AXPONA 2019

Scaena Model 3 Speakers, High Fidelity Cables MA-1 Amplifier, dCS Vivaldi Front End

Jason Victor Serinus  |  Apr 12, 2019

Spying the Scaena (pronounced Sane-a) room, I was happy to hear their fabulous sounding speakers once again. This time it was the Scaena Model 3 ($90,000 pair including the two big subwoofers), driven by a High Fidelity Cables MA-1 amplifier ($30,000), fed by a four-stack dCS Vivaldi system ($114,996 total) and connected by High Fidelity cables.

Surprise of surprises, this room only played those good old silver discs. After seating myself nearfield, I offered up my Channel Classics SACD, Perla Barocca, with violinist Rachel Podger and friends playing Bertali's rollicking Ciacona. The soundfield was extremely spacious, and the air around Podger's piquant instrument truly exciting. I also loved how Podger's instrument floated in space above the other instruments, and how delightful and beautiful Marcin Swiatkiewicz's organ sounded. Midrange, however, was a mite gray and thick-sounding, with sounds a bit muddled. I'd point to the room as the culprit.

COMMENTS
Bogolu Haranath's picture
Submitted by Bogolu Haranath on April 12, 2019 - 6:33pm

Correction ..... not 'spying' ...... just 'surveillance' :-) .......

georgehifi's picture
Submitted by georgehifi on April 13, 2019 - 4:29am

How anyone can hope that all those midrange units can work in perfect unison with each other are kidding them selves?
Of course the mids will be gray, thick and muddled.
Because it's impossible for them to act as one driver.
Just like the McIntosh XRT2K disaster, and others that do the multi driver joke.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/28/70/de/2870deba6f6faf2c175ad64cc1101053.jpg

Cheers George

Cheers George

Bogolu Haranath's picture
Submitted by Bogolu Haranath on April 13, 2019 - 5:33am

'Acoustic Lobing' could be a problem with many drivers producing the same frequency ........ You can read about 'acoustic lobing' in Wikipedia :-) .........

audiodoctornj's picture
Submitted by audiodoctornj on April 14, 2019 - 6:10am

Georgehifi the Scaena line array can sound amazing. Our pair setup a the New York Audio Show sounded mind blowingly real and would have easily given many $200k sets of speakers fits of jealousy.

This setup was either the room or the matching components.

Sceana over the years has never consistantly shown with the same gear other than keeping the DCS stack.

A properly designed line array doesn't produce lobing.

A pair the Mcintosh it isn't the line array it is the drivers and design which makes them okay at best.

Audio Doctor NJ

Josh Hill's picture
Submitted by Josh Hill on April 16, 2019 - 4:32pm

Yep, others were saying the same thing, there was an issue with the midrange, probably room-related. A shame, but shows are chancy. Bogolu, very roughly, lobing shouldn't be an issue if the driver spacing is less than half the highest wavelength reproduced by the driver. It's just like digital audio -- you need two spatial samples per wavelength to avoid spatial aliasing.

X