Before summing up my experience (in part two) about the meshmerising and one of the kind Living Voice Vox Palladian horn speakers, here is a bit of the background and technical information about this state of the art gems…
The initial sonic impact still lingers with me and do mind, that the 15″ driver and crossover were both installed completely new. Of course, there is the factory “burn in”, but as will all the components it will take some music to flow before I’ll summarise my experiences. Still, let me tell you… These are no ordinary loudspeakers and by no means ordinary horn speakers.
No frequency range sticks out and the sound is projected as one- harmonic-whole. This is one of the hardest things to accomplish with horn based speaker systems, but Vox Palladian encapsulates extremely well the music for what it is. There are no artificial garlands kittening the musical body. Just a pure, emotional and vibrant essence. Vox Palladian’s can easily carry the signal without any hidden traits and with the utterly refreshing feather like easiness, that can convey both micro and macro details with ease and with a sense of completeness.
Even nowadays, most of the horn speaker still corrupt or augment the original energy essence. Not the Vox Palladians. In the timeless Little Prince, it was said that the essential things cannot be seen with the eyes. Somehow, Vox Palladian’s embraces the outer beauty seamlessly with the artisanal innards. And the result is quite stunning… Even so far…
The Living Voice Vox Palladian speakers act beyond of being just an exuberant commodity. They stand on their own, radiating with a certain-timeless aura and aural patina, letting them forming an intriguing, luxuriant and profuse sensual interaction that simply grows on you.
There is nothing casual about these loudspeakers and if there is a speaker, that can capture the music’s zeitgeist profoundly intimate, here you have it… The rare vertex of science and art combined…
Don’t let anything or anyone distract your curiosity about Living Voice creations. They’re something very different and very special about these masterpieces…
Let me conclude my thoughts with the Ludwick Marishane’s quote: “You can learn some entrepreneurial skills, but the entrepreneurial attitude cannot be taught.”
This is exactly how I’ve felt after my initial exposure to the Living Voice Vox Palladians… They do convey music with THE attitude and authority…
TECHNICAL
The Vox Palladian’s 15″ Vitavox bass driver has a straight sided light paper diaphragm with a steep 40 degree cone angle and a small 1.75 inch voice coil. The magnet is AlNiCo. This loads through a solid maple phase plug into an exponential horn development built from precision calibrated 30 mm laminated beech. This mid bass system has a 10 ohm impedance and 105 dB sensitivity.
The mid range horn is also made of the calibrated beech substrate. It uses a compound radial and exponential geometry to provide dispersion of 90 degrees vertically and 120 degrees horizontally.
The cut off frequency is 300 Hz. This horn has 3 sintered aluminium lenses in the throat to aid dispersion. The driver manifold is cast from LG2 bronze on which is mounted a Vitavox S2 compression driver with proprietary suspension.
This uses a powerful AlNiCo motor with a flux density of 16,000 Gauss. The 3″ aluminium diaphragm is only .002″ thick, and is anodised to increase stiffness. The short cylindrical coil former is a an integrated continuation of the diaphragm and hence the voice coil is wound directly onto the dome. This avoids the need for intervening adhesives and material discontinuities.
The diaphragm loads through a complex phase plug to ensure a uniform wave front in the throat of the horn.
The HF system uses a partial exponential development machined from 8 pieces of LG2 bronze with captive elastomeric damping in the mouth section. This geometry loads a TAD 1″ compression driver, also using AlNiCo with a flux density of 19,500 Gauss. Just like the S2 it also employs complex phase plug geometry. The diaphragm is formed by vacuum deposition of atomised beryllium.
The super HF (high frequency) unit is a proprietary design which is made for Living Voice by Vitavox. This unit uses an aluminium ring diaphragm with 30 x 30 degree dispersion via a short exponential horn. The magnet material is AlNiCo with a flux density of 16,000 Gauss. This unit extends to 35 kHz.
The heart of the speaker and in essence its DNA, is a highly evolved and resolved passive crossover (crossover points are 400Hz, 5kHz, and 15kHz) that integrates the 4 way system into a seamless whole.
Living Voice use a strict recipe of components and technologies to voice the speaker and concentrate on the qualities of musical expression, feeling and sentiment rather than on aspects of ‘hi-fi sound’. The development programme is strictly empirical and iterative.
The lead time is 6 months. There are made entirely by hand in the UK.
To be continued…
Matej Isak