SetupIn my room, Heretic importer and Fidelis Audio principal Walter Swanbon set the AD614s on custom 12" Fidelis stands about 20" from the wall. In that position, they played big soundstage-wise but were a little lean through the midrange. After he left, I experimented by moving them first forward some, which made them leaner and brighter. So then I tried moving them backward, ending up with the two boxes no more than 6" from the wall behind. Sitting on the Fidelis stands, the 614's tweeters were 27" from the floor. My normal listening position places my ears 33" to 36" above the floor. Because all the photos on Heretic's website show their speakers sitting directly on the floor aimed straight ahead, I tried that position for a while. The sound was overtly rich and smooth, not boomy, and quite listenable. I put ¾" wood blocks under the front feet, which allowed me to aim the 614's tweeters directly at my nose. In the new configuration, the sound was more transparent, deep-spaced, and sharply focused than it was with the speakers aiming straight ahead. Fidelis's Swanbon tells me that Heretic is finalizing the design of matching wood stands that will deliver the type of sonics I experienced with the arrangement described above.
Listening with Elekit's new TU-8900The AD614 is so far outside today's mainstream design and marketing paradigms that whenever I listened, I couldn't stop my left brain from scanning for all those terrible faults the knowers told me I should find. But all I discovered was a Santa's bag of new pleasures—pleasures not offered by my Falcon Gold Badges or any other box speaker in my collection. The first new pleasure the Heretics delivered was reproducing Sinatra's Only the Lonely LP, in my studio, with touchable textures similar to but less intense than those I experienced in the demo at HiFi Loft. Consider, though, that at my house, the Heretics were playing Frank with just two or three single-ended 2A3-tube watts. How many narrow-baffle speakers can do that? The second new pleasure was even more exciting: The AD614s displayed an oceans-wide, minutely drawn, evenly lit soundspace that felt natural and relaxed, not exaggerated or contrived. A few days before Christmas, I was listening to the Medieval Players playing a bagpipe and a little bowl-shaped drum called a naker, performing a Christmas song from the Moosburg Gradual of 1360 entitled "Anni Novi Novitas" (Cum infulatus et vestitus Presul intronisator), from their album Al Manere Minstrelsy (LP, Planet Life PLR 052). The experience was striking to the point of being hypnotic. I watched drumbeat transients bouncing off stone walls with identifiable trajectories. The bagpipes, nakers, and the stone walls felt physical and visible, and the music felt timeless and universal.
When I switched from 2A3s to Cossor WE300Bs, opera sounded larger, smoother, and more electrifying through the Heretics than through my Falcon Gold Badges, so I kept playing opera recordings—from Italy and Kentucky—and staring at the AD614's treble. All I saw were beautifully textured, minutely articulated soprano harmonics.
With the WE300Bs, the Heretics' upper octaves sounded creamy, extra-dynamic, and clear. The 614's treble sounded uncompressed, wide open, and low-distortion, making sopranos, trumpets, and the upper octaves of the piano sound more intense than they did through my tiny Falcons or DeVore Fidelity's broad-baffled Orangutan O/93 floorstanders.
I doubt any amp-swapping on any speaker could render a more dramatic change in sonics than exchanging the 3-watt 2A3 tubed Elekit TU-8900 for Parasound's 300W Halo A 21+ amplifier. The 21+ injected steroids into the AD614's monitor-like clarity. Every tiny bit of sonic data seemed perfectly clear and fully charged. When I played my beloved Skip James LP, Devil Got My Woman (Vangard VSD-79273), my first thought was "Wow! I've got to tell J.C. how much this series-crossovered speaker likes solid state amps." The Heretics really lit up with Parasound's mighty class-A/AB watts. Skip and his guitar and piano never sounded more present or exposed by the microphone. I doubt the AD614s ever dragged more than a few watts out of the Parasound, but the watts they pulled were smart, good-looking watts. The sound I experienced was probably the result of the A 21+'s heavy transformer and high-current power supply effortlessly streaming tiny details into the Heretic's resistive load.
The first thing I noticed when I switched from the John Curl–designed Parasound A 21+ to the Nelson Pass–designed First Watt SIT-3 was the huge reduction in gain, from 29dB with the Parasound to only 11.5dB with the SIT-3. The thing I didn't notice, at all, was the reduction in potential output power, from 300W (into 8 ohms) to 18W. What I noticed most was the SIT-3's denser, more colorful and relaxed presentation, which I attribute to the absence of feedback in the First Watt amp. Beyond that, the sonic differences were subtle, with the A 21+ winning the Leica-focused deep-imaging contest and the SIT-3 taking gold medals for Best Tone and Longest Reverb Tail. Powering the Heretics, both amps showcased free-swinging dynamics and Webb Telescope vividosity. Most importantly, the Heretics proved they could play comfortably and enjoyably with a wide range of amplifier types. That's rare.
That day at Sound by Singer, I was alienated by the disembodied clarity of those early Audio Physic speakers. As I stared between those thin towers, my attention wandered. I looked around distractedly, noticing how everything in the room—including my chair—had been arranged for no other purpose than to facilitate what I felt was an excessively cerebral form of man-machine interaction. All feng shui lines pointed at that lonely Le Corbusier chair. No sofa, no scantily clad lovers, no pets, no cluttered coffee table. My taste in listening environs leans toward plush, Bohemian-style couches with silk-embroidered pillows, candles, colored lights, and various forms of temple incense. Heretics feel at home in that environment.
As much as these speakers look like vintage Altecs, they do not sound like vintage Altecs. Compared to the various Altecs I've owned, or to Alex Halberstadt's Valencias, which used to belong to Art Dudley, the AD614 is dramatically smoother, more precisely focused, and more evenly balanced across its bandwidth. Art thought speaker imaging was overrated, but I loudly disagreed. For me, if tone, texture, and tempo are properly recovered, then vivid imaging is added proof that a majority of small-signal info is getting through. In my room, with my sources and amplification, the broad-chested Heretics project the widest, most intricately focused and evenly lit soundspace I have encountered, and they did it while sitting only inches from the wall.
