosity polyurethane lines the inside walls to restrict the acoustic gain to the intended lower frequencies. As to
the company name Albedo, in astronomy it's the reflective coefficient of a celestial body not capable of its own radiation,
i.e. the ratio between reflected and incident light.
________________________________________
* The resonators also double as acoustic impedance compensators much like an RCL circuit compensates the electrical
impedance of a driver connected to a filter network. This driver loading restricts excursions at high amplitude to increase
control.
The 5-day shipment arrived via DHL from Ancona and with pit stops in Bologna, Milano, Bergamo, Lugano, Zurich and
Geneva. The 70kg palletized cartons originated from Music Tools, Italian maker of speaker stands and component racks
run by brothers Davide and Cristiano Bastianelli. The latter became my shipping contact. He advised that the speakers
were Richard Branson—virgin—and would require from 60-80 hours to come on song. I prefer taking off without wait but
you don't always get clearance to do so.
Owning the very large AudioSolutions Rhapsody 200 speaker from Lithuania, the far smaller German Physiks HR-120 and
the even smaller domestic Boenicke Audio B10, there's no question. My living room looks grander and more spacious
when the ultra-narrow and petite Swiss take to the floor. Shut-eye listening eliminates the effect but there's an undeniable
psychological correlation. A bigger more spacious room and a big spacious sound from seemingly nowhere, certainly
lesswhere than hulking coffins, reaffirm rather than oppose each other. This also avoids speakers blocking the stage by
visually occupying areas our ears insist are really taken up by performers. If you love capacious wall-to-wall staging, don't
underestimate such psychology. It goes without saying that our Italians pull that vanishing act with fanfare. Being able to
easily move speakers about without a knee lift or wheelie cart, for cleaning or social occasions when you rearrange your
setup, is another obvious but rarely talked-of benefit. Here the Apticas rule too. It's decorator appeal beyond cosmetics.
Fine hifi is a lifestyle. And what else would you call listening to music for hours each day? Such practical live-with-ability
is key. It also helps make inroads with those who'd object to turning their living rooms into shrines to electronic boxes. Or
cemeteries. I call it comprehensive design IQ. And the Aptica has 130+ smarts. For audiophile appeal there's the Accuton
angle. It's long served as Kharma's and Mårten Design's trump card. There prices skyrocket quickly. Albedo occupies the
€5.500/pr to €23.600/pr bracket. It's serious dosh but not unconscionably so considering what competitors charge.
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By default speakers are the highest distortion generators in the hifi chain. That's true for the frequency response,
phase linearity and mechanical behavior. Costly speakers address the latter via heroic measures. There are aluminium
(Magico, YG Acoustics, Crystal, EBTB), specialty glass (Perfect8, Waterfall, Crystal), synthetic resins (Wilson),
synthetic marble (Mark & Daniel), concrete (Concrete Audio), stone (nOrh), panzerholz (Kaiser), stacked Ply (Aries
Cerat) and a long list of other subjugatorial means to battle box talk. If you've felt approaching trains announce
themselves from afar with clearly felt tremors or a passing lorry in a high rise, you already appreciate that high mass is
rather ineffective at suppressing resonance. Hence industrial routers and lathes aren't hard-coupled to their massive
concrete foundations but isolated on Sorbothane-type viscoelastics.
Even the big Axcentia remains with 6-inch drivers, albeit now paralleled and dedicated to just bass.
At 19kg/ea. the Aptica clearly doesn't pray to high mass. And that's good for your back, your suspended floor and your
shipping bill. It might even be good for your sound. That is if high-mass speakers as a lot have struck you as overly dry,
angular and slightly robotic in their delivery, i.e. not sufficiently fluidic, elastic or generous. Theory is one thing to
appreciate that a truly dead enclosure must make the sound cleaner and more accurate. It's another to hear low-mass
speakers like Harbeth, Spendor, Living Voice, soundkaos and Ocellia defy that notion and rather than sound bad magnify
qualities the dead boxes can't but which you might think of as equally important or more so.
With its concealed damped steel-bar spine turned stem for a mechanical ground path into the solid and spiked metal
plinth, strategic non-parallel walls and boat-hull curvature, the Aptica combines various recipes from the deaden-that-box
bible except for extreme mass. But it also doesn't attempt to crack the 40Hz barrier. That and the use of extended-reach
line loading make for a counter-intuitively small mid/woofer and minimized excursions to create lower mechanical forces
easier to address. The compact form factor reduces panel size, hence vibrational reactions.
