Drivers and crossovers
As mentioned in the previous review of the L5 MkII, Scott literally builds his ribbon drivers! How can I compare them in terms of specs and construction to drivers from established companies or parts warehouses? I can’t. Can I vouch for their longevity? I can’t. Scott does offer a two-year warranty. Prospective buyers must not be the type that agitate over the potential for a mechanical issue. I had no hint of such the entire time using the Lagrange L5, the Lagrange L1 mkII, or the Grand Aspen. I do not abuse speakers, nor do I attempt to test them by seeing if they avoid damage at extremely high levels. Scott said the ribbon drivers are robust, not likely to be damaged by playing them. Frankly, I think listeners are nuts to play back at higher levels, as the added ingredient to the sound is distortion.
As a hand-crafted driver, the ribbon is a feature of unusual beauty; the gold glint (perhaps picking up the color of my walls) on the aluminum traces looks rich. There are ever so slight departures from perfect alignment, but for a hand-made ribbon the build quality is highly consistent because Scott made a jig for assembly. He is a perfectionist, so I presume they are well made and will have a low failure rate over time. Can I prove that? No. Regarding long term endurance, this is a roll of the dice. If you can’t take that possibility, then you are not an Aspen Acoustics customer — yet. Someday, if the process is more automated, then perhaps you can get in the game, after the price doubles.
I assure you this speaker system will not be kept at this price if the company goes into higher production. It cannot. Scott told me a year ago the cost of outsourcing the cabinets alone would add at least $5K to the speakers. With inflation that number would certainly be higher today. Outsourcing the speaker’s ribbon drivers would likely add another $5K to its MSRP, perhaps more. If you want perfection, it costs much more than fine craftsmanship. If you wish to wait for perfection, it will cost you time and perhaps close to double the price. Even if the sound quality did not improve in the process, would it be worth double the money? Absolutely!
Development of the DLT
In the Grand Aspen the DLT is refined over the Capella chiefly by the addition of the 30” midrange ribbon bridging the Accuton ceramic driver and the dual 1” ribbon tweeters. A new element, the Aurum Cantus dipole super tweeter, which sits at the top of the midrange-tweeter tower, extends the upper range and adds ambience to the speaker. With the transition to a 12” Aurum Cantus bass driver versus the 11” Eton of the Capella, the speaker has become more relaxed, that is, less constrained in creation of the bass notes. The bass is less localized sounding and matches the large ribbons better. I have said for years that smallish bass drivers are unconvincing as they pop and strain to create lower notes at higher listening levels. The additional size of the Aurum Cantus driver makes the Grand Aspen more easeful and seamless as it transitions between dynamic and ribbon drivers.
Captivating midrange
The most noticeable aspect of the DLT’s hybrid nature is heard in some pieces of music which emphasize recurring effects in the midrange. Occasionally I discern the distinct operation of the midrange ribbon apart from the Accuton dynamic midrange driver. The effect is not pronounced and, in a sense, helps to spread the wave launch wider to mimic a panel speaker. It is not unlike Legacy Audio’s use of four 7” mid-bass drivers, which can be individually distinguished. There is no getting around this when it comes to a multi-driver or hybrid design. To achieve complete coherence, one must reduce the drivers to one, or use a single, concentric, or dipole driver wherein all frequencies fire from the same location.
But there are drawbacks to that, too. The primary drawback of the dipole solution is splaying of the images, especially the center image. Treble becomes disincarnate, seemingly everywhere, not discernible as emanating from the location of an instrument. Bass is somewhat crippled if forced into a dipole wave launch and is famously limited in frequency extension. When a concentric dynamic driver is used, the weakness is a congealed mingling where spatially everything is erupting from one spot. It’s not the best for purity and preservation of the treble or bass waveform to launch with one inside the other. One reason for the scintillating precision in sound of the Grand Aspen is the segregation of the drivers, which to my ear is an acceptable trade-off for the benefit conferred.
