THE ACARIAN ALÓN V Mk II SPEAKERS
by ARTHUR S. PFEFFER
We begin with a quiz. Quiet in the back row.
THE ACARIAN ALÓN V Mk II SPEAKERS
by ARTHUR S. PFEFFER
(Answers: 1.d, 2.c, 3.d, 4.d, 5.e )
Trick questions and answers? I would have said so, too, before I auditioned the Alón V Mk II (abbreviated hereafter as 'the Mk IIs'). Actually, these speakers are all but impossible to audition. I have played them constantly for almost two months but seldom heard them. The hero of Woody Allen's movie Zelig was a man, surely not Mr. Allen, who had no identity of his own but became whichever person circumstances required. The Mk II is the Zelig of loudspeakers. It takes on the collective personality of the recording and the electronics you are listening to. If that personality is a self-effacing, musically truthful one, the listener is in for a revelatory treat. If not, then not.
Acarian's first product was the Alón IV, a floor-standing three-way speaker, $3500 per pair, with minimal crossovers, open midrange and tweeter baffles, and a twelve-inch woofer that could shake the floor. The IV's transparency, neutrality, dynamic oomph, and huge soundstage have made it a classic conventional design. However, Carl Marchisotto of Acarian saw room to improve the IV in the areas of resolving power, neutrality, speed, top-to-bottom tonal consistency, and physical bulk. The result was the V, selling for $4800 per pair, with a ten-inch woofer, a dipolar tweeter, an elegant, easily removable, one-piece grille, and a smaller footprint. The V has now been redesigned as the Mk II, boasting a re-engineered midrange cone and suspension, more sensitive tweeter, seamless cabinet shell with removable base for easy service and upgrades, tuned woofer system, and more sophisticated crossover components.
Like the Alón IVs, the Mk IIs are designed to be tri-wired- three separate pairs of cable for each side, six connectors in all at the speaker end. Jumpers are provided for bi-wiring, but this entails a perceptible loss of sonic quality. Acarian makes a convenient tri-wire harness called the Black Orpheus, and Discovery Cable makes one that is even easier to use. Bi-amping is facilitated by the removable base, which allows easy access to the internal crossovers. The speakers image best and sound most natural when placed several feet away from nearby walls.
Marchisotto's philosophy that speakers are not musical instruments but passive transmitters of the music does not convince all listeners or all dealers. He wishes to eliminate the component's ability to color or distort sound, even euphoniously. He hopes to make his speaker as neutral as possible through as wide a range of frequencies and dynamic levels as possible and to avoid any design elaboration that, whatever its other merits, might add coloration. In addition, Marchisotto wishes to achieve the midrange transparency of the best electrostatics while enabling listeners to enjoy the full weight and authority of a symphony orchestra. If this sounds familiar, it should. Almost every audio manufacturer makes similar claims. Neutrality is a constant buzzword in ad copy. The question is why do components that claim to be neutral sound so different? Is it because even many sophisticated listeners like them that way? With Marchisotto, neutrality isn't just talk.
One of the results of their insistent Zeligism is the noted fussiness of Alón's top speakers when it comes to amplification. Like the IVs, the Mk Its do not present a difficult load for an amplifier. Their impedance curve hews to the four ohm mark, and their relatively simple crossover networks minimize phase problems. Nevertheless, they relentlessly reveal the characters of the electronics (cables, tonearms, you name it) used with them and refuse to disguise sonic flaws. If you want smooth, well balanced sound with a deep stage and big, accurate images, then you better find an amplifier (cable, toner, etc.) that delivers a smooth, well balanced sound with a deep stage and big, accurate images, because the Mk IIs will not inject their own depth or sweetness or create a false impression of focus. With well chosen electronics and a properly tuned signal source, the Mk IIs provide a listening experience that can be overwhelming in its clarity and power.
Accordingly I tested the Mk IIs with a variety of good power amplifiers. (The rest of my system includes a VTL PR-1 [Super Deluxe] preamp, Pioneer CLD-97 CD transport, VTL TDAC-2 DAC, VPI HW-19 Mk IV turntable with SAMA, Eminent Technology 2.5 arm, Signet AT-OC9 cartridge, Discovery Signature cables and cords, and Room Tunes equipment rack and wall treatments). Now I must find words to describe what I didn't hear.
I listened first to the VTL MB-225s with KT-90 output tubes but without the new Signature transformer upgrade. These made the Mk IIs dynamic, extremely well defined, and spatially expansive, but top heavy, rolled off in the bass, natural in the middle midrange but aggressive in the upper midrange, even a bit thin. Later, equipped with the improved transformer, the amps suddenly sounded better-natured, allowing the Mk IIs to offer a more balanced sound with deep, ample but controlled bass, with transparency and midrange purity to burn, and startlingly natural airiness and detail. Switching to the current stock version of the MB-225s, with 6550 tubes and the transformer upgrade. I noticed increased warmth, a softer edge to the highly focused images, an even 'friendlier,' sweeter character, a slight reduction in high frequency airiness, but the same powerful bass response and deep, wide stage.
