Yesterday I popped over to Hugh's for a coffee and to see what he had on the boil. I know the sound of Hugh's room and system quite well, having listened to many versions of his gear on similar visits over the last few years.
Hugh had made a couple of changes since my last visit. He now had an LF55 mkII in the system, feeding a pair of the new V-Sonic transmission line speakers. The latter are quite small floorstanders, despite the 8" Peerless driver, and I suspect WAF will be very high. I had auditioned the earlier Aksonics in my own system some time ago and overall was underwhelmed (see ... I don't gush over ALL Aspen products
).
I had no preconceptions and sat down to listen to a few tunes. I only listened for about half an hour and was unfamiliar with the music played, so my comments here are preliminary impressions only. Also, we didn't swap amps so I can't be sure what aspects were attributable to the mkII amp and how much to the speakers.
These speakers really rock and can play very loud. The 8" Peerless really hits quick and hard, no bloat, no overhang and the bass tone and texture is superb. Unless you had a very large room, a subwoofer would not be required. IIRC Hugh mentioned that the F3 is ~36Hz and sensitivity ~90dB. We cranked it up and I searched for any signs of boom, loss of detail, compression etc without success. I hadn't heard a true transmission line before and was very impressed with the lifelikeness and throatiness of the bass.
Midrange and top end were excellent too, with wonderful transparency and immediacy. Leading edges are very quick and clean with no softening but also no harshness or edginess. This was particularly evident on enthusiastically plucked guitar notes, even at very loud levels, where the tonal detail and harmonics of the notes retained all their natural colour and energy with no glassiness or edginess at all.
The soundstaging and imaging were also very good with an excellent sense of the performers being in the room. Overall the V-Sonics seems to be a super clean, but not unnaturally so, speaker with a very exciting presentation. I have heard other speakers sound 'exciting' but with some edginess/harshness that became all too evident when the volume was raised. Not so with the V-Sonics. They sounded totally unrestrained and effortless and the transparency and freedom from any edginess gave me the impression of all the performers having been better mic'd.
These speakers have sufficient punch and dynamics to make a great (home) party speaker, but also the finesse and lifelikeness to be an excellent choice in a high end 2-channel system. The LF55 mkII drove them to very loud levels without breaking a sweat. I don't know whether the LF100 would improve things even further, or whether the easy impedance load and relatively high sensitivity meant that the LF55 mkII already had so much headroom that the LF100 wouldn't improve anything.
I'm very happy with my current speakers but, out of interest, I would love to hear the V-Sonics in my system/room one day for a longer and more thorough evaluation.
DISCLAIMER:
Every few months or so I drop in on Hugh for a coffee, a chat, and to catch up on what is going on in the world of Aspen Amplifiers. I enjoy Hugh's BS free attitude and total lack of sales pressure ... indeed, unless you thrust money into the man's hand and demand something, you will never hear the words "buy" or "sell" uttered. Another trait I admire in Hugh is his dogged determination to dig out extraordinary levels of performance from his components, by ultra refining circuit design rather than simply throwing in a bunch of expensive boutique parts. Owners are thus delivered a component that, out of the box, equals or surpasses the performance of much more expensive competition but can choose to wring out a few extra drops of performance with the addition of their favourite boutique parts.
Although I do like and respect Hugh, my buying decisions are based purely on performance. If there is a group of AKSAphiles who automatically buy Hugh's products without thorough audition and assessment against the competition, I am not a member. If I could find a better sounding component from another manufacturer, for the same (or sometimes significantly more) money, I would buy it in a heartbeat. And I can say without hesitation that Hugh wouldn't have it any other way.
Frequent visitors to the Aspen circle may recall that I have written several glowing reviews of various Aspen components. The reason I add this disclaimer is to try to give readers an idea of my psyche and to allay any thoughts that I have any blind allegiance to Aspen, or any financial connection. My passion for (some) Aspen components is driven primarily by their performance, with pricing (an Aspen strength) a distant second. It is my excitement at finding such extraordinary sounding equipment that pushes me to share the news with others and to suggest that they put it on their audition list. As a result, I sometimes feel like (and possibly sound like) a raving newbie Aspen fanboy and I blame Hugh for that .... damn him to hell for making such great sounding equipment!!
END DISCLAIMER.