The holistic presentation of the soundstage is less triangular than the Capella, and I suspect that the introduction of the big midrange ribbon is the primary cause. Frankly, the orientation of the Grand Aspen’s soundstage has shifted toward that of a big Magnepan with a large field of treble flanked by a larger field of bass. Likewise, the King Sound King III places the tweeters to the side of the bass drivers. As the Grand Aspen’s forward firing 12” sits to the right of the ribbon array, it mimics a big panel speaker surprisingly well. The bridging 30” ribbon midrange allows the ear to detect significantly more of the minutia of the performance while filling the soundstage to the outsides of the bass towers. The overall effect is not unlike the Apogee wall of sound Scott has been seeking. It is an approximation of a large dipole speaker rather than a large dynamic speaker, but it does not suffer much of the weaknesses of a large panel speaker.
Revisiting music that I played often through the Capella speaker, I was struck by how its character had changed in the transition to the Grand Aspen. I play a wide variety of music to test a speaker’s capabilities, some beyond the boundaries of what would be called audiophile music. For instance, Rock Candy Funk Party’s “Octopus_E” on their live recording Rock Candy Funk Party Takes New York — Live at the Iridium has a mind-numbingly repetitious intro of more than two minutes, but if you can get past that, the artistry of Joe Bonamassa’s guitar work comes to the fore. The electric guitar solo in the left channel at 2:40 is richer and has more tonal coloration as heard through the Grand Aspen. In comparison to the King III, the Grand Aspen keeps the guitar at a reasonably lifelike size, while the electrostatic speaker spreads it out over several feet. Because the Grand Aspen’s ribbon does not have the surface area of a large dipole, the images it creates are spatially closer to those of a dynamic speaker, tighter with more density. The three wide tweeter panels of the King III in comparison to the Grand Aspen mean the guitar and cymbal work are generally but not as specifically located.
As compared to three other designs
As I hear four distinctly different designs on a continuous basis, I have learned the characteristic sound of each. Here I add a disclaimer that if you wish to revisit my review of these other speakers and pick an argument with me, I’m not interested. With additional time and comparisons, judgments of a speaker’s capabilities and characteristics relative to others may change somewhat. Here is a summary of each speaker’s characteristics:
PureAudioProject Trio15 10” Coaxial— Tight and dense imaging with performers’ acoustic envelope not highly segregated. Transients are good but not exceptional to these others. Coherence and tightness of center image is excellent. A good choice for those seeking to play less extreme music, such as solo instrument or voice. Tonally well balanced, but shallower bass without appreciable LF. Overall scale of the presentation is the smallest of these speakers.
Legacy Audio Whisper DSW Clarity Edition—A quasi-line array speaker takes getting used to. In this case the quad of 7” drivers lend larger scale and force/impact, but give up some image cleanness. Instruments and voices are moderately blown up to be somewhat larger than life sized, but not as extreme as a dipole speaker like the King III. Transients are not as sharp as the Grand Aspen. Generous low bass captures spatial clues of the recording’s venue superbly. The warmest tonally of these speakers but can be challenging to not have bass overrun and occlude upper frequencies to a degree. The scale of the presentation is like the Grand Aspen and King III, but with less resolution across the soundstage.
Aspen Acoustics Grand Aspen— Enlarged but not obtuse imaging with similar density as the Trio15 10” Coaxial. Performers’ sizes are very close to life sized and the acoustic envelope of each seems to mesh with but not overrun each other. Macrodynamic impact is good, but not as strong as the Legacy Whisper. Coherence top to bottom is excellent for a hybrid, and in the midrange is adjustable as discussed in this article. Tonally superb, with full adjustability to cool or warm each driver top to bottom, including super tweeter and subwoofer. Scale of the presentation similar to the Whisper and King III but with the best resolution across the soundstage.
