pdf - Albedo Audio

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Reviewer: Srajan Ebaen
Financial Interests: click here
Source: Esoteric UX-1;Yamamoto YDA-01, Esoteric SA-50 [on review], Hegel CDPA4MkII [on review]
Preamp/Integrated: ModWright DM-36.5; Esoteric C-03, Wyred for Sound [on review], Hegel H-100 [on review], April
Music Stello Ai500 [on review]
Amp: FirstWatt F5, ModWright KWA-150, Octave MRE-130
Speakers: DeVore Fidelity Nines, Zu Essence
Cables: Acoustic System Liveline interconnects, speaker cables and power cords
Stands: 2 x Ikea Molger with Ikea butcher block platforms and Acoustic System footers
Powerline conditioning: 2 x Walker Audio Velocitor S
Sundry accessories: Furutech RD-2 CD demagnetizer; Nanotech Nespa Pro; full-house installation of Acoustic
System resonators, noise filters and phase inverters; Advanced Acoustics UK Orbis Wall and Corner
Room size: Sound platform 3 x 4.5m with 2-story slanted ceiling; four steps below continues into 8m long open
kitchen, dining room and office which widen to 5.2m with 2.8m ceiling; sound platform space is open to 2nd story
landing and 3rd-floor studio; concrete floor, concrete and brick walls, converted barn with no parallel walls nor perfect
right angles; short-wall setup with speaker backs facing the 8-meter expanse
Review Component Retail: €5,800/pr or local equivalent in other currencies
World's most beautiful speaker?
With notions on beauty a dime a dozen, only a fool would dare go
there - without a question mark. But Albedo's transmission-line 1storder ceramic-driver'd 5-inch two-way floorstander from Italy does
beg the question. At least to the eye of this beholder. Slim, petite,
rakish of profile, swooping of line, curvaceous plinth beautifully
integrated and mirrored with the top panel, rear of enclosure
rounded, the whole clad in stylish remanufactured striped wood,
perf-metal driver grills non-removable and an intrinsic part of the
design... it's Italian Amore for design at its finest. Bellissima!
But on potential for 'most', this didn't yet scratch the surface.
Designer Massimo Costa's skills for communicating his design
philosophy and engineering focus are unusually developed. As
such, they're reflected unedited and unabbreviated in our lengthy
20-page SideBar. You can find the same as PDF documents on his
attractive and informative website. Not only does this multi-pronged
material make a good read, it establishes without doubt what he
tried to achieve and how; and why he believes to have discovered a
new way of perfecting transmission line loading. Naturally, you can
disagree or challenge his position. The important thing is to have a
position and firmly stand for something in the sea of sameness that
engulfs most of today's loudspeaker offerings.
Beauty dissected
86dB. Linear phase 6dB/octave acoustical slopes with air coils and poly caps on double-layer copper substrate.
Physical time alignment of drivers. 45Hz to 20kHz. 26 x 19 x 101cm dimensions. 19kg mass each. Helmholine bass
loading which incorporates specifically tuned multiple Helmholtz resonators in series to linearize the progressively
tapered transmission line by acoustical equalization. Line cross section shrinks towards the floor-firing exit in a 3:1
¶
ratio. This arrives at a 50Hz resonant frequency for less than a 1-meter length. The line is open, not stuffed but its
walls are lined with open-cell medium density polyurethane. Ultra-rigid driver to cabinet to floor coupling. Accuton
(Thiele & Partners) pair-matched ceramic drivers.
Beauty explained
To correlate theory and practice, Albedo created a software simulation program into which were entered data points
from existing Bradbury transmission-line theory. Their predictive outcome was compared against what Clio would
actually measure on equivalent prototypes. The twain didn't meet and therein lies much of the tale of the Albedo
project chronicled in the above sidebar.
Beauty set up
With its hidden steel spine extending fluidly into the massive plinth which couples to the floor via top-adjustable spikes
(grazie!), the petite HL2.2 packs significant hardware. The instruction manual is loaded with useful setup tips on the
effects of wall distance and various toe-in schemes. And being the company's flagship, we discover something else
about Massimo Costa. He lives in the real world. There speakers must blend into modestly sized living rooms. He isn't
a design-for-design's-sake freak. In furniture, their kind often ends up with radically outré chairs that are uncomfortable
as hell to sit in to become functionally useless. This beauty has brains and common sense. Bravo!