Next I heard the E.A.R. 509 Mk 2s, compact tube monoblocks which shared most of the 225s' characteristics and perhaps outdid them in transparency and coherence- the bearable lightness of hearing. But their 105 watts were not quite enough to energize the speakers' deep bass and dynamic potential, and the stage shrank just a bit as well. The Mk IIs lost some of "their" kick. With all these amps, a suave Mercury CD like the Saint-Saens Cello Concerto No. 1 [432010-2] offered a well defined solo, a vividly immediate, full-bodied orchestra with a firmly sustained bass register, and precisely focused woodwinds in the center. The mellowness of the speakers absolutely depends on that of the source, amps, and cables with one exception: in a warmish sounding room there will be no added bass warmth from the Mk IIs, as there could be with the Alón IVs.
A different transformation took place with the connection of a Plinius SA-250 solid-state amp, 250 watts per channel of immaculate Class A power on a single massive chassis. Now, the MK IIs became a rock fan's delight: fast, ultra-potent deep bass plus stable, hardly-less-rounded images, with extreme precision and clarity of detail in the front half of the stage. Through the tube amps, the pounding electric guitar and drum kit of Jeff Beck's GuitarShop [Epic CD EK44313] floated in their own spaces, left, center, and right. But the effect was a little polite compared with the immense bass kick of the Plinius, which makes the Mk IIs more receptive to the violent sounds of the music. The precise imaging of the speaker on "Behind the Veil" is especially captivating- or is it the precision of the amp? In music with strings, though, the Mk IIs lost a bit of "their" sweetness and relaxed ease with the Plinius; the sound became denser, tenser, and, at high levels, brighter, but somehow more exciting.
The huge soundstage and ripe sonorities of the Prologue to John Williams' music for Hook [Epic CD EK48888] are made for the Mk IIs. The wispy effects of Track 6 curl spookily about the stage. The Mk IIs, like the Alón IVs, are nearly ideal home theater speakers because of their pinpoint imaging and responsiveness to the sudden transients found in film scores and effects tracks. They do silences just as well as sounds-no overhang, no smear. And no volume level below the lethal induces the Mk IIs to break up, distort, or abandon its characteristic crispness in any frequency range.
Especially with the tube amps, the Mk IIs render individual instruments, alone or in an ensemble, with richly realistic textures and timbres. We may call it harmonic structure or some other technobabble, but it just means that a trumpet sounds trumpet-like and a cello cello-like, no threadbare imitations. It's quite an experience to hear the two mandolin soloists in an old Erato LP of Vivaldi's Concerto for Two Mandolins [STU 70545] suspended in space to the right and left of center, perfectly defined and tonally pristine, each with its own distinct timbre and player's touch. On other recordings, drums are wonderfully full-bodied, with firm pitch and complex decay that convey the thwonk, the drumhead resonance, not just a heavy thud.
The attributes of the Mk IIs that may not please some acute listeners are intimately related to the speaker's excellencies. For one thing, low powered single-ended amps will probably not do much for the Mk II (Recommended minimum power is 200 watts, but that is flexible.) For another, acquainted as I am with the wonders of electrostatics, I doubt that the Mk IIs, for all their speed and dynamic bloom, quite equal the Martin-Logan CLSes, for instance, in the illusion of being in the live presence of (non-bass) instruments or rival much more expensive systems, like Alón's own Phalanx, in capturing the subtle nuances of air and space. But they come remarkably close, and they are more convenient to set up and use.
The Mk IIs' honest midrange quality is connected to bass response, because a component that filters out low bass, like the CLS and many mini-monitors, can transmit midrange without smearing from low frequency resonances. The Mk IIs' bass is identical in tonal quality and speed to the rest of its range. (The crossover points are undetectable.) This consistency of texture and attack is what planar/cone woofer hybrids don't readily accomplish. When a note terminates on a hybrid, the flat panel stops vibrating while the melody lingers on in the woofer. Same things happens at the initial attack: the panel jumps ahead while the cone lags back. This is one reason why Marchisotto, in targeting identical timbre in all the drivers, chose a ten-inch woofer for the Mk IIs- to take advantage of the quickness of the lighter cone while sacrificing some of the low end amplitude (but little of the extension) of the IV. Yet few will regard the Mk II as a midrangy speaker- it has too much of the weight of live music for that. Not that you can't make the Mk IIs sound fat: certain tube amps can do it, and so can a recording like the Wagner Transcriptions for Organ on Philips [CD 416159-2]. Some tracks (try number 3) have inflated organ pedal notes, and the Mk IIs obligingly fill the room with sonic obesity. Though its anechoic -3dB point is 34 Hz, in my room the response descends impressively into the twenties (and even the high teens, but with less power), well below the lower limit of high quality mini-monitors. One ten-inch cone per side will not move enough air to flap your pants cuffs; for that you need a woofer tower or subwoofer boxes, and these do not fit Marchisotto's purist ethos.
The Alón V Mk II proved to be an unusually realistic transducer, a connoisseur's speaker, convenient, easy to place in the average listening room, but quite demanding of associated equipment. Work with it, and you should experience a new level of musical immediacy and pleasure. And keep Zelig in mind when you visit your dealer's showroom.