System Details
| Pre Amplifier | Aesthetix Calypso Signature |
|---|---|
| Power Amplifier | Aesthetix Atlas Signature |
| Speakers | Stenheim Alumine Two.Five |
| Cables | Audience Front Row |
How does it sound?
We all have an ability to remember some perfect moments in our life. It may be spending the summer hanging out at the beach during our teenage years, it may be a moment we were being acknowledged for finally achieving something we had worked so hard for, our first romantic encounter or just a moment where everything was going swimmingly and we felt totally content. Whatever the nature of our perfect memory, it has the ability to put a smile on our face and fill our heart with joy.
One day we were experimenting with audio gear while deeply engaged in the superfluous argument ‘who’s the best rock front-man (or woman) in history?’ As we debated the relative merits of Bruce Springsteen, Freddie Mercury, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Mick Jagger & co, we happened across a combination of components that made us stop in our tracks. We sat in front of it and just grinned, ear to ear while song after song washed over us. To this day, if anyone mentions this system, everyone just smiles. We have all added that memory to our file of perfect moments.
This system sounds like it has an inner glow around the musicians. You play the same music file, on CD or vinyl, that you play on any other system and on this system, it sounds as though the artist was particularly inspired that day, or that they were having a great moment in that song, or that this album was the highlight of their career. This system has an intangible quality that is difficult to explain but it just connects you with the artist in a way that makes you feel invested.
Voices and instruments have a natural, well rounded, slightly smooth sound that is rich with harmonic content. Voices sound like they’re emanating from a real human throat and such is the rendition of timbre that you can immediately tell what kind of guitar is being used and the playing style of the guitarist. But not in a detail overload kind of way, just purely in terms of musical rhythm, timing and flow.
While you’re hearing this wonderful tone & glow, at the same time there’s a subtle precision governing proceedings, like a musical structure that is keeping all the good stuff from becoming too much. There’s a talented conductor who’s keeping every member of the orchestra in check, operating accurately and in harmony with the other players.
There’s an excellent synergy at work with this system, and it’s just so gratifying. It reminds you why you love music so much. There’s great extension in both directions. The sound is agile and precise with no smudging or blurring of the boundaries yet the body of the sound is warm and well rounded. It has a great energetic balance and a sweet, melodious quality. After many hours of listening, we felt that the sound had a mature, experienced, ancient quality to it. It sounded like the system had been put together by someone who had been around a long time and had experienced a lot of life, with all of its ecstasies and tragedies. Our minds imagined the rise and fall of empires and dynasties…
Why does it work so well?
Normally you expect components from the same brand having a great synergy as they were developed by the same designer and should complement each other. Despite this expectation, we know from experience that this is not always the case as we often achieve wonderful results with certain combinations of different brands. However, Aesthetix is one of those brands where the brand symmetry is superb and the electronics all coming from the same stable are a huge reason why this system sounds so good.
The Aesthetix Calypso line-stage is a masterpiece creation from Jim White. It features fully balanced differential circuitry with an ability to internally balance a single ended input signal. It is a zero feedback design with a discrete switched resistor volume control with 88 1dB steps. It’s an all tube amplification and output design (4 tubes total). It acts as the conductor of a great orchestra, beautifully organising proceedings at the heart of this system. In Signature guise, it elevates into a rarefied level of performance, being quiet, clean and expansive while facilitating a breathtaking realism and believable tonal quality. Jim White’s designs are well known for this quality – the low noise floor of a pure solid-state design with the tonal richness and organic character of a tube amplifier. It’s one of those designs that was well conceived from the beginning and then over many years has been tweaked, developed and honed to a level where the design is now considered optimum. It gets out of the way of the music and has a timeless aesthetic (pardon the pun).
The Atlas Signature provides the brawn in this combination but limiting it to that role is severely underselling its ability. It features an innovative hybrid design that incorporates a bipolar output stage, bipolar driver stage, and vacuum tube input gain stage. To the best of our knowledge, it is the only hybrid amplifier with zero feedback, essential for maintaining harmonic integrity, air, space and coherence. When we play the Atlas Signature in other systems, it brings a sophistication to the sound. It’s not just a power amp brute but rather it drives speakers with a delicacy and maturity that is difficult to describe. We have often inserted an Atlas Signature in the place of seriously expensive, highly rated famous brand amplifiers in client’s systems and the Atlas was immediately preferred because the system lost some aggression & forwardness, especially in the higher frequencies and at higher volumes. The Atlas teaches you how many other designers voice their amplifiers to sound impressive in the first few auditions but then make your ears bleed in the long term. This combination of electronics gives you paints a very listenable, non-fatiguing yet very dynamic sonic picture. It also has a bit of that intangible ‘funk factor’ which is hard to describe but has you moving to the music.