Beauty delivered?
Having crossed Albedo paths on the Internet to follow up with a News Room mention, I subsequently expressed
review interest solely on this combination of looks, concept and attendant white papers. Meeting the HL2.2 in the flesh
at Munich HighEnd 2009 clinched the deal. Once Massimo had assured himself that his shipping cartons would
survive the rigors not of mortis but transit, I received the hoped-for notice. "I'm ready to ship. When would be
convenient?" "Yesterday."
The day after
In use, the relatively blunt spikes offer sufficient length to level the speakers
perfectly and without fuss. Even alignment of the floor protectors is child's play
since their diameter is identical to that of the top screws. No more putting nose to
grind stone before a pointy spike finds its dimple receiver. The full cleverness of
Massimo's overall form factor can only be appreciated in the raw as it were. The
whole affair leans back; slims from top to bottom but at a rate asymmetrical
betwixt front, back and sides to also produce a different rake between baffle and
spine; curves around the back like a boat hull; and sports a top whose slant
differs radically from that of the bottom. In short, nothing parallels anything. It's
pure unadulterated terror from a manufacturability perspective, sheer organic flow
to the appreciative eye. Visual litheness is further underscored by floating the
body above the plinth on a stem thinner than a slim wrist.
Studying photographs of this model, one must invoke the mid/woofer's small 5-inch diameter to arrive at a proper idea
of overall size. This is a very narrow speaker. Its concomitant height will reach a 6-foot tall man's shirt sleeve rolled up
twice. In the scheme of floorstanding speakers with full-range ambitions for mere mortals -- not 20Hz geeks -- that's
molto piccolo indeed.
Preconceived notions
A pervasive one to live down also in Casa Chardonne would be 'ceramic etch'. Many speakers dressed by Accuton
focus on the leading edge to the detriment of body and render timbres with a peculiar whitish tone. Those who
automatically correlate hard diaphragms with hard sound find that predictable and unavoidable. Aware that different
implementations can produce differing results, others might reserve judgment. They'll know how stubborn designers
with clear goals and know-how can bend most anything in audio to their needs and break rules. Naturally, if one has
already heard three different ceramic speaker brands demonstrate the same qualities, this subject will be a foregone
conclusion.
Even more obvious to live down would be lackluster bass extension and impact from small cubic volume and limited
cone surface. Having come this far, you've already read of the Helmholine concept to anticipate somewhat more. How
much more remains to be answered. Ditto bass quality. After all, added extension is here purchased from Helmholtz
resonators. Would this ring like ported alignments? High-efficiency speaker users might add cranky (must be cranked
to come alive) due to the middling 86dB rating. Silk-dome lovers might express concern over treble pellucidness, head
bangers blacklist any chances at true satisfaction.
Bridge building
In short, audiophiles in particular will construe the connecting of high decor with bona fide hifi aspirations as a lost
cause by design. And there have been many earlier attempts to lend credence to such pessimism. But must we really
accept that everything meaningful on the subject has already been exhausted and etched in stone?
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Not.
The HL2.2 rewrote expectations twice, once on bass, then on its mostly 'anti-ceramic'
character. The compression-chamber loading of the mid/woofer's rear wave really did the
promised business. It extends LF reach, creates very solid output at the pipe resonance
frequency and surprising action below it, albeit literally stepped down as though one
crossed a discrete threshold. This loading also seems to assist acoustic impedance
matching. Even at high output, the driver undergoes less physical motion than expected.
You can overdrive the little thing—I inadvertently did so once on the last track of Mercan
Dede's Nefes with its powerful low-frequency heart beat spikes—but it takes some
uncivilized doing. And you don't want to bang the stops on this driver whose membrane is
physically quite brittle. I doubt it'll tolerate brainless abuse as nonchalantly as a pro-level
paper driver might.