85dB sensitivity of course warrants power. I had the 125wpc Swiss Goldmund Job 225 stereo amp. For twice the shove
there were the mAMP ICEpower monos from Wyred4Sound's EJ Sarmento. Equivalent April Music amplification had
garnered repeat show accolades on Mårten speakers from The Abso!ute Sound. Such sightings suggested special
synergy between the gen 3 Danish class D modules and these German metal/ceramic drivers which Albedo selected for
their "ultra-stiff low-mass diaphragms, excellent transient response and very low distortion". My special curiosity was how
the latter's famed accuracy, damping and rise times would manifest. As a very quick lucid lively invigorating sound? Or as
a somewhat hard, lean, mechanical and overly incisive read that I'd find wanting for body and lazy decays? Before I'd find
out I had to taxi my runway for the obligatory break-in. Time for a closer visual inspection then.
With your new Apticas peeled out of thick foam caps and protective plastic bags, you're left with two cannoli, two boxes
of pizza and one filled with pepperoni and parmesan - okay, gloss-black plinths and spikes with receptor discs.
Attachment to the T-shaped brackets takes three bolts each. Now horizontal goes upright, in my case into fat Track
Audio shoes to securely slide on my sisal rugs without jumping out.
I'd always thought of my cheery Cherry Boenicke B10 as the unkontested kings of kompact kool. Sultans of svelte swing.
Noisy narrators of narrow. As it turned out, the Albedos were a close second, just as narrow at the base, less deep and
only a bit taller. Growing older makes one softer. Exercise and proper diet delay it but mental softness is a different case.
Give me light small speakers to the end of my days. My head has gone all jello around the notion of concrete bunkers
sized like refrigerators.
And this as yet said nada about slippery perfection of glossy veneer wrap tinted a pale gray, scalloped rakishisness of
what faces you. Fit 'n' finish of these Italians really was spectacular. Jewel like. For a small speaker reaching this deep
into the till, all eyes should feel properly served and sated. My old flame was dressed to kill. I felt straight on a set of The
Transporter. Would the conversation pick up where we'd left off years ago?
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Swedish reader Christer Lagvik: "I am still surprised that I preferred the Bakoon to my KR Audio amp. But I simply
couldn't send it back to our importer after living with it for two weeks. It's clear and transparent as a mountain stream.
Going back to tubes was like putting some silt into that stream." This quote was no underhanded proselytising against
valves. We all like what we like. It merely illustrates a core quality of our speaker. And what happens when we take it out
again.
TuneAudio Prime on FirstWatt SIT-1
American reader Fred Crane: "Now you've gone and done it. The Tune Audio Prime sounds like the curvy sister of a
more svelte Rethm. Can't wait to hear it based upon your review and what I've heard about scaling up in their ranks. After
the type of sound the Fostex gave you, I wonder how hopping into bed with the Albedo will contrast. I doubt there could
be two more opposite sounds." Quite so. Here was highly crystallized clarity like a cut glass decanter. Or Christer's cold
translucent Alpine burbling brook. Like the high-bandwidth current-mode Bakoon amp I'd described as "lit up all over", this
quality seemed built upon steep rise times—vertical transients—and very low self noise. In the case of speakers, noise is
not primarily electrical. It's mechanical. We can thus only presume superior mechanical S/N ratio when by triangulation a
speaker with a less damped enclosure diminishes certain qualities we associate with the absence of low-level noise.
What would those qualities be?
Space. Particularly the specificity of layering and the tacit overlay of recorded ambiance over our room's own are the most
telling wins of lesser noise. It's true of powerline devices too. And properly engineered resonance isolation equipment
racks. Having just come off the Prime with its more conventional Birch Ply box with downfiring rear horn, the Aptica's
handling of space was more specific. More sorted, less generous. Image focus was higher. This removed subliminal blur
and in general made virtual instruments a bit smaller. That I believe was tied directly also to timing exactitude. When
harmonics rise smack in/on time atop their fundamentals rather than stagger delayed or premature from phase shift and
dissimilar driver path lengths, such alignment wipes away motion blur, ghosting and incertitude. Rather than soft, fuzzy
and biggish, things stand still as clear and defined. With it not the overall scale shrinks but the relative size of the various
occupants within it.
