International Sound & Sight Exhibition 2018

Our very own annual International Sound & Sight Exhibition (ISSE) just ended. The show was held between 16th to 18th November 2018 at Parkroyal Hotel. Here is a brief report on the show.

Big rooms first :-

High End Research

The all-new Wilson Audio DAW

Streaming was carried out by an Aurender streamer hooked up to an Orpheus Lab SACD player / DAC and integrated amplifier

Ong Radio

Drool-worthy McIntosh gear

The Mac equipment paired with Opera Grand Callas speakers

Horizon Acoustics

Full Grandinote system. Playback was switched by a Totaldac D1-Seven / streamer and a Grandinote digital source

Close-up of the Mach 4 speakers

When I dropped in, the Grandinote Demone monoblock amplifiers were in play. Cabling was a mixture of Luna Cables and Verastarr. Great system - One of my favourites of the show !

Audioline

Live demonstration of different CD pressings. How about a $2,000 glass disc or a much cheaper Ultimate HQCD press ? Very nice demonstration which really showcased how much difference a pressing could make. 

Really impressive sound from Accuphase electronics and Diapason Dynamis speakers. I adored the various models from Diapason. Boring boxes ? Certainly not here.

TGI Technology

The biggest surprise had to come from these cute speakers. Take a plastic sphere and mount a full range driver with accompanying electronics and battery pack, and you get the Eupho E3 speaker. Connection can be done via Bluetooth, USB, 3.5mm minijack or Toslink optical. 

Weighing just 1.6 kg, these speakers sounded remarkably good for their price tag. At $399 for a single speaker (including tripod stand, leather carrying strap and table-top mount), there is no excuse not to get one. Who said lifestyle speakers had to sound bad or break the bank ? And yes, two of these can communicate wirelessly to form a stereo pair. 

On to the 7th floor rooms :-

Advanced Audio Acoustics

The second surprise of the day had to come from these LS3/5A inspired speakers (the JM 3/5A SE. At $750, they sounded really good. Some mention was made of a special deal for the show, and I ran as fast I could before I succumbed to temptation. 

Tritone AV

I sat at front row and predicted a bass boom and poor driver integration given the near-field position and small room. Guess what ? They sounded great - very precise, transparent and dynamic. Makes me wonder why Legacy speakers aren't more popular locally. They certainly deserve to be. I had to check with Mervyn Loh, MD of Tritone to ensure that they were not running any form of room correction software. This gets my vote for best sound of the 7th floor.

Telos Asia Pacific

Project Perfection

Raindrop Audio

Ray Ng of Raindrop has always assembled good sounding setups, and this year is no different. The setup was a mix of SoTM and Ayon equipment and sounded very good. I liked this setup very much. 

Audionote Singapore

Audio 88

To be continued ...

SB Acoustics Ara Speaker Kit

Introduction

SB Acoustics is not a familiar name to many Audiophiles although they are one the largest OEM speaker suppliers in the world. A collaboration between Danesian Audio of Denmark and Sinar Bajar Electric in Indonesia, SB Acoustics brings affordable and technologically advanced speaker drivers to the market by marrying the considerable design experience of Danesian and Sinar Bajar's 27 years of transducer manufacturing.

Manufacturing in Surabaya, Indonesia would result in certain cost efficiencies, and the lucky beneficiaries are cash-strapped audiophiles like you and I ! It's well worth to have a look at the factory visit done by AudioXpress to find out more about their manufacturing quality (Link here).

Description 

The Ara is sold overseas as a kit, but available in Singapore in fully assembled form. My review sample came in Gloss White, and has a visually interesting cabinet, with a chamfered corner (mirror-imaged for each pair), and a backward tilt of about 7 degrees which time aligns the drive units. The cabinet  is very well made (18mm thick MDF panels), with a single pair of sturdy binding posts and magnetically attached protective grills - no DIY or homemade looking kit here. 








The Ara is a bass-reflex design with a rear port with a flared opening. The standard Ara kit comes with the Ring Dome Satori TW29R tweeter and Satori MW16P-4 woofer. An option is also available to swap out the tweeter for the top-of-the-range Satori Beryllium tweeter. The crossover circuits are slightly different though, so it would be best that you make your selection at the outset. 