Having heard Mårten Design and Kharma speakers to carry my own mixed bag of ceramic preconceptions, I was
frankly unprepared for the wholesale absence of etch and whitishness this implementation of Accuton drivers
celebrates. Recognizing their lust for power, I arguably had kicked off sessions with a best-case scenario with the
mighty €15,000/pr Octave KT88-fitted MRE-130 monoblocks. But even amplifiers of their caliber can't turn swines into
swans. While these speakers did all the expected disappearance tricks to soundstage like wanted bandits—all of that
you've heard before—and were exceptionally astute in how they differentiated depth perception between different
soundstage layers, they were not mechanical sewing machines whose entire raison d'être is on magnifying the
transients. In fact, Triangle's Magellan Cello Sw2 in situ at the same time veered farther in that direction. And the
French use a cellulose pulp (paper to us commoners) midrange. Geezus. This boggled the mind like so much gray
jello. But then the ears have their own wisdom. They routinely are disinclined to hear what theory would want them to.
(And the Triangle's treble does rise deliberately above 3,000Hz which the Albedo's does not.)
Hot.
Believers in the audibility of time-domain fidelity probably agree. Treble sharpness is often a
function of harmonic tweeter data which leads the midrange fundamentals of which the
overtones are merely a function. In other words, effect precedes cause and the HF
ingredients arriving a fraction too early are what cause the etch. The inverted Accuton
tweeter in this Albedo speaker most assuredly does not—and this bears repeating because
it flies in the face of expectations so here goes: does Not!—suffer any innate sharpness or
fiery brilliance. Instead of Platinum white, the general treble tone here was rather a pale rosy
gold. It suggested one of ex Stereophile scribe Jonathan Scull's favorite nouns:
mellifluousness. It's fancy for sweet honeyed flow. And that's precisely the calling card of
this speaker. Color me not a golden tan but blotty embarrassed red for having entertained
such contrarious notions.
Trot.
With that out of the way, the second round of undue cause fell on the incredibly well-damped, outright plucky bass.
Where the whole Helmholtz resonator business—which of course also describes every vented alignment in the book—
had perhaps predicted a somewhat ringy hollowness to pay for 'stolen' extension, reality once more interfered. Mostly.
There was a specific and quite narrow mid-bass band that was boosted in amplitude and texturally a bit discontinuous.
Aside from that though, it weren't just speed, articulation and bounce which characterized this bass as agile and perky.
There also was a quite counter-intuitive wallop that really shouldn't have been considering how the HL2.2 has very
small gloves to punch with.
Naturally big powerful amplifiers are required to get the best in that regard. 100 glowing or
150 dark watts are probably advisable for the biggest damage these mid/woofers are
capable of before crying Uncle. On all musical fare that routinely factors in my reviews,
there really was nothing beyond the HL2.2s. But by the same token, I'm not one of those
who expects a symphony of a thousand to fit into my living room at front-row levels.
Headbangers, gut pounders and monster wave surfers better move on. It's when high SPLs
and those frequencies which are additionally amplified by the Helmoline encounter violent
spikes rather than steady-state signal that the narrow Accutone is most liable to exceed its
grasp. Damping and the handling of back EMF are further variables which had me return to
my Octave monos. Then all was hot to trot and the following paragraph covers the
highlights.
Barrelling down Albedo Avenue
The most powerful attribute of the Albedo HL.2.2 is soundstaging. Without etch, this speaker separates so uncannily
that regardless of simultaneity compounding to the nth degree—look for your most complex recordings and cue up the
densest of tracks—intelligibility never corrupts. The extent to which everything is assigned an unwavering locus
regardless of how many different instruments get busy all over the place is extraordinary. While 2-ways and big
symphonies might not seem natural friends, shy of obvious limits in energizing room air with big displacement when
the kettle drums start to pound, the HL2.2 was very impressive in its refusal to get confused. In short, the Albedo
highway has numerous exits marked 'Panorama Soundstage' to indicate that just like a large city, it's a main and big
attraction.
This seems a testament to high-level accuracy in the time domain as well as minimization of
box talk. While soundstaging usually isn't terribly high on my list of wow buttons, I had to
admit that this speaker was unusually endowed. Importantly, this did not come at a big price
of analytical aloofness probably because this tweeter refused to slice 'n' dice up the virtual
stage into a checker board. I found particularly impressive the sorting power in the layering
direction. If you want to know how far away from your observer's point various performers
are situated, this speaker will tell you without any ambiguity.
To reverse direction into minor liabilities, this speaker is somewhat cranky. One must crank
the volume to beyond background fill and into the main focus zone before it gives of its
best. Intelligibility won't default at lower levels—far from it in fact—but the sense of tone
body shrinks and goes paler than desirable. This is true for any speaker but my Rethm
Saadhana, Zu Essence and ASI Tango R keep the faith deeper into the shadows of
quietude.