Aptica on Goldmund Job 225
There's also a temporal aspect to it. Albedo's crisp transparency was as though counterpoint to the Prime's warmer
fuzzier but also more fluidic redolent elastic feel. To talk in complementary pairs whilst overdrawing for emphasis, think
PRaT/flow, staccato/legato, string/wood, attack/decay. To its credit and distinct from my personal read on the general
metal-driver breed, the Aptica didn't default into sewing-machine sound. That's metronomic. Marching band rather than
valse. Techno not swing. Albedo's tightening of the reins didn't suffocate the sound but did impose more law and order. By
contrast to the gushing Greeks this felt more buttoned up. It sounded spatially enormous but materially smaller. The
Greeks focused on flush-faced bodies in space, the Italians on negative space as the surrounding more aloof context. The
Prime was earthy, the Aptica airy. On a wine scale think premium Super Tuscan versus a sweet bubbly Spumante.
Source stack
Sitting down with what really was my old flame's sister had our first dialogue a bit hesitant. The above sorting, exactitude
and dimensionality were already evident. Juiciness, here-now presence and bollocks were pale and not sufficiently
fleshed out. Bass tickled rather than hit. I could disguise some of it with higher playback levels. But that's a cheap cheat.
Real body doesn't rely on compensatory SPL. And of course like Fred surmised, as really an alternate or different school
sound to the departed Prime I couldn't expect the same weighting of qualities. Time to taxi my living room whilst hoping
that introductory small talk would get more intimate to bridge the somewhat abstract safe distance of these pre break-in
doldrums. For now my date kept chatting away. I kept looking at that dress of hers wondering.
Demythification. Hifi is full of myths. Some are born in reviews. Afterwards they're handed around like a pitcher of beer.
Everyone imbibes. Each repetition confirms the good taste. The myth goes viral without being challenged. One I'm guilty
of perpetuating? High-efficiency speakers are better whisperers. Given that these speakers required break-in from zero,
part of the process occurred at low levels to keep the domestic and neighbourly peace. Now this particular pitcher hit
empty. The Aptica was a whisperer par excellence. This went back to vertical transients and concomitant super
intelligibility. Check the step response of complex multi-way speakers. They tend to be very confused in the time domain.
Here single-driver widebanders—which as a genre tend to be highly efficient to birth the myth in the first place—have quite
an advantage. But not exclusively so. Time-domain accuracy isn't inextricably linked to high efficiency after all. It would
seem more associated with design simplicity. One- and two-ways more easily get the impulse response right (enough).
A co-conspirator in the myth of high-eff = superior low-volume playback are the more powerful amps required to drive
inefficient speakers. At least in the still affordable realm they tend to be slower and more confused than two-stage amps
with a single output device per channel (or a push/pull pair). That's the first-watt observation. Goldmund's Job 225 simply
happens to be an affordable sufficiently powerful exception to this rule. Hence the 85dB Apticas did a perfectly brilliant job
of being ultra legible in the dim light of very low volumes. Mainstream reviews of course never say this. Yet to my mind it's
one of the most important qualities a real-world speaker must possess. 8:00 in the morning the neighbors haven't yet left
for work. That's no time to crank it. Nor is 16:00 when your kid does homework. Nor 23:00 when your wife is asleep. Get
the wrong speaker. It'll sound so boring at the necessary low levels that you simply pass. And how is that different from
the exotic car in your garage? It's never taken out when the destination has no garage. That's because you worry over
envious key marks when parked on the street. Here Aptica is a 10-year commoner's ride. You don't hesitate to park her
even in the funky parts of town. This gives you more places to go and explore. Even an apartment dweller can listen
anytime the mood strikes. That's big!
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Sushi interlude. Our friends Nino and Babette had come off the mountain for sushi in our village's hole-in-the-wall 4-table
eatery which annihilates the posh competition in Lausanne and Geneva. When they entered our living room—the last
time I'd had the German Physiks HRS-120 up—Babette gravitated like moth to flame to the Albedos. She circled them
ooo'ing and aaa'ing, wanting to know what they were made of and where they were from. As Ivette shared afterwards (both
speak primarily Spanish which I don't understand), lustful comments about the Apticas went on throughout the evening.
Nino is a voracious music lover but utter non-audiophile. Babette likes music she likes but otherwise could care less. For
both to chat up speakers spoke volumes. Desire for fine audio often starts with the eyes. Those who put sound first and
disregard this basic mechanism cheat themselves out of sales with 'ordinary' folk. To close that subject, my wife called
the Albedos exclamation marks because that's what they reminded her of.
