CLOSER ACOUSTICS AND FRIENDS 2015
For a few years now in November I invite home friends that „hear in a different way” to spend an afternoon listening to the music. This year it was quite exceptional. I am pleased that the group of friends keeps growing and the time spent together makes an opportunity to build experience and provide positive vibrations. This year we had the newest toy from elinsAudio – an integrated amplifier Concerto to play with.
Łukasz Fikus – mostly known in the audio world as the Lampizator, brought his flagship products: an amplifier or in fact two monoblocs build on gm70 tubes.
The Golden Gate DAC,
and DSD Computer or a music server.
Besides Łukasz brought a fresh product an ”all having” integrated tube amplifier hosting DAC and headphone amplifier with input sockets in four different standards.
As for the loudspeakers we had an abundance of them, and I am really thankful to my friends for an opportunity to check the performance of Closer Acoustics offer with a top notch electronics.
And because a lot of new things is happening at Closer Acoustics, so besides the currents products – here Adam loudspeaker was performing –
we were also playing with test and experimental set ups. A pinch of creative improvisation. And since lately we have introduced into our offer the drivers from respected French manufacturer Electro Magnet Speaker I have prepared for the occasion a test open baffle with EMS LB 12 MKII driver.
Nothing simpler cannot be done. One driver without any crossover in a simplest „enclosure”.Talking about open baffles, in fact there were two, because the central baffle with the drivers is exchangeable. However during this minimeet there was no need to exchange baffles, because we made a bit ad hoc arrangement with the baffle containing the 15” bass driver – what you can see on the photos. From all the drivers installed in this panel we used only this Supravox GMF 400 woofer and to serve the mid and high frequency range we applied a biradial horn with 1” compression driver. Therefore acoustically three different worlds.
The music was served from my Marantz CD 17KI player, in the first session with the Concerto amplifier and then using it only as the transport and passing the signal into to the Lampizator Golden Gate DAC and then to the Lampizator tube power endings.Then the time has come to play the from the DSD Computer. And finally by pure curiosity we connected an Apple TV to the amp with the integrated DAC to check the quality of the Tidal HiFil. As Łukasz concluded – it is listenable in day by day listening :).This time no vinyl at all.
Well I cannot make you hear it by using words, but I think everyone found something intriguing this evening. It looks that the EMS LB12 driver became a little winner of the evening despite only slightly over a dozen hours of breaking in. It needs some hundred to reveal a full potential. But already it made his job of enchanting all listeners. For me it is a great satisfaction and I am very happy that I’ve had started business with Catherine Fertin.
Not sure if there is another place where one can listen to Supravox and EMSpeaker sound under one roof anywhere near… and I do not mean only Poland here.By the way the 15”Supravox woofer got a praise too. It did a fantastic job in the duet with the biradial horn in this improvised but in fact a very classic configuration.
Gentlemen thank you very much for the visit and an opportunity to play music using yours fantastic electronics Made In Poland!Most importantly we all had fun and I would like very much to extend a bit the format of the meet next year. Will see where it will lead…