A couple of devoted audiophile friends of mine were invited to my place for a hifi session that I hosted earlier in January this year. We tend to hold this kind of sessions regularly at each other’s respective place, each time with the set-up being slightly different compared to the session held last time.
The fact that I was going to host the first session in 2012, that my friends were going to listen to speakers that they had never listened to before, namely the Dunlavy Aletha, and that I in the meantime had laid my hands on a couple of new and interresting high-quality recordings, I guess I was extra thrilled and had made a careful selection of the music to start the evening with. They had all also been asked to bring their own favourite recordings to listen to in my system.
The session went generally fine, but was at the same time a rude awakening for me. During the audition, we listened to both the Dunlavy Aletha (planned) and the Rauna Leira II (not planned). My initial enthusiasm over the natural sound and presence of the Dunlavy Aletha was unfortunately not shared by all the attendees. This was particularly clear when they put on some of their own recordings that they had brought for the occasion. Much to my surprise, the majority actually preferred the Rauna Leira II. True, this speaker is really special.
Both the Dunlavy Aletha and the Rauna Leira II that I have right now can no doubt sound very good in the right listening environment, with the right set-up and with the right music/recordings. They are very different though.
The Rauna Leira is quite nice to listen to when it comes to classical music, jazz and human (both male and female) voices. Maybe less so with rock and pop music, where they can sometimes display a slight boominess. They are also very room and placement sensitive. Ideally placed, they can have a wonderful voice. But wrongly placed, they will not perform to your satisfaction. The soundstage is quite big, but of course not as big as that of the Dunlavy Aletha. The precision, rapidity and treble is probably somewhere in the middle, and will obviously depend on a lot of other factors. Although I think that it can handle most classical instruments in a rather good way, I sometimes feel that it cannot really reproduce a natural piano sound. It sounds like piano, yes, but it is not as if you would actually be listening to a live piano performance. I cannot put my finger on it. It’s not box colouration (the boxes are made of solid concrete leaving no or minimal room for interference/colouration), it is something else.
The Dunlavy Aletha has won much recognition over time (maybe not so much in the press, but by the private users). The sound is overall darker than the Rauna Leira. In the right environment I have no doubt that these speakers will impress. My living room is however most likely much too small (approx. 25 sqm) for these speakers in order for them to have a fair chance to perform the way that they are intended to perform. I don’t know if it makes a difference if I place them differently. The way that they manage to reproduce piano sound is however quite impressive. Here you get the feeling that it is damn close to the real thing. The soundstage is of course huge, but obviously way too big for the room where they stand right now. I would have liked to hear these speakers in a much bigger room, as I am sure that they can perform much better than they actually did during our last hifi session at my place.
I’m a bit puzzled after this, and have decided to try out yet another pair of speakers, namely the ProAc Tablette Reference 8 Signature. I have read both positive and less positive reviews of this speaker. They obviously take a LOOOONG time before they open up. Some people have talked about several weeks of constant listening before the sound suddenly was there. They are also very room and placement sensitive (like the Rauna Leira II) and have been said to lack bass in some cases. They are not meant for background listening, as they may sound very thin when listening at low volume. They apparently start performing first when the volume is set quite high. For the rest, they are supposed to be very good. Well, we’ll see about that….
I will return with my first listening impressions in a later post.
Who said life is easy….?