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A Reprint from January 1996 , Vol. 19 No. 1

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America's oldest and largest subjective-review audio magazine. Subscription rates $33 (U.S. and Canada), and $75 US (foreign). To Subscribe remit all funds to Stereophile, 469027, Escondido, CA 92046-9027, or call toll-free to charge subscription to your credit card (800) 444-8908. Outside the US, call (619) 745-2809.

Equipment Reports

DIVERGENT STRATEGIES
Wes Phillips examines the Alón Petite by Acarian Systems

SLAM! My left foot went numb. My fellow salesman, Danny Shapiro, had lost control of the Thiel CS5 that we'd been walking into place in Demo Room V, and it had come crashing down on my foot with unerring accuracy-- all 180 lbs worth.

As I stared down in horror, I remembered that we'd left the spikes on. But wait a minute-- there was no pool of blood spreading out under the CS5. How could that be? Convinced that the heavy cabinet was acting as a tourniquet, I levered it off my foot, expecting a grisly sight. I got one: my new Rockport pierced by the carpetpoint-- right between my big and second toes. And people ask me why I like small loudspeakers.

There are other reasons. As JA pointed out in his review of the AE2 Signature and Platinum Audio Solo (Stereophile,, November 1995, Vol. 18 No. 11, pp. 108-117), many rooms just can't support a speaker with abundant LF information. Besides, the li'l guys frequently image like bandits- which some of us just can't resist. There are also cost constraints; not everyone can afford the $10k he-man jobbies. So it's not surprising that there are a lot of small speakers on the market. What does constantly astound me is the incredible variety of designs offered in the realm of the two-way compact monitor. Good cases in point are the two loudspeakers considered here; they illustrate just what a broad diversity is available in design philosophy-- and also in performance.

REVIEW CONTEXT

Both speakers were reviewed in my relatively small living room: 17' by 10' by 8' high in the primary dimensions, although it's part of an "open plan" living room/dining room/kitchen layout. I placed them along the long wall which means I listened more or less near-field. Both pairs benefited greatly from rigid, nonresonant stands-I used a pair of Cliff Stone's 24" Foundation stands, which are filled with aggregate and were spiked through the carpet to the concrete subfloor. Although both loudspeaker pairs are quite efficient and can be driven by modestly powered amplifiers, I used the Pass Aleph 0 monoblocks for their wonderful transparency and unwavering image stability. The preamp used was LAMM's Model Ll. At the front end were Theta's Data Basic II/DS Pre Basic III and the Well Tempered Reference/SHO/Gold Aero dB45 combos.

All of the components were plugged into two API Power Wedge 112s. Interconnect was Kimber KCAG, speaker cable was Alón Black Orpheus-- an extremely interesting design that has little bulk, even in bi- and tri-wired runs. Both pairs of speakers were thoroughly run-in before audition with burn-in tones, my Rykodisc A Day on Cape Cod: Babbling Brook, and abundant quantities of music. Only one pair of speakers was in the listening room during the auditions.

ALÓN PETITE: $995 / PAIR

Alón by Acarian Systems is certainly no newcomer to the High End: for the last five years they've built an enviable track record, producing one well-regarded full-range design after another. Carl J. Marchisotto, Alón's President, engineer, and speaker designer, has been designing audio gear since 1973, when he marketed a solid-state phono section under the name Alltest. Later, he joined Dahlquist, designing the DQLP-1 electronic crossover (still highly regarded and sought-after on the used market) and improving the DQ-10's basic design. The DQ-20 and DQ-12 also show his influence. He still employs the open-baffle concept on most of the Alón designs; Petite is the sole exception.

The Petites, introduced at Winter Consumer Electronics Show '95, immediately attracted the attention of the industry. If you've read about these speakers at all, you know they were "set up" by being placed atop a clunky hotel chest-of-drawers, and were powered by a modestly priced integrated amplifier-- and everyone still came away raving. They're a small speaker (6 ½" W by 8 ¼" D by 15" H), vented to the rear, and have two pairs of high-quality five-way binding posts to facilitate bi-wiring. These are wonderful binding posts; although they sport knurled cylindrical barrels, the last ¼" is hexagonal, allowing you to tighten the connection with a hex-driver or Postman wrench. The well-made cabinet gives a satisfyingly consistent thunk to the knuckle-rap test. The review pair was veneered with Santos Rosewood, lustrous and rich with a tight grain pattern. Removable grilles are included-- and should be removed. All of my audition was performed with grilles off.

Sonics: The Petites were placed relatively near the record shelving that lines the long rear wall of my listening room. I employed David Wilson's "voweling" process (see Stereophile, November '95, p.101)-- or something resembling it-- to locate the point where the speaker "freed up" from the rear wall's boundary effect. In my room, this was approximately 14" from the shelves. The speakers sounded best with a very slight toe-in; however, this may not be true in situations where the listener sits at a greater distance from the speakers. The Petites also benefit from being tilted back-- severely, in my case-- in the vertical plane: the front spikes were 2" taller than the rear. Again, listeners must experiment with this type of positioning based on the ratios particular to their own situations-- I found the response to be much more coherent when the Alóns were placed in this manner in my room.