Villeneuve's splendid but (or because?) tiny Huit Sushi
Ripening. Guido Corona's Merrill Audio Veritas review on PFO chronicled the sonic pit
stops of those Ncore monos over a colossal 1.000hr break-in period. I'm made of less stern
stuff but did note that about three days into it, the midbass below 70Hz began to make a
more committed appearance. Listening to Deborah Henson-Conant whose website's Steve
Vai quote calls her the world's finest Jazz harp player, I was very impressed by how wiry
and controlled her long strings integrated without textural breaks into the overall bandwidth.
Without a piano's sound body a properly rendered harp is all about well-damped pizzicato
and a natural steeliness—different to a spinet but loosely related—which readily outs
speaker-induced bass resonances. Massimo's V-shaped line loading effectively delayed its
driver's natural roll-off but didn't add any dreaded port-related bloat or blur.
This wasn't about ultimate mass—for that I'd add the giant Submission—but nails-on-glass
exactitude. The technical term would be transient rise times. Contributing factors should be
very tight mechanical driver coupling and excellent system damping. For even bassier harp
escapades via addition of gnarly electrified bass guitar and big drums I switched to Asita
Hamidi's Bazaar and tunes from Bazaar and Blue Ark before giving the equally Swiss
tribal elder Andreas Vollenweider his due spin. Though piling up on low-frequency data, this
succession didn't derail my earlier impression. Whilst this wasn't big bass like the Prime
had made, it was tauter and springier to emphasize rhythmic spikes like an EKG monitor.
This broadband articulation included rapidly damped cymbal strikes, tchicky-tchicky rattles
and assorted clicking, clacking, hissing, percolating and clanging percussive noises. If with
quintessential triode sound we talk of a certain connective tissue which binds together
various sounds, this wasn't that by a long short. This stripped out the connective tissue like
cobwebs and emphasized the separation and simultaneity of discrete sounds. If forced to
label it, I'd call it a drier high-feedback high-power transistor sound with beaucoup damping
factor. You could obviously run Rogue or VTL tubes on the Aptica and introduce a different
flavor. What I've described here is how the speaker performs with neutral electronics.
Speaking of which, I had no actual power valves but EJ Sarmento's mAMP monos. When driven from the matching mPRE
which acts as a fully balanced actively buffered passive within my SPL envelope—or an actual passive like my Bent Audio
Tap X—these ICEpower amps move a bit closer to the Albedo sound. Driven from my tube Nagra Jazz preamp however
they get warmer, cuddlier, a bit fuzzier and on those counts closer to valves including a thicker less illuminated treble. By
adding my upgraded tube-coupled APL Hifi NWO-M universal player as streaming DAC, it further fattened up and
decelerated the sound. It added a good dose of earthiness and em-body-ment but also diluted what had so specialized
the sound before. That's were personal taste and system tuning enter.
With APL Hifi NWO-M, Nagra Jazz and Wyred4Sound mAMP monos
In search for middle ground I next disconnected my Metrum Hex, ran AURALiC's Vega mAMP-direct and swapped
PureMusic for Audirvana 2 set to 32/352.8kHz upsampling and integer mode 1. By hovering between 20-30 on the Vega's
volume display, I was way deep into digital attenuation. This incurred some dulling and flattening whilst the sound grew
bassier. Bassier got even more so when the hi-gain Job 225 replaced the D-class amps. It also pushed the Vega into ~15
on its scale. Despite Sabre's claim to the contrary, into such attenuation values their on-chip volume is clearly lossy. To
reset the Vega to full tilt I now parked Khozmo's shunt-resistor passive with remote atop the Job 225 for the tidily short
interconnect its breed wants. (For those keeping track, the Khozmo's readout now sat around 7!) Over the Metrum Hex
with PureMusic in 176.4kHz NOS upsampling mode, the Vega/Audirvana combo played down PRat and upped tone
colors. Quasi DAC-direct drive via the Polish passive beefed up LF heft and impact over the active valve-powered Nagra
preamp. From my options on hand, I felt this best suited Albedo's special talents without spotlighting them in too stark a
white-light manner.
What did this balancing act entail? Shifting the transient/bloom/decay meter a bit to the right and turning up the tonecolor saturation control a few clicks. All this was accomplished with the front end. The high-bandwidth DC-coupled amp
as actual driver of the speakers stayed put as my best option. Your personal 'settings' would likely differ. A speaker of
such clarity and timing precision simply responds astutely to small adjustments. No heavy handed manoeuvres to park it
in just the spot you deem perfect.
