Tonight I found myself listening to the TORII MONO's paired with the Decware FRX2 drivers in the Zen Open Baffle cabinets, backed up by a pair of Imperial SO folded horns.  This was a combination that dropped a lot of jaws during the 2018 DECFEST, but since then I have updated the amplifiers with the anniversary mods that swept the entire Decware line.  

The ZOB loudspeakers are pressure-centric so the louder you play them, the fuller the frequency balance becomes.  Tonight I was in the mood to hear some music sound real, and at live levels.

What a combination!  Makes Lowther's sound slow.  The sound is so real that for the first time in 40 some years of serious listening, I actually felt like the speaker diaphragm was reproducing the microphone diaphragm exactly.  In regular hi-fi, 86dB speakers this is an alien concept.  

Anyway, I still have a big red spot on my forehead from the face palms... I have the 60 watt mono's turned up as loud as they will go without distortion and the sound leaves me without words.... me... without words.  Think about that for a minute!

I should start giving this demo to customers, but if I did, they would return home and tell their wives that they have to sell the house to get a bigger room and two refrigerator size speakers to set behind the speakers we'll be listening to... of course you can see where that would go.  

Oh, and I almost forgot, the CD player!!!  Holy crap, this thing is simply over the top.  It even sounds better to me than the top of the line Wadia transport and Dac which has long been my reference.  I'm setting here tonight listening to a CD on a system where the CD player is hooked directly to the amplifiers and I've never heard a CD sound this good before!!!  (Using a 44 lbs DENON with the solid copper chassis that was a reference back in the 90's.

Had I known sound from a CD like this was possible I would have lightened up a bit on my digital bashing.  But at the same time it proves my 30 some years long point, that to make CD's sound like LP's or TAPE, you need a very expensive transport and DAC, something that most consumers could never dream of affording... myself included but tonight I am listening to CD's that sound so good my first instinct was to down-sample my hi-res files to 16/44 and burn them to CD's just so I could hear them on this system!

Tell me this hobby isn't crazy.

Steve

It's rewarding to listen to the results when after doing this for so many years you just can't believe what you're hearing! It was so good. Imagine the sound of a SE84UFO25 with 30 times more power and that wouldn't be terribly far off.  

I played Randy's (Caintuck Audio) demo disk, which is one of my favorite demo disks of all time.  It's so weird, because every time I listen to it, albeit usually always on a different configuration of gear, it's like hearing it for the first time. The fact that I still enjoy it even though I've had it since October is epic. But hearing it loud was simply fascinating!  

For those who were at the DECFEST in October who got to hear this combo on one of the better bass tracks on the CD, you should know that one of the amps had a bad socket and one of the two output tubes wouldn't come on. That means that the amp would only put out about 5 watts before noticeable distortions on that channel. So without spoiling the demo, I set it to 5 watts and let it rip.  Everyones eyes got pretty big during that demo and will tell you the low bass just ripped the room and you could feel the concrete move.  Last night I was at the full 60 watts and it was... epic.

These TORII MONO's really benefitted from the anniversary mods, and they like to work which is, on a 94dB speaker, pretty loud. Also I have to pat myself on the back for the FRX2 drivers performance in open baffles which I was certain would be limited to 8 watts back when I did them, easily handled the full brunt of the TORII MONO's 60 watts without a hint of compression or strain. They have the ability at these power levels to accurately duplicate the sound of a 10 foot 2x12 board being snapped in half. They make you eyes blink at the concussion, yet even at these power levels the sound was pure liquid, no grain, no fatigue, no peaks, just perfection.  

Of course in fairness, the Imperial SO subs were placed in the building first and turned on while the interior rooms were being designed and built so that there would be perfect bass everywhere. This was how they were placed, why the listening room was located where it is and how it got it's size and dimension.  Also it is how it was discovered the large Imperial SO horns can't touch the walls or the floor but rather must have a 4 inch air space below and behind them. We built the entire listening room around these speakers without anything actually touching the cabinets.

The brighter articulate sound of the FRX in the Zen Open Baffle cabinets is what is required to offset the massive deep bass of the imperial SO horns.

The louder I played it, the better the frequency balance gets. From low volume where the mid bass is a bit sucked out but lows and highs are great, to high volume where everything is in balance. Talk about some hit!  

I would say the system with zero clipping was about 3 to 4 dB above live levels, and it was so good!  Most of the time live (amplified) gigs are in rooms and with electronics that are no where near this level of refinement, so when they get loud, it generally sucks.  This experience was the exact opposite, and so refreshing for a change.  

The Decware listening room can handle probably 3 times the pressures that a room in the average home could, due to the way the building is constructed with walls like giant diodes that let sound energy pass through them to the outdoors where the nearest reflection point is nearby houses that are too far away for the reflection to get back through the 1" thick MDF shell of the building.

Anyway I left pretty impressed with the FRX2 drivers, and the room itself, and marveled at how good the amps were with such outrageous speakers!  Usually I run this pair of 15 inch horns in parallel with the 8 inch FRX2 drivers with the 2 watt Anniversary amp because it makes it sound GIANT.  Always plenty loud with 2 watts for normal listening levels, so I was 15 dB above that level if you can image.

You can go to any main stream audio store and get pummeled by speakers with dozens of drivers and hundreds of watts, but it never sounds good for more than a few minutes.  This did.  In fact I played the CD twice.

I prefer the suspended wood floors over concrete any day, as you can feel the music better, especially bass.

Steve

Quote:


Steve.....I was one of the lucky ones to be in the hot seat during that demo at Decfest 😁.  Not only did the music engulf the entire room.... the bass struck me through my inner core....at that was only at 5w....I couldn’t image that at the full 60w.  Yes.... Epic comes to mind!!

As a reference for those who were not present, here are 2 videos I took of that demo. Mind you this video does not come close to the live experience, but nonetheless worth the reference.

https://youtu.be/onLMORjksCo

https://youtu.be/u_eTsVktaxc


Dom