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Regarding the Virgo's horizontal dispersion (fig.4, which shows just the changes in response off-axis), there's a peculiar step around 1kHz, which is perhaps due to the side-firing woofers. Other than that and a slight flare at the bottom of the tweeter's passband, the dispersion is even, with progressive HF rolloff as the listener moves to the speaker's sides. This always correlates with excellent imaging ability, and the Virgo is no exception, to judge from MF's auditioning comments and my own listening. The apparent peak at 27kHz in this graph is due to the on-axis interference notch in…
To examine how these quasi-anechoic responses sum, fig.6 shows a spatially averaged response trace taken for the pair of Virgos in my own listening room after I had experimented for a while to get the optimal integration with the room acoustics. There's a slight energy excess in the upper bass, which is only partly due to the room; note, though, the excellent low-bass extension, the Virgo being flat to below the 31.5Hz, 1/3-octave band. This gave both rock and orchestral recordings a secure musical foundation, I found. Though the midrange and treble in-room meet superb ±1.5dB limits between…
Mikey wrote again about the Virgo in June 1999 (Vol.22 No.6):
Despite my Sonus Faber Amati ravings, my long-term reference, the Audio Physic Virgo, need not apologize for its performance. It is still a very special loudspeaker. The proof is that Audio Physic has had a difficult time selling the excellent $10k/pair Avanti, which is priced between the Virgo and the $19,000/pair Caldera. (From what I've heard of the Caldera, I find it inexplicable that this speaker is still placed in Class B in Stereophile's "Recommended Components" rather than Class A.) The Virgo is that good.
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Geminiani: Concerti Grossi
Concerto 1 in D, Concerto 2 in B-flat, Concerto 3 in C, Concerto 4 in F, eight others.
Andrew Manze, Academy of Ancient Music; Alison McGillivray, cello; Richard Egarr, harpsichord.
Harmonia Mundi HMU 907261.62 (2 CDs). 2000. Robina G. Young, prod.; Geoff Miles, Mike Clements, engs. AAD? TT: 2:24:19
Performance ****?
Sonics ****?
Concerto 1 in D, Concerto 2 in B-flat, Concerto 3 in C, Concerto 4 in F, eight others.
Andrew Manze, Academy of Ancient Music; Alison McGillivray, cello; Richard Egarr, harpsichord.
Harmonia Mundi HMU 907261.62 (2 CDs). 2000. Robina G. Young, prod.; Geoff Miles, Mike Clements, engs. AAD? TT: 2:24:19
Performance ****?
Sonics ****?
In 1716 in London, violinist Francesco Geminiani, just off the boat from his home in Italy, was called to play before King George I. Worried that an unknown and somewhat less-than-stellar harpsichord accompanist…
As much as I'm tempted by the impressive sweep and scale with which some of the large, full-range loudspeakers endow music, for some reason I find myself more at home with more compact examples of the breed. This is not through lack of familiarity with large speakers, a pair of B&W Matrix 801s occupying pride of place in our living room (which also serves as my wife's listening room). Yet I find myself hankering after that ultimate soundstage precision that only minimonitors seem capable of producing: the loudspeakers totally disappearing, vocal and instrumental images hanging in space,…
Both satellites and subwoofer come with comprehensive Owner's Manuals covering all aspects of setup and use and offering good advice on where to site the units within the room to get the optimum sound. Would that all loudspeakers were as well served in this respect.
The sound
The Modulus pedestals were supplied ready-assembled; all that I needed to do was to fill the 22", diecast aluminum center pillars first with 12 lbs of No.8 hard lead shot, then with dry sand to within 1" of the top plate. A foam plastic insert then ensures that the top plate is adequately damped. The base of…
To put this problem into perspective, the spl of the hum measured about 56dB unweighted at the listening position, lower than the background noise on the Dorian Pictures recording, but in the very quiet listening conditions I have available, any level of hum is audible except when masked by the music. I assumed that either my controller or subwoofer were faulty or needed an internal modification. I therefore ignored the background hum for the purposes of this review. If you are interested in the full-range Infinity Modulus system, however, it would be worth checking that you do not get any…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Infinity Modulus: two-way, sealed-box, stand-mounted loudspeaker. Drive-units: 2.125" by 0.5" EMIT-k ribbon tweeter, 5.5" (140mm) IMG (Injection-Molded Graphite) cone woofer. Crossover frequency: 4kHz. Crossover slopes: 4th-order, 24dB/octave, Linkwitz-Reilly. Frequency response: 80Hz–45kHz ±2dB. Sensitivity: 84dB/W/m (2.83V). Nominal impedance: 5 ohms. Amplifier requirements: 50–200W.
Dimensions: 12" (305mm) H by 7" (178mm) W by 10.625" (270mm) D. Weight: 12 lbs (5.5kg) each.
Finishes available: gloss black and white.
Price: $1000/pair (matching…
Sidebar 2: Review context
The speakers were positioned for the best sound (with only one pair of loudspeakers in the 21' by 16' by 9' listening room at a time), some 4' from the longer rear wall (which is faced with books and LPs) and approximately 5' from the shorter side walls (which also have bookshelves covering some of their surfaces). Source components consisted of a Revox A77 to play my own and others' 15ips master tapes, a Linn Sondek/Ekos/Troika setup sitting on an ArchiDee table to play LPs, and Kinergetics KCD-40 and Meridian 208 (Bitstream) CD players. (The latter also saw…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
I use a mixture of nearfield, in-room, and quasi-anechoic FFT measurement techniques (using primarily DRA Labs' MLSSA system with a B&K 4006 microphone, but also an Audio Control Industrial SA-3050A 1/3-octave spectrum analyzer with its calibrated microphone) to investigate objective factors that might explain the sound heard. The speakers' nearfield low-frequency responses and impedance phase and amplitude were measured using the magazine's Audio Precision System One.
There are no surprises in the Infinity's measured impedance (fig.1). The sealed-box…