As the lucky first owner of a (shipped) pair of Salk SS 9.5s, I thought I would take a few minutes to write my thoughts after two weeks of listening and break-in.
I find it timely that Steve Guttenberg just shared
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XDawcfHpQQWhy? Because I like what he's saying in this video. However, unlike Steve, I don’t care to have a laboratory of different equipment in my listening area. I value visual peace — and a little nature — in my listening environment, and I don’t want equipment to disturb this sense of peace.
What I have unexpectedly discovered about the Salk SS 9.5s is that they present a tremendous number of different listening opportunities in a single package. Yes, of course, there is the obvious — that I can choose closed back, open back, open back with semi-transparent grilles; open back with no grilles; and full, some, or no stuffing in the open back space with each combination. That is part of the deal with all of the Salk SS designs.
But what I did
not expect was that the drivers also present several distinct opportunities for credible toe-in options that present equally compelling soundscapes (oh!) for different performance demands.
Let me digress to last summer, when I first starting to Jim Salk in the dialog that led to the development of the SS 9.5s. Like many of you, I do have a couple of setups. But my primary listening space is my 11x22 sunroom, where the light changes throughout the day, highlighting the different plants and artwork in the room in ways that never seem to bore me. Over the years, I decided that less prominent speakers were what I wanted in this space. Magnepans? Wilsons? As great as they might sound, they would destroy this space. Plus, they would block the door to my adjacent deck, and that would be a travesty.
After years of several different trials with speakers in this space, I had enjoyed the sound of Totem Acoustic Hawks in this space. These are a complex beast, with a first-order crossover and a very strange impedance curve due to the use of a ScanSpeak woofer designed for a sealed cabinet, albeit in a ported cabinet. The first-order crossover configuration in the Hawks is well-implemented, creating a compelling single-source sound. But they are a bear to drive well. The more clean power you can provide them, the better.
I used to live in Binghamton, NY, and I always believed in supporting my former neighbors. After a lot of research, I eventually mated the Hawks with a McIntosh MA8900, which was the first amplifier that seemed to be able to power the Hawks without feeling like it was going to destroy them. (I got to pick it up in person at the factory, complete with a facility tour. Simply a great day.)
The sound of the combination was amazing – but the MA8900 is a decidedly airy and analytical amplifier – and the Hawks’ MB Quart titanium tweeters were a tad too harsh a match at higher volumes.
Like many audiophiles, I had been growing weary of the sound of metal dome tweeters anyway. The MA8900 was just so amazing in every way that I thought it needed a better, but less analytical, partner.
I thought of ribbon tweeters, and I remembered Salk.
The (nee) SoundScape 8’s were always a design that intrigued me, and it seemed that their combination of size and driver selection (especially the RAAL ribbons) might be the right mix for my sunroom.
I reached out to Jim…and then he called me. I shared a diagram of my sunroom, with the current placement of my Totems (worked out to a millimeter), and noted that it was a very “lively” room, with lots of windows and hard surfaces. I explained the predicament I was in with my MA8900 and Totem combo, and told him that I was looking for a speaker with a smoother top-end.
As it turned out, he had just used the last of his stock of SS 8 woofers, and the manufacturer was not interested in producing more…although a large order from Jim – which he was not averse to – could change that, if there was enough demand.
But: Jim was in the process of designing a new speaker that he felt might be a worthy replacement. He had no name for it, but he had been experimenting with a mixture of drivers from the SS 8 (the Accuton midrange), the Song 3 Encore (the Eton midrange) and the Song 3 BeAT (the Satori beryllium tweeter and the Audio Technology Midrange), among others.
The story is longer than I have here, but since what I was looking for was something less analytical for my situation, he opined that a combination of the Satori beryllium tweeter with one of his chosen midranges might be the ticket for me. And he had a brand new Satori 9.5” woofer and a pair of passive radiators to round out the design.
(I should note that I grew up listening to my brother’s setups in the 1970s, which were first powered by Large Advents, replaced with Polk Monitor 10s. If you read me, I have an affinity for non-ported designs, and I like bass that scales with volume.)
But…I had to ask Jim: with a 9.5” woofer (and a single one, at that), were these speakers going to be distractingly large in my room? As it turned out, they were a fair amount taller than the SS 8s. I hemmed…I hawed. I wondered: with a baffle supporting a 9.5” woofer, what was going to happen with diffraction effects from the diminutive tweeter and midrange? Jim was a little coy, but he shared, “We are likely to chamfer the cabinet edges so that the wider front baffle will be no issue.” I never knew what this chamfer was going to look like until he revealed the initial design several weeks ago.
What intrigues me about Salk is that it is not just Jim making these things. It is a collective of some of the smartest advisors in the DIY speaker building community. You have not just Jim and his indomitable spirit – a pioneer in Internet direct marketing. You also have Dennis Murphy designing the crossovers. And you have Jeff Bagby contributing passive radiator designs. There are, of course, others. Jim’s work is tireless, and each new design seems to build upon everything else he has learned.
This spirit became evident in each interaction I had with Jim.
I ultimately decided that the proposed dimensions were something I could swallow. So, late last summer, I made my downpayment.
The original design we agreed to included the Eton midrange. But as the months wore on, Jim’s experiences led to him contacting me to advise that the Audio Technology midrange would be more satisfactory for the problems I was trying to solve. I trusted him, and told him that I was in his hands.
