Wes Phillips reviewed the Aesthetix Calypso Signature in July 2010 (Vol.33 No.7):
When Aesthetix Audio's founder, Jim White, dropped off a sample of his Saturn Atlas hybrid power amplifier, which I reviewed in January 2010, he also brought along a sample of his Saturn Calypso line preamplifier ($4999). Actually, two samples: One was the stock unit reviewed by Michael Fremer in July 2005, the other the Saturn Calypso Signature ($6999, footnote 1). At first, White said only "I think you'll find the differences instructive."
I began by listening exclusively to the stock Saturn…
Sidebar: Wes P's Associated Equipment
Digital Sources: Ayre Acoustics C-5xeMP universal player; 2.5GHz Intel Apple Mac mini, with 250GB LaCie external drive & 2TB Infrant Technologies NAS; Bel Canto e.One DAC3/VBS, Ayre Acoustics QB-9 D/A processors; Bel Canto USB Link 24/96 USB-S/PDIF converter.
Preamplifier: Aesthetix Audio Saturn Calypso.
Power Amplifiers: Aesthetix Audio Saturn Atlas; Parasound Halo JC 1 monoblocks.
Loudspeakers: Klipsch Palladium P-39F, Thiel CS3.7, Vienna Acoustics Klimt The Kiss.
Cables: USB: EntreQ Discover. Interconnect: Shunyata Research Aeros…
On a very special Saturday night in early September—late winter in Australia—I was deeply moved by hearing Brahms' Symphony 1 in the concert hall of the Sydney Opera House complex. Perhaps it was Marek Janowski's fiery, inspired conducting, but I keep recalling the hall itself. Earlier that day, I had photographed—first from my hotel room, later from a ferry—the huge, nesting sail-like roofs, covered with a million white ceramic tiles, that enclose an opera theater, concert hall, and restaurant. Twenty-five years in construction and costing over $107 million, the Sydney Opera House is…
Setup
I placed the Revel Salons where my Quad ESL-63s had done best: 63" from the rear wall and 36" from the side walls, on a circular area rug. The Salons faced the full length of my listening room, which is 26' long, 13' wide, and 12' high, with a semi-cathedral ceiling. The back of the room opens into a 25' by 15' kitchen through an 8' by 4' doorway. Even in this large listening area—over 5000 cubic feet—the Salon produced high volumes. Its 86dB/2.83V/m voltage sensitivity falls within the range this magazine has found to be normal. Medium-powered solid-state amplifiers such as my…
This lack of compression and low distortion were most evident when rendering the full dynamics of percussion, as on Tito Puente's timbales solo, "Tito," on Arturo Sandoval's Hothouse (N2K 10023). Played at the Bryston 7B-STs' maximum output, the Salon projected an image of the timbales spread across the soundstage in three parts. Precise soundstage imaging—even at top volume—showed Puente moving back and forth among the three drums. Each drumstick stroke was sudden, with no decay or congestion—just the clear, open, explosive sounds of the drumhead, the rim, and the drumstick's wood. The…
Specifications
Description: Four-way, floor-standing loudspeaker with rear-facing reflex port and tweeter. Drive-units: 1.1" (28mm) aluminum-alloy dome tweeter, 0.75" rear tweeter, 4" (102mm) titanium-dome midrange driver, 6.5" (185mm) midbass transducer, three 8" (210mm) woofers. Crossover frequencies: 125Hz, 450Hz, 2.2kHz; 8kHz for rear tweeter. Rear-panel level controls: front and rear tweeters, low-frequency compensation. Frequency response: in-room response, 25Hz-12kHz, ±1dB; first-reflections response, 25Hz-17kHz, ±1dB; listening window (on-axis) response: 24Hz-18kHz, ±1.5dB; in-…
A Visit to the Revel Factory
Driving 75 miles on Southern California's crowded freeways was a first for me, but I was determined to visit designer Kevin Voecks at Harman International's Northridge facility. I traveled north from Anaheim, through Hollywood, past the Van Nuys airport, turned off Balboa Boulevard into Harman's parking lot (catching just a glimpse of the beautiful San Gabriel mountains in the distance), and entered a huge, 450,000-square-foot factory once used to assemble Titan missiles. The next hour was a blur as Kevin and his engineering team raced me through Revel's…
Greenhill: How did the Salon's design process differ from your earlier loudspeakers? Voecks: Back at NRC, we thought off-axis measurements should be held to standards similar to on-axis ones, but we could not specify how. Now that process is much more refined here at Revel. We have a single curve with so much information. Second, the listening process is very much improved. We can place a speaker in the same spot in the room. Even at Canada's NRC we had a problem doing that. You'd have to switch back and forth to see what was coming from the speaker and what was different about the room…
Greenhill: How did you determine that off-axis response was so important in speaker design? Voecks: The real breakthrough in the design of the Salon was getting a speaker measurement that correlated with double-blind listener preferences. We divided our measurements into three groups.
First was the direct sound. We measure direct sound at the listening window. This yields a curve that gives loudspeaker measurements a bad name, because it can look good with a lousy speaker. We do an average of seven measurements. That cancels out local interference that doesn't mean anything in…
Associated Equipment
Analog sources: Linn Sondek LP12 turntable with Lingo power supply unit, Ittok tonearm, Spectral moving-coil cartridge. Tuners: Day-Sequerra FM Reference Classic, Rotel RH-10, Fanfare FM-1, Magnum Dynalab MD-108/Model 205 Sleuth RF amplifier. Digital source: Krell MD-1 CD transport, Adcom GDA-700 processor.
Preamplifiers: Krell KBL, Mark Levinson ML-7A, Duntech MX-10 head amplifier.
Power amplifiers: Mark Levinson No.331 (stereo), Bryston 7B-ST (monoblocks).
Loudspeakers: Snell Type A Reference system.
Cables: Interconnects: 75 ohm…