When we were experimenting with this system, the definitive WOW moment came when we connected the Stenheim Two.Five speakers. These speakers have been making waves around the world since their release and in our opinion, they’re so special in what they do that it’s very difficult to compare them to other speakers. In fact, the Stenheim brand is very difficult to compare with other brands due to its unique approach to the art (& science) of manufacturing loudspeakers.
Jean-Pascal Panchard, the owner & face of Stenheim, has a solid background in music recording and production environments. Aside from being one of the most approachable gentlemen in the industry, he’s genuinely passionate about music with an infectious enthusiasm for a well recorded, emotionally engaging music reproduction experience. When he set out to make loudspeakers, in typical Swiss style he did lots of research, lots of R&D and technological innovation but he always trusted his ears above any measurements or data. He systematically chose technologies that sounded the best, irrespective of modern trends & fashions. If it didn’t sound better, he wasn’t interested in the measurements. His approach is the embodiment of art meets science. Therefore, he selected certain elements and made them the foundations of the Stenheim ethos. One example is the use of paper cone drivers – they have such a musical sound that has been lost in the modern search for cone materials that measure better.
Stenheim also feature a unique cabinet construction technology that results in a big sound for the size of the cabinet. People are often shocked at how effortless and ‘big’ Stenheim speakers sound. The Stenheim Alumine Three model is a very successful design but customers kept asking Stenheim to build a floor standing speaker that has all the Stenheim qualities but has a more compact size and is available at a lower price point. Stenheim’s response was to introduce the Alumine Two.Five at the Munich High End Show in 2023.
This speaker features a mid-bass driver with a sophisticated, treated paper cone, a fabric dome tweeter, carefully horn loaded for increased efficiency and a high order, phase-coherent crossover to preserve the fragile but all-important temporal and spatial information in the stereo signal. It is built to golden-ratio dimensions and incorporates damping materials to kill cabinet resonance and internal standing waves without killing musical dynamics. It produces fast, deep, natural sounding bass that will shock you when you experience it because it can really scale, it can image like the best monitors and it has a sonic presentation which delivers a harmonically rich, natural sound. This all comes together in a way that we feel is exceptional. In fact, we often describe these speakers as having an ‘X-factor’ that you can’t describe with words and some of us use them in our own systems.
An integral part of this magic is the use of Audience Front Row cabling in this system. The Front Row is Audience’s flagship range and is a key ingredient in many systems that we have set up over the years that have been client favourites. Apart from the fact that it’s thin, light weight and practical, it has this ability to disappear and leave the system sounding natural and ‘un-manipulated’. In particular, voices and natural instruments are perfectly rendered. You will find yourself exploring your music collection over and over again. It brings a healthy energy and a believable tonal picture.
This system is ingrained in our memory because it just makes you *SMILE*. We love systems that go beyond the simple task of playing back a recording. Beyond having a believable soundstage, frequency extension and pin-point imaging. You expect audio systems to cover those bases as par for the course. We love systems that communicate the essence, the intention, the emotion of the music. This one delivers but adds a few cherries on top of the cake. It seems to portray the artist in their best light & gives you that earthy settled feeling that you get when something is well sorted, made by people who really know what they’re doing, and feels ‘just right’.
What changes could you make to the system?
If you wanted to save money, but maintain the sonic qualities and synergy of this system, you can try:
- You can use standard versions of the Calypso & Atlas rather than the Signature versions. This way, funds can be saved while maintaining a similar type of sound and the synergy of the same-brand components working together. What you give away is a level of texture, harmonic richness and tone.
If your budget extended a bit further and you wanted to upscale this system, you can try:
- Upgrade the Calypso & Atlas to the to the Eclipse version. These upgrades would result in an improvement in noise floor, instrument separation and focus but they are not as dramatic as the improvement from going from standard to signature specification.
- If you want to include a built-in phono stage function, change the Calypso to a Janus.
- Upgrade to the Stenheim Alumine Three for a huge jump in… everything!
Why Rome?
When you have a DAC named after the legendary founder and first king of Rome, it’s difficult to think of another city. But truth be told, this was not the inspiration behind the Rome system. Instead, we remember visiting Rome and trying to decide which sites to visit. Standing outside our hotel, we looked across the golden hue of the streetscape, holding a map. We were immediately surrounded by Ancient Rome, Renaissance Rome, Gothic Rome and Modern Rome. From the spot where we were standing, we circled 52 possible points of interest that were within a couple of blocks from our hotel. This feeling of an almost overwhelmingly rich cultural and historical diversity was the inspiration for the name.
This system combines the serious talents of some of the world’s best audio minds into a few boxes and once turned on and playing music, it just makes you settle into your seat and go on a journey.
I’ve heard this song before many times but not quite like that.
What’s different this time?
Well, I seem to be actually ‘getting it’ this time…
It’s this ability to unpack and present to you the essence of the music, the meaning, the intention, the architecture and the human condition embedded within the notes that makes this system a joy. We kept describing it as infusing the music with a bit of ‘ancient wisdom’. Press play and let the journey begin…