Months of waiting, and I got these speakers in my hands in late March. They took a couple of weeks to arrive – but the packaging and treatment was superb, and they arrived with not a dent in any box. They are large and heavy, and take time to unbox and assemble. But the instructions are clear, and since I had waited a year, a few hours of movement and cleanup was really not much to bear.
Now…I reported on my initial impressions a couple of weeks ago. But two weeks in, I thought I would share greater insight.
First off, as I mentioned in my original post about them: they can handle gobs of power, just like an American speaker should. They absorb power in a way that a Large Advent or Polk Monitor 10 should…and then some. A McIntosh SS amp (not to mention a 200wpc one) is a great partner to these speakers. I have them attached to the 8 ohm taps. The passive radiator design allows the bass to scale with volume.
None of the three chosen drivers seem to present any audible cone breakup, even at ear-splitting volumes. (And, yes, you can split your ears with these.) This is delightful.
I am not John Atkinson, and don’t have any sort of scientific measuring equipment. The design is so free of distortion at any volumes that it is remarkable. As expected by a design with this sort of focus, your brain will be focused on the sound of the humans behind each recording, rather than the speakers themselves.
A few notes on recordings that paint a picture of what the SS 9.5s are capable of:
1) King's College Choir, Stephen Cleobury – O Come All Ye Faithful (Argo 414 042-2) – “Once In Royal David’s City”: This track is a Christmas-morning tradition in my house, and I think it sums up everything that makes the SS 9.5 special. You can hear the human depths of Robin Barter’s boy soprano performance – everything from the slight quiver in his voice, to the earnest enunciation of each word. The choir is full-bodied. As the organ enters, its gravitas supports the voices in perfect balance. This is a group of humans, performing for other humans, and it has never been more apparent to me than on the SS 9.5s. It will bring a tear to your eye.
2) Joe Walsh – The Definitive Collection (MCA CD 11679) – “The Confessor”: This first half of this track is a sonic masterpiece, and I haven’t met anyone who isn’t gobsmacked by it. The SS 9.5s do this track justice. But this track revealed something I had not expected: In my narrow, lively space, with the SS 9.5s not-carefully-toed-in, the gorgeous flanging that supports this track was a bit muddied up. After a little conversation with Jim, he suggested trying no toe-in. This was the right play. The flanging effects revealed themselves, floating in space in holographic form. Subsequently, I discovered that more precise (laser-guided) toe-in allowed me to maintain the body of the flanging effects.
This leads me to my first big observation about the SS 9.5: the tweeters have such an incredible horizontal dispersion that toe-in angle, for the most part, doesn’t make radical differences in sound or imaging. They might even sound good facing backward. It is only on tracks with flanging effects that toe-in provided a meaningful difference in sound. But if you want, you can achieve a credible room-filling realism for a group of people with the speakers pointing straight out. And if you want a personal perspective, a precise toe-in brings you right in. Neither configuration is wrong; both bring delight in different ways. I love this.
Oh, and this just might mean that the chamfers on this design that Jim and I talked about last year – more than just a new design language for Salk – are indeed a successful element.
3) Pink Floyd – The Wall (2011 Remaster) (EMI – 50999 028944 2 3) – “The Happiest Days Of Our Lives”: This track has incredible dynamic range, and I do believe it actually clips, unfortunately. But it is a real challenge for speakers to handle, at volume. The helicopters are not the problem here. It is the full-on “slams” that recur through the track. They are among the most difficult things to reproduce with scale that I have ever heard on a recording. And the SS 9.5s can handle them with ease. Simply wonderful.
4) Joe Walsh – The Definitive Collection (MCA CD 11679) – “Life’s Been Good”: This is one of the best-sounding rock recordings ever made, if you play it on the right equipment. The SS 9.5 is the right equipment. As I said in my original post, words fail. Same thing, two weeks later. Maybe even better with 40 or so hours of break-in behind me.
5) Gallant – Ology (Warner Bros. Records – 556347-1) – “Weight In Gold”: This track will make you laugh. Sure, people used to think that my Totem Hawks sounded way bigger than they look. This makes the SS 9.5s sound bigger than they look. Stunning, really. If speakers can make you laugh at the scale of the sound they can reproduce, then that is a good thing. And the SS 9.5s are a good thing.
6) Organ Great Classics (2XHDJD1066; Double DSD version) – Entire album: A great demonstration of the SS9.5s depth. There is air, presence, and weight to the sound. This sounded wonderful with the backs fully-opened. Close your eyes, and you will feel transported.
I could go on, but I don’t have much more time to write. I have yet to find a classical disc that sounds bad with the SS 9.5s. The full range of instruments and delicacy on each of my classical recordings is well-presented.
Generally, everything that is good sounds good – if not better than good (edit: by good, I do mean amazing, I hope you know) – on the SS 9.5s. Very little sounds bad. Sure, there are recordings that sound bad. But they are still listenable on the SS 9.5s. You might not want to crank them up, but you can enjoy what’s there. These are the times when I am glad for the MA8900’s tone controls. Pity those who don’t have tone controls.
So that brings me back to Steve Guttenberg. I plan on retiring with my SS 9.5s. And with all of the choices available to me – from closed back, to partially filled, to totally open; from toed-in to toed-straight – the options these speakers present to me seem limitless, without the need for separate equipment. I like that. That doesn’t mean I might not like to power these with some tubes someday (although they will not replace the MA8900 by any — any — means). But I will want to make it all look nice and clean. That’s a mental challenge for another day.