As you would expect from the above, the HL2.2 tracks complex rhythms with great clarity.
For one, there's no time smear. Of additional assistance is the absence of a big woofer. Big
woofers have a tendency to warm up the proceedings. Their warmth bleeds into the upper
ranges that telegraph the fine tchikedee-tchikedee percussive stuff that propels the tunes
along. While big whomp and infrasonic presence produce their own magic, a forté of more
nimble-fingered small drivers is their on-the-money beat fidelity.
The Albedo HL2.2 isn't a cold hard speaker as its hard silver driver artillery could suggest.
Neither is it warm and fuzzy, voluptuous, round or meaty. Nor is it super lit-up. The tonal
balance in fact is very well centered. It does high-impact stuff astonishingly well for being a
petite speaker and I predict that those attracted by its modern form factor will be very
impressed by just how large it plays. The ideal client for it is someone who listens with her
eyes - by which I'm not referring to cosmetics now but the fact that the spatial/dimensional
and rhythmic precision is so high as to make the playback experience very visual.
The accomplishment
Like there are holes in Swiss
cheese so the speaker world
is riddled by claims and
theories. Not all deliver or are
as audible as their proponents
make it sound.
Time/phase coherence is one
of the more 'exotic' schools
with rather fewer adherents.
And it's true that in terms of
hierarchy, grosser errors must
be solved first before the time
domain can assert itself. Any
number of tonally flawed
single-driver speakers would
point at that for a start.
It also seems true that once
one has gained sensitivity to
time-induced errors—and gain
here carries no superiority
claim; ignorance can be bliss
in enjoyment—there's nearly
no turning back for such a
listener to 'the other kind' of
speakers.
That said, Thiel, Vandersteen
and Green Mountain Audio to
mention just three 1st-order
brands sound nothing alike so
there's more to the story than
filter choice and sloping or
stepped baffles.
If you have deliberately acquired a no/1st-order preference or found yourself wired to always prefer such designs,
Albedo's HL2.2 very obviously conforms. You needn't know that to hear it. Within that school, this Italian speaker has a
greater similarity to Thiel than Vandersteen or GMA. The company's tag line Brightness in Sound is unfortunate in that
it plays to the negative connotations 'bright' has acquired in hifi. It's assuredly not bright in that sense. But if by bright
we mean a person with charisma—one who shines—then it's quite appropriate. This segues back also to the very high
degree of visibility I mentioned earlier. If brightness means that you will see a lot very clearly because there's no
obstructions, then too this tag line has merit.
Massimo Costa's real accomplishment with his Albedo HL2.2 is that it packages a true hi-performance design—
superior for example to the previously reviewed 'high design' Danish Davone speaker—with refined style and solid
engineering such as to make for a nearly perfect balance between the demands of the various involved disciplines
which could have easily pulled in one direction or another to sacrifice the golden mean or middle path.
Coming back to the opening header about 'the world's most beautiful speaker?', reactions on cosmetics will diverge.
They always do. But I don't think anyone would deny the Albedo high style. It might not be for you but it surely conveys
itself that a gifted industrial designer has labored hard over every little detail. Nearly invariably, audiophile dogma
suspects at best second-rate sonic performance as a result. But this Italian blonde not only has the curves, she's also
got a very sharp brain and killer instincts. Rather than monkey coffins and laboratory equipment, that's where the
future in speakers must surely lie - small, dialed and attractive and bona fide high-end not in bed but the listening seat.
Quality of packing: To be improved.
Reusability of packing: Once.
Ease of unpacking/repacking: Easy.
Condition of component received: Perfect.
Completeness of delivery: By design, there are no grills.
Ease of assembly: None required. Plinth ships attached.
Website comments: Very informative, Italian/English translations suffer just a bit.
Human interactions: Prompt and forthcoming on all info requested.
Pricing: Commensurate with performance and for the concept and realization, more attractive than most.
Final comments & suggestions: The thin stem means there's a bit of give between enclosure and plinth. The shortish blunt spikes won't work too well in deep pile carpet, ditto the current scheme of protectors. For such scenarios,
Albedo should include longer pointy spikes or have them optionally available.
Albedo website