S A M ’ S S PA C E
S a m Te l l i g
The Verity Audio Rienzi loudspeaker
L
ars loved to latch on first. My
friend, who died five years
ago, liked to be among the first
to discover hi-fi—amplifiers,
cables, tweaks, and, of course,
loudspeakers.
When Lars found a favorite piece
of gear, he did more than adopt the
product; he adopted the company,
and became friends with the manufacturer. This is how I got to know
Julien Pelchat and Bruno Bouchard,
of Verity Audio. We met in Lars’s listening room.
Lars’s Shun Mook Mpingo discs
now reside in Verity Audio’s Quebec
City listening room—as much for nostalgia’s sake, apparently, as for what
they do to the sound. My wife, Marina,
and I finally had the chance to visit the
Verity factory. Their drive-units are
made in Denmark and their cabinets
are manufactured offsite, elsewhere in
Canada. All assembly and testing takes
place in Quebec City.
Ah, Quebec. I do love a place where
the stop signs say “ARRÊT”—only in the
province of Quebec, never in France,
where the signs say “STOP.” Even in
Russia, a stop sign is just that—in Cyrillic letters.
Julien and Bruno are not only business partners (they jointly own Verity
Audio), they’re best friends. They met
in the late 1980s, when they worked
for Oracle (the Canadian turntable
maker, not the software empire). Julien
had been hired to design speakers,
Bruno to develop a CD player. When
work on the player stalled, Bruno
joined Julien to research loudspeakers.
At the end of 1994, they left to start
Verity Audio. Their first speaker, in
1995, was the Parsifal. Ten years on, in
2005, they introduced the Parsifal
Ovation. Like most Verity speakers,
the Parsifal comprises a two-way monitor sitting atop a bass cabinet.1
Julien and Bruno are big fans of single-driver loudspeakers, those with no
crossovers—especially the original Quad
ESL-57 electrostatic. “The speaker had
1 Michael Fremer reviewed the Verity Sarastro in
March 2005; see wwww.stereophile.com/floorloud
speakers/305verity.—Ed.
www.Stereophile.com, October 2007
great midrange but limited bandwidth,”
Julien declared.
This is where Ejvind Skaaning, of
AudioTechnology, in Denmark, came
in. Skaaning—who might be called Mr.
Speaker—is the founder of Scan-Speak,
one of the world’s largest makers of
speaker drive-units. For the three-way
Parsifal, Skaaning, who’s now 78, developed a driver whose bandwidth extends from 55Hz to 5.5kHz. No other
speaker manufacturer has this driver—
or anything quite like it, so far as I
know. It’s part of what makes the Parsifal unique. It’s also part of what makes
For instance, is it better to measure the
frequency response of a tweeter at the
tweeter’s height—or at the typical
height of a seated listener’s ears? My
friend The Brass Ear was on to this. At
one time, he owned a barber’s chair
that he could raise or lower to the right
vertical listening angle. His wife made
him get rid of it.
Julien described Verity Audio’s
approach to audio verity: “Tuning a
speaker cabinet creates a high-pass
acoustical filter. If you tune the cabinet
for an anechoic chamber, you can
achieve a flat frequency response, just
THE PARSIFAL ACHIEVES AN EXCEPTIONAL
PURITY OF SOUND—A COHERENCE, IF YOU WILL—
THAT SETS IT APART FROM MOST LOUDSPEAKERS.
the speaker expensive. A Parsifal “system”—monitor plus bass module—starts
at $20,000. (All speaker prices per pair.)
“Because the voice-coil is so short,
the acceleration factor of the driver is
about twice that of a normal driver,”
Julien explained. “This allows the driver to operate almost full-range.”
The Parsifal achieves an exceptional
purity of sound—a coherence, if you
will—that sets it apart from most loudspeakers. Ejvind Skaaning’s driver, with
its short voice-coil and long magnetic
gap, is a key reason. So is the elaborate
cabinet construction: 1"-thick medium-density fiberboard (MDF), beautifully finished. Such construction does
not come cheap.
“Braces are installed in such a way
that any resonance is split into many
smaller resonances over a wide frequency range and so as not to reinforce
one another,” said Julien. “We are able
to reduce the resonance of each cabinet
by a factor of four.”