Love synth bass? Here the Aptica is a two-edged affair. On the rather bigger plus side its greased rise times do far better
at tracking bone-dry violence than slower more indecisive bass systems with heavier bigger woofers. On the smaller
minus side it lacks the air displacement or shoulder contact behind the initial kick for that knock-out punch. A subwoofer
can help a bit but because it doesn't merit roll-in much above 40Hz, it can't completely address the sock-'em power
region higher up. Extension and speed embrace techno and electronica but raw shove—where a Zu Druid V for example
collects stars—falls a bit short and the extra wallop from ported alignments is absent too. Considering just how compact
the non-vented Aptica is, that's no surprise but bloody impressive. As such it is quite the surprise, simply of a different
sort.
Final review system: $3.000 DAC, $650 passive, $1.495 amp. Dollar signs don't always tell the whole story.
Tweets. In Wilson speakers Focal's inverted Titanium dome has received its share of criticism. Equally inverted, Adrian
Bankewitz's tweeter attracted none such from me. Perhaps by dint of shared geometry and composition with its 6-inch
mate, the transient precision described at length extended into the uppermost frequencies as though (cough) it were
made of exactly the same stuff. From this derived the same micro output visibility. It's very common for the treble to 'shut
down' as you asphyxiate SPL to barely there. Not here. A BuddhaBar love fest of Tibetan singing bowls, gongs, cymbals
and other oscillating metal objects became a fascinating case study of descending into ridiculously low levels to identify
at what stage the uppermost treble would stop making it to the ear. Let's just say it was a way-delayed reaction before
decays dried out. Whilst I didn't find the Accuton as gossamer airy as my favored Raal ribbons in hosted soundkaos and
Aries Cerat speakers, it plainly was ideal here for perfect integration with the main driver which isn't softer paper. The hard
convex dome's leading-edge reaction seemed superior to fabric domes.
Friend that soundstage. In quasi Audio Physic fashion I like my speakers spaced very wide but toed in sharply. Not all
loaners are equally up for it. With some the center image collapses. Others get tonally lean to need more proximity with
each other. Perhaps because they focus brilliantly as time-coherent minimum-phase designs, the Apticas could play the
edges of the field for Cinerama panorama without going diffuse or blowing up individual performers to grotesque
dimensions. No freeway fret boards, no hole-ridden Emmenthaler cheese, no formless fondue. In many ways—timing,
space, pinpoint precision—the performance reminded me of my Gallo Strada 2. Where the latter differ is bass (they can't
go as low nor move as much air), dispersion (far wider due to the 180° CDT) and presence-to-brilliance range dynamics
(higher due to larger tweeter membrane). Where they overlap is in generally electrostatic qualities. If you love that sound,
here you can approach it in a physically far more compact package without requiring arc-welding amps to wrestle paneltype impedance dips into submission.
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Adding it up. Massimo indulged me with a second chance, I paid back with extra depth for the assignment. I began by
saying that I'd never really felt drawn to metal-driver speakers from show and other exposure. By default though any wellread reviewer sooner or later becomes an opinion maker. It's very important to at least occasionally break out of one's
comfort zone to avoid getting stuck in an exclusionist skewed perspective. To conclude we'll go straight for the jugular:
Albedo's very own byline Brightness in Sound. Audiophile lingo despises brightness. Taken on its surface, this slogan
wouldn't seem to cultivate desirability as much as undermine it. Sales prevention at work. So we must dig a bit deeper.
The hated bright relates to a forward hard perhaps even steely treble. Albedo's brightness applies to the full bandwidth.
That's exactly like my description of Bakoon's AMP-11R being "lit up all over". Say music was a person emerging from
the shadows. Aim a narrow spot light at just the face. You'll cause squinting and selective thus partial emphasis. That's a
bright unattractive treble. It stands out. It's different from the rest. It makes your ears squint. Now light the entire musical
person from behind. Nothing's in the shadows, nothing glares at you, everything's evenly lit. Voilà, Albedo's brightness.
Note too that our Italians don't say brightness of sound as though the sound itself were spit polished. They call it
brightness in sound. That shifts the meaning. Light filled. Once you explore the linguistic redirection to its end, you'll have
the Aptica's essence too.