These are remarkably refined performers. As I listened to my favorite music-- and to a lot of new stuff-- I was consistently impressed with how much musical enjoyment I could derive from a pair of "modestly priced" loudspeakers. Of course, they're small and have limited LF-- that's what compact monitors are. But given that restriction, I must still marvel at the sense of weight that these li'l guys gave to music that contained deep bass.¹ In this regard they don't rival the Thiel CS7s, or any other true mid-20Hz performer, but they sure didn't sound anemic either. Orchestral works, such as my standby Corigliano Symphony 1, were re-created with great elán, but did inevitably lose some power. But the drive, the sense of doom and foreboding, and the organic sense of pace that distinguish the work survived intact. That's a lot of pluses, and it could be argued that all of those qualities are ultimately more important to an informed appreciation of the Symphony than the mere sensation of wallop. I lean toward that interpretation myself, but I'm enough of an audio-weenie to want it all, even at this price point.

The Corigliano also pointed toward another-- extremely minor, I think-- shortcoming of the Petite: If pushed really hard-like, say, in the range of 100dB-- they lose coherence. Sure, orchestras, big bands, and rock groups do regularly reach sound-pressure levels (spls) in that area, but remember, we're talking about speakers that are designed for smaller spaces that might not accommodate deep bass. All spaces can acoustically overload, even Carnegie Hall (I've heard both the VO and the CSO manage that trick).

When really stressed, the Petite gets a tad blurry through a broad midrange band, as though the drivers were no longer in perfect sync. In fact, the brightness region seems to be projecting forward of the rest of the soundstage. Cymbals and string overtones sound spitchy, and the midbass, normally so expressive, turns opaque. There's a simple solution for this: turn the music down! Or, perhaps, add the subwoofer that Alón has just introduced.

I wanted to get those extremely minor cavils out of the way so that I could concentrate on describing these compact speakers' many admirable traits. They're extraordinarily expressive. Not just articulate and precise-- which they are, in spades-- but sublimely capable of communicating. This is a rare feature; many megabuck no-holds-barred components don't possess it, so I'm particularly gratified to find it in affordable ones.

I'm an old softie at heart; I seem to listen to a lot of music about loss and longing. Listening through the Petites, I found myself surreptitiously wiping away tears while writing my listening notes. "Goodbye," from Steve Earle's Train a Comin' (Winter Harvest 3302-2), is a good case in point. Earle's voice was never a supple instrument to begin with, and with the life he's led, he can't exactly be accused of having pampered it; still, he gets the job done. The song is searingly honest; the singer is looking back on a lost opportunity and accepting responsibility for it. "Was I off somewhere just too high / But I can't remember if we said goodbye," Earle sings-- heck, almost croaks-- but the simple words are imbued with missed chances, rueful responsibility, and deep, deep regret. An old friend claims that high art is made out of the meanest materials; this song proves her point-- and the Petites get it all so right.

And image? That's a lot of the appeal in minimonitors in the first place, and the Petites are champs in that regard. Train a Comin' really sounds like a coupla guys sittin' around your living room playing and singing together. When Norman Blake plays his solo piece, "Northern Winds," he's a solid and present as a guest in the room-- and there's no doubt that he's playing his 1934 D-18. Each of the four musicians is concretely placed in space, surrounded by air, and full of life and verve. Watch out! Peter Rowan just bounced a pick off his F-5-- it could've hit you.

Palestrina's Missa Viri Galilaei, as performed by La Chapelle Royale and Ensemble Organum (HMC 901388), seems to always find its way to my CD player when I'm evaluating a system's ability to soundstage. It's a truly nasty test, featuring a vast acoustic and combinations of singers that range from solo to duet to quartet, quintet, and full chorus-- with dialogs between the solo (and small-group voicings) and the chorus. Colorations are revealed mercilessly, as is any loss of ambient information. The Petites did a fantastic job of portraying the vocal combinations in the reverberant acoustic, doubly impressive when you consider how much ambient information is contained in the lowest octaves. The soloists and choirs had great physical presence, and the passion with which they sang was rendered with exceptional force. Yet the specific nature of the huge space in which they sang lost the slightest bit of precision-- although the voices were clearly in a large space, that space lacked the identity that it achieves through the finest speakers I've recently auditioned: the WATT/Puppy 5s and the Thiel CS7s.

But who am I kidding? You could buy fifteen pairs of Petites for the price of the Wilsons, nine for the Thiels. The Petites perform way out of their price class, and if I can point to one state-of-the-art design or another and find the Alóns lacking in comparison, there's no shame in that.