The speaker crossover is a 12 element design and comes fully assembled on a PCB that fits at the bottom of the cabinet. Crossover parts are decent, with all capacitors being Jantzen cross cap metallized polypropylene capacitors, save for a single electrolytic capacitor. The large inductors are air-core, while sand-cast resistors are used throughout. Those handy with a soldering iron are free to swap components, but limited space will necessitate some creative mounting for some over-sized aftermarket capacitors. 

The crossover board - picture taken from SB Acoustic's web-site.

The Ara's specifications are as follows :-

Nominal Impedance : 4 ohms
Sensitivity : 87 dB
Frequency Response : 45 - 25000 Hz +/- 3 db
Crossover point : 3000 Hz
Recommended power : 40 - 150 watts

Installation

My own experience suggests that you need a fairly powerful amplifier to drive these speakers. The best amplifier match for these speakers in my room was the Mivera Audio Purepower-Icepower 1200AS2-2 amplifier, which delivers 700 watts per channel into 4 ohms.I preferred this match compared to my usual Conrad Johnson ART monoblock amplifiers. The Mivera was driven directly from my Totaldac DAC using digital volume control. 

The Ara was set-up on 24 inch Partington Dreadnought Broadside stands, and placed in open space with minimal toe-in. The fairly long footprint (388 x 190 mm) of the Ara would probably require you to have a customised top plate for maximum stability.

Sound Quality

Any worries that the Ara kit would sound anything less than a finished commercial product were quickly put to rest after my initial listening sessions. The Ara is a very pleasing and easy going speaker, that combines a smooth tone with a detailed sound. You get a seamless presentation with very good integration between the two drive units. The Ara resists a common trend in bookshelf speaker voicing - a mid-bass hump and tipped up treble. Instead, you get very civilised and even behaviour throughout the frequency range. 

The Satori drivers used in the Ara are from SB Acoustic's flagship range and offer remarkable performance for the money, even exceeding the performance of some other more expensive drive units I have used previously. No surprise then that the Satori has also been used by a number of leading audiophile speaker manufacturers.  

The Ara has decent low frequency grunt for a bookshelf speaker, albeit a fairly large volume one. Tight, tuneful and agile, bass notes are fast enough to avoid being lumpy or one-note. Double-bass is reproduced with good articulation and detail. However, you cannot avoid using a subwoofer if you want to enjoy large orchestral works in their full glory. In any event, you are probably better off going for the floorstanding version of these speakers if you are pursuing that route. 

Midrange is smooth, with a subtle warm tone. Presentation is laidback, with vocal presentation further back in the soundstage. While sounding distant, this also creates an illusion of depth. 

Treble quality is very good, with a silky quality, that is very fluid yet detailed. Some listeners may prefer a bit more bite, but if you like a pleasant and easy-going tone, you will love this. If you don’t, SB Acoustics still has you covered, just read on !

Where the Ara wipes the floor with it's competition is soundstaging ability. Both width and depth are class-leading, with excellent dimensionality. While the competition is able accurately place voices and instruments in the soundfield, they do so in a flat manner, unable to flesh out sonic images with the palpability of the Ara.

I also had a quick listen to the Beryllium tweeter equipped version of the Ara in another setup. There is a significant improvement in low-level detail, clarity and air. The tweeter sounds subjectively "hotter" than the fabric dome tweeter, so some may actually prefer the stock version, especially if you favour listenability over details and precision. While I found driver integration to be still very good, the two drive units do not speak with the exact same voice, and the tweeter does call a bit of attention to itself. I found this effect to be subtle, and not disconcerting in practice. 

The choice of tweeter will ultimately depend on what you value more. A more forgiving and easy-going sound, or a high resolution warts-and-all approach ? If you are interested in the Beryllium version, and the assembly process, please have a look at Part II of this review.

How does the Ara stack up against the competition ? Very well indeed I must say. It ran rings around my KEF LS50 speakers in terms of resolution, detail and dimensionality. The only area where the LS50 was able to trumph the Ara was in terms of imaging specificity, which is not surprising given the coaxial driver used. 

Conclusion

The Ara is an excellent buy at it's price range. You get very high quality sound for your money and a speaker that is able to withstand a fair amount of upgrading in the rest of your system chain. 

Buying the kit is probably the highest level of endorsement I could give it, so enough said there - Best Buy.

I would like to thank Artisan Acoustics for arranging this review. 

SB Acoustics Ara Kit

Price - POA

Artisan Acoustics

http://speakers.artisanacoustics.net