It's fair to call it a modern sound. It relies on driver diaphragm materials and associated manufacturing processes which
didn't exist when tubes ruled. It thus resists the retro trend which favors softer vintage papers and textiles. It pursues the
high in high definition. It's not about tone mass or inside-out glow which by definition relies on surrounding darkness. This
is about heightened contrast between sound and silence. There is no darkness. It turns up all the stage lights for
directness and crispness at extreme nearfield conditions. However proper front-wall distance casts tremendous depth to
seem farfield in the visual not textural perspective. Set up thus it becomes a spatially enormous soundfield which has
individual sounds within it smaller. There's no romanticism from half shadows or tube talk's connective tissue. There's
comprehensive brightness. If from all that you conclude that this presentation ought to be particularly suited to modern
music with its hard-hitting wiriness in the lower registers and dry production mixes which capture all their instruments
with spot microphones to add faux ambiance merely afterwards, I'd not disagree.
It's a rhythmically prickly sound with angular percussive frisson rather than round legato fluidity. Flamenco not fado guitar.
Ancillary choices obviously downplay or highlight these qualities. I'd simply consider it ill-advised to deliberately slow
down and gentrify this speaker. It'd throw away what it's been designed to do in the first place with such obvious care and
cunning. It's a highly tuned specimen of a particular sonic school which in my case would be lovely to keep around for a
just as valid contrast to my warmer looser paper-driver sound.
I suspect that with properly
matched valve amplification
(preferably SET for speed but with
power) the Aptica would make an
ideal middle-path choice splitting
those differences to perfection.
My audiophile path over the past
few years explored lower-power
transistor amps. The speakers
I've thus felt drawn to played into
that with their own compensation
to avoid extremes one would soon
tire of. One such extreme with the
Aptica would involve Tellurium Q's
Iridium 20 amp; another one a
FirstWatt F5 but already less so.
To illustrate how easily these
lines shift, an F6 with its uncanny
semblance to the SIT amps would
be near ideal on flavor but you'd
probably still want lower output
impedance and more power.
Designer Massimo Costa & marketing manager Cristiano Bastianelli
A 50-watt Bakoon would have the drive but could be a bit too alike. Fred Crane's Crayon Audio integrated should be just
about perfect. And so forth. The basic points have been made. Season to taste thereafter. On an aside, set to 40Hz Zu's
sealed Submission subwoofer made for a truly terrific texturally of-a-cloth mesh. And the downfiring TL proved to be so
well executed and self-damped that I had zero room boom even when placed closer into the corners. In hifi there's little
worse than lumpy bloated interference bass. Here the Aptica was pure and tidy perfection.
Final date assessment? A sweet dry ajwa date. The sweet surprise was the speaker's low-volume excellence. This
doesn't imply that it satisfied less at high levels. Au contraire. Complete lucidity at what to a flat dweller are midnight
levels simply eludes the majority of speakers. That an 85dB speaker would ace that task at the top of the charts I wasn't
prepared for. My metal-driver beliefs (being transient not bloom centric, drier and more damped) came home to roost
though. What didn't? That a few years after my first encounter I would no longer fully enjoy such a presentation as much
as the sound I've since 'built'. I'd call this one cooler, more visual/space focused and, again, electrostatic by gestalt.
In headfi terms the Aptica was the polar opposite to my open-backed Audeze LCD-2 but a virtual stand-in for another can I
own, the close-backed Aëdle V-1 I run on the go into my RWA-modified Astell & Kern AK-100. And it's just as stylish too.
This latest Albedo thus seriously impressed us and a number of visitors. That such an ultra high-performance device
could look this good, be this compact and wide bandwidth were the cherry and cream on top. Italians own style. It's so
cliché but true here and with a vengeance. That's no longer cliché but cachet and worth every penny. If you can afford it!
Quality of packing: Very good.
Reusability of packing: A few times.
Ease of unpacking/repacking: A cinch.
Condition of component received: Flawless.
Completeness of delivery: Perfect.
Human interactions: Good.
Pricing: Luxury class.
Final comments & suggestions: The better value is the HL2.2. It remains available until Accuton discontinues its 5-inch
mid/woofer. The HL2.2 has the same dimensions, tweeter and performance specs. It differs only slightly on appearance.
Because Albedo's proprietary transmission-line bass loading is exceptionally well damped and its downfire orientation
very non-problematic for room setup, a ~40Hz low-passed sealed subwoofer integrates truly seamlessly for 1st-octave
extension. With either HL2.2 or Aptica this generates infrasonic bandwidth at half or even less than half of what the top
€23.600 Axcentia commands. A benign impedance plot makes amp selection less critical but it's higher damping factor
which gets the best from the TL loading. Even my 10-watt FirstWatt SIT1 monos could play far too loud off the Khozmo
passive with a 4V-out DAC but their higher Z-out very noticeably softened up bass control and general image outlines.
Albedo Audio website