King Sound King III— Exploded imaging with less image density and larger than actual size. Performers’ acoustic envelopes encroach upon each other. Macrodynamic impact is, like the Trio15 10” Coaxial, weaker than the Whisper and Grand Aspen. The least warm of these speakers. Tends toward midrange to upper end energy as the bass is shallower and less powerful. Strong recommendation to mate with a sub like the Perlisten D212s. Scale is like the Whisper and Grand Aspen. The closest to an omnidirectional speaker but with reasonable localization of performers on the sound stage.
How does one experience each of these speakers when listening to music? This year I discovered Bob James’s “Angela with Purple Bamboo” on his enchanting Angels of Shanghai album. There is a great deal of quiet background with diminutive percussion and woodwind. Each of these speakers is strikingly different in how it renders this selection. The Trio15 10” Coaxial is like a black hole pulling the performance toward the center, the background instrumentation orbiting around the central woodwind. The Whisper pushes back the depth of the soundstage chiefly through extended LF and gets the locations of the backing instruments right. However, the smallish 4” ribbon is not able to yield as much information as the relatively enormous midrange ribbon of the Grand Aspen. The King III, as might be expected, expands the entire performance and with its triple tweeter panel lessens the resolution of the quiet instrumentation.
The speaker that stands out in terms of how deftly it handles the minutia of this piece is the Grand Aspen. The dual 1” ribbon tweeters recall the large, effortless ribbon drivers of big Magnepan speakers. The ability to massage the output of the super tweeter and the tweeter ribbons allows for critical subjective selection of the intensity the treble as well as the decay of cymbals, triangles and other high frequency artifacts in the recording venue. Adjusting the dial on the super tweeter results in such powerful changes that the decay and brightness of the various metallic background sounds either carry a zing to break up the tranquility or conversely only peek through momentarily. Regarding vocals, the super tweeter can either intensify and brighten the voice, thus making it sharper, or it can soften it and tone it downward.
The dual midrange drivers of different technologies result in a spooky combination of replication and reduction. At the same time the flute seems bigger, such as a dipole would render it, it also seems tight, dense, and localized; big and full but without atomizing the image. These drivers coordinate; I had welcome control to warm or cool any part of the performance top to bottom. With the other speakers compared, should I find the bamboo flute too light, too bright for my taste, I would have to change a cable or component, or perhaps (not likely, but maybe) reposition the speaker. With the Grand Aspen all I needed to do was approach the attenuators of the dual ribbon tweeters and super tweeter like a safe cracker. Contentment was achieved by bringing the super tweeter down a smidge and nudging the output of the midrange ribbon up a bit— it was as if the performers swapped instruments midstream! It can be annoying to hear a performance that seems tipped toward the top or bottom end and not so much can be quickly and easily done to mitigate it. Not a problem for the Grand Aspen; in a minute I reorganized the piece tonally to be eminently gratifying! Once that balance was achieved, I found it held for whatever music I was playing. I did not have an impulse to play with the dials for each artist to sound correct.
The Grand Aspen’s midrange and treble starts inherently more resolving, seemingly more full and complete, than the other speakers. I found that adjustment of the output of each driver did not present a dynamic drawback. I did not sense that the bottom dropped out of drum thwacks or a vocal became too reticent, or a horn dropped back several feet as I adjusted the output of individual drivers. That likely is because it took very small adjustments to create sizable changes sonically. The individual driver’s output was barely adjusted, but the output relative to its neighboring driver(s) seemed profound and the tonal shift immediately noticeable. I took photos of each attenuator’s setting after Scott did the initial setup, but I never needed to reference the photos because I moved the dials so little, yet accomplished quite satisfactory changes. One might think that a wide range of performances would be screwed up by dialing in the attenuators using a smaller sampling of music, but the opposite occurred. It took very little time to find comfortable and yet exciting settings, and once done I had no desire to adjust them regardless of the genre of music played.
Copy editor: Dan Rubin
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