Each cabinet is carefully tuned—not
just to measure well in an anechoic
chamber, but to work well in the typical listening room. Measurements can
be misleading, according to Julien.
They may also be somewhat arbitrary.
as you could with an electrical filter.
But when put that speaker in a normal
room, you have room reinforcement
going on. Of course, you can deal with
this by loudspeaker placement. But we
wondered whether there was something we could do to make speakers
work with rather than against room
reinforcement.
“Often people describe a ported
speaker cabinet as having one-note
bass,” Julien continued. “If a speaker is
flat in an anechoic chamber, when you
put that speaker in a normal room, the
room reinforcement starts at about
200Hz and reaches a peak at the tuning frequency of the cabinet. We use
Bessel tuning of the cabinet to compensate for this. It starts to attenuate
the bass at around 200Hz and increases
at lower frequencies. This compensates
for the room reinforcement and
extends the low frequencies. A properly tuned Bessel cabinet avoids the onenote peak that is typical of a ported
cabinet. One benefit is that we were
able to make speakers whose footprints
are smaller than that of the usual loudspeaker. The cabinets are smaller, but
they perform better because of the way
the speakers interact with the room.”
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fi bedlam—Richard Schram, of Parasound, arrived bearing John Curl’s new
halo JC-2 line-stage preamp for use
with my reference Halo JC-1 monoblocks. I’d been waiting for this piece
for more than four years. How could I
say no? I ran the Cary CD player into
the Parasound combo, using balanced
connectors. Now I had power to spare.
“Think of the Parasound JC-1 as a
25W class-A amp that can deliver
400Wpc,” Richard observed.
Walter Swanbon, of Fidelis AV,
dropped by with the news that he’s
become the distributor for LFD, a
small electronics company based in
England. I loved the LFD Mistral integrated amplifier, which I reviewed in
my September 1998 (Vol.21 No.9) and
November 2001 (Vol.24 No.11) columns. LFD has been without a US distributor for some time, and I couldn’t
say no to the Mistral’s replacement, the
Integrated Zero LE Mk.II. The LFD is
rated at 60Wpc into 8 ohms and costs
$1995 without phono stage. In some
ways it offered the best sound of all
with the Rienzis—an example of less
being more.
At this point, long-suffering Marina
was tearing out her hair. I had amplifiers stacked up in the adjacent dining
room. There were boxes in the hallway. Then, in came the Quickies.
Quicksilver’s new SET mono amp
is rated at 9W from a single KT88
output tube ($2800/pair). The sound
with the Verity Rienzis was better
yet—alive and immediate in a way that
only SET, with no global feedback, can
achieve. I find that with SET amps I
tend to listen at lower volume levels. I
can’t say that 9W was always enough,
but most of the time it transported me
to hi-fi heaven.
With all of these amplifiers and
associated gear, the Rienzi was an
exceptionally revealing speaker—revealing of the equipment and, more
important, the recordings. The Rienzi is a superb speaker in its own right,
retaining many qualities of the Parsifal Ovation.
Bass, for instance. Seldom have I
heard bass in our living room that is
both well extended and well controlled. I suppose this is a matter of
tuning the loudspeaker to the listening room, eh bien? From the Rienzis I
heard tight, tuneful bass with no
bloat. And the bass was fast. “That
bass is really quick, John,” I said when
John Quick visited.
Because the Rienzi’s bass isn’t
www.Stereophile.com, October 2007
overdone (as it is with so many loudspeakers), its extension sometimes
took me by surprise. I won’t say that
the Rienzi rattled the floor (you probably need the Parsifal Ovation to do
that), but there was a firm foundation
under the music—especially welcome
with classical piano recordings. I found
that I could bring the speakers well out
from the front wall, just as Lars had
done with his Parsifals. I put them
about 4' from the front wall and less
than 2' from the sidewalls, with no loss
of bass extension.
The Rienzi’s midrange was exceptionally pure. Timbres just sounded
right—with the right gear, of course. I
would not choose a cold-sounding
solid-state amp for this speaker. (The
Parasound JC-1 amplifier does not fall
into that category.) The transition to
the treble seemed seamless, as it
should. As for that classic Scan-Speak
soft-dome tweeter, it was a treat for
sore ears. I had no wish to tame the treble—it was tamed for me. In fact, I