-Wes Phillips

Measurements from JA: As expected from its diminutive proportions, the Petite is not very sensitive, 2.83V raising a calculated 83dB at 1m (B-weighted). However, its impedance traces (fig.1) reveal it as an easy load for an amplifier to drive, dropping below 8 ohms only in the midrange. Though no wrinkles can be seen in the impedance traces, the cabinet was generally lively in the 350-500Hz region. No strong individual resonant modes could be found, however, which suggests an optimally constructed cabinet.

Fig. 2 shows the individual responses of the Acarian's drive-units on the tweeter axis at a measuring distance of 50". (The lower reaches of the woofer's output and the port response were measured in the nearfield.) The crossover can be seen to lie around the specified 3.5kHz, though the woofer has a distinct step in its output just above 1kHz. The output of the tiny port is the bandpass centered on the woofer's minimum-motion frequency, 52Hz, and I noticed considerable chuffing and wind noise coming from it at even moderate levels when the speaker was driven by a pure sinewave. Luckily, music will offer some masking and the port does face the rear.

How these individual responses sum on the tweeter axis can be seen in fig.3. The complex sum-- magnitude, phase, and distance-- of the woofer and port low-frequency outputs rolls off gently below 100Hz, reaching the 6dB-down point at a moderate 55Hz; not bad extension for such a small speaker. Though the overall balance is smooth and even, the step in the woofer's on-axis response remains a distinct feature.

This response shape is almost always associated with a pronounced nasality to a speaker's sound, in my experience, so I was initially puzzled as to why WP didn't notice any excessive coloration. Then I read that he had to tilt the speaker backward quite a ways to get a balance he liked. My choice of the tweeter axis was not optimal, therefore. Fig.4 shows how the Petite's response changes as the listener moves up or down from the tweeter axis. (Just the response differences are shown in this graph; hence, the tweeter-axis response appears to be a straight line.) As can be seen from fig. 4, the speaker's output in the region just above the step increases by up to 5dB for listening angles more than 15° above or below the tweeter axis. The response on WP's preferred axis is shown in fig.5-- though a slight discontinuity can still be seen at 1kHz, the response is pretty flat overall.

WP also commented on the Petite's fine imaging. Fig.6 shows how the speaker's sound changes to its sides. The textbook rolloff in the top two octaves with increasing off-axis angle, coupled with an excellent match between the woofer and tweeter dispersion patterns in the crossover region to the sides, is always associated with excellent stereo imaging, in my experience.

In the time domain, the step response (fig.7) reveals that both drive-units are connected with the same positive acoustic polarity, but as expected from the flat front baffle, the tweeter's output leads the woofer's by a fraction of a millisecond. Other than the on-axis step at 1khz, the Petite's cumulative spectral-decay or waterfall plot (fig.8) is simply superb, clean and free from resonant problems.

All in all, the Petite is a well-engineered little speaker and, provided care is taken over what axis the listener listens on, should offer a neutral, well-balanced sound. -John Atkinson

Wes Phllips sums up:

Compared to other thousand-dollar loudspeakers, the Petites are winners. There are a lot of considerations in choosing a speaker in their very competitive price-class. The Ruark Templar I reviewed in December, the Thiel .5 MK reviewed in November, and the Monitor Audio Studio 2 I reviewed back in February are all worthy contenders. But I'd have to say that, even given the caliber of the competition, the Alón Petites would head any list I compiled of must-audition, affordable minimonitors. Let's just dub them "first among equals."

-Wes Phillips

MANUFACTURER'S COMMENTS

Many thanks to Stereophile and Wes Phillips for this fine review of the Alón Petite mini-monitor. Our goal in the Petite project was to produce a small loudspeaker that did not sound deficient in its ability to communicate the essential emotion and intent of the music. While, as pointed out in the review, this is quite difficult for any loudspeaker regardless of size or price, we feel it is extremely rare in a small loudspeaker. That the Alón Petite cornmunicated musical and emotional intent, even on large-scale works such as the Corigliano Symphony 1, indicates that we have met our goal.

Regarding the reproduction of large acoustic spaces, we can say that this aspect is improved by the addition of the new PW1 Petite woofer, which will extend response to 32Hz.

We recommend, as Wes pointed out, that for the most critical listening, the Petites should be tilted back 9°. This can be achieved by raising the front spikes 2" more than the rear. This tiltback brings the high- and low-frequency responses into the same time frame.

While the Alón Petite is intended to be a moderately priced product, it is interesting to note that it causes comparison with loudspeakers costing nine to fifteen times as much. We think Wes best summed it up with his final comment: "first among equals."

Once again, thanks for this fine review.

CARL J. MARCHISOTTO, President
MARILYN MARCHISOTTO, Vice President
Acarian Systems