by Michael

Acapella Sphäron Excalibur – The holy grail of high-end audio loudspeakers

Acapella Audio Arts has upped the bar significantly with their new statement-level loudspeaker, the Spharon Excalibur:

Frequency range: 15 Hz to 40K Hz.

4 x 18 inch woofers per channel

Sensitivity: 103-107 dB / 1 W / 1 m

Impedance: 8 ohms.

Over 2500 pounds. Each.

1 x ION plasma tweeter per channel

From $620,000 a pair. Active version available for additional cost.

The specifications really do tell the story here. Very big. Very efficient. And, given the Acapella brand sound, it will sound like music, and not a high-school science-day project or mad scientist’s laboratory experiment gone bad.

Don’t believe it? Stop by the store in Duisburg Germany and hear for yourself.

That is exactly what the German Lite Lifestyle technology magazine did.

They go into quite some detail – it is a long article, but in German.

We translated the first paragraph to English below [you haven’t experienced life until you and your spouse attempt to translate the same bit of text together, let me tell you…].

Without further ado…

Acapella Sphäron Excalibur – The answer to all questions

What is the maximum amount of effort that we can put towards achieving the high-end ideal of pure, natural and undistorted playback of sound? How far can we go in pursuit of precision, vividness and coherence? An answer to these questions can be heard in Duisburg, where Acapella Audio Arts, renowned manufacturer of horn loudspeakers, has their rarely built Sphäron Excalibur on display. We seized the opportunity to listen to this magnum opus, and are happy to share our insights.

 

Audiophile power: The massive Sphäron Excalibur is 2.40 metres tall and occupies nearly 1.7 square metres. This loudspeaker system is finished in black acrylic cabinets with red horns.

 

Does anyone really need this level of performance? At the pinnacle of high-end audio, that is the wrong question. Here, one aims for a higher goal. One aspires to experience unprecedented quality. One strives for the maximum achievable performance, constrained only by the limits of known science and available technology. One ignores costs, number of materials and market analysis in order to gain new know-how at the leading edge of sonic reproduction. This is the driving force for Acapella co-founder Alfred Rudolph. After building the sensational Sphäron, the ultimate horn speaker system of that time, he asked: “Can it be done better? Will I be able to improve it further? Or, more poetically: “Can I, as in the Arthurian saga, pull this sword from the stone?” And so the Sphäron Excalibur was born.

More here.

 

 

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 by Michael

Acapella Audio Arts – The Audio One music server

Acapella has recently come out with a music server. You’ve seen it at shows, but it is now in production and we’ve been using it here on both the big and small systems for a month or two now.

On the big system we run it into the Audio Note “Fifth Element” DAC at 24×96 and it sounds very good. Not as good as the very expensive Audio Note CDT-Five transport, but sometimes the laziness bug strikes and one just wants to set it and forget it.

On the smaller system we use the Audio One’s on-board DAC [which we also use on the big system sometimes when we want to experiment – it is VERY competitive (or better) with everything we’ve heard at the price].

The unit perfectly complements the rest of the gear in this system, which are honestly some of my personal favorites of all time and which I could happily live with forever (AN SORO integrated, AN/E Spe HE speakers, TT2), which are all in the $6K to $10K range.

We’re not giving up on CDs just yet [but if YOU are, let us give you our address and instead of just throwing them away… :-)], but their days are numbered and some are getting harder to find and more expensive – and some are now 50 cents.

Audio One music server, Price: $6875.00 USD

 

 

 

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 by Michael

Audio Note U.K. level-5 volume controls

Volume controls? Yep. Volume controls.

Audio Note’s more expensive pre-amplifiers have high-performance and awesome-looking volume controls. Hand soldered resisters are used for discrete levels of attenuation – arranged in a couple of different geometries that are pleasing to the eye [well, MY eyes anyway!] as well as the ear.

The red, square-looking one in the photos has more “steps” and allows for finer control of the volume between soft and loud. AN believes in high-gain preamps and so do we, but we wanted a little more control over the playback and recently had Nick at True Sound install the red volume control in our M9 Phono preamp.

We are liking the change. 🙂

It is taking  us both awhile to get used to setting the volume 5  clicks in and still being able to hear ourselves talk [which can be a good thing and a bad thing ;-)].

OK. Enough with the spouse-humor [sorry Neli :-)]. We also upgraded the M9’s umbilical cord between its power supply and control unit a few months ago, a major improvement.

Audio Note U.K. doesn’t stay still and keeps improving things. Which is good. Because after some amount of time, I am always ready for something that brings me closer to the epiphanies of hope and beauty that music can deliver to world-weary tired souls – like mine. And maybe like yours too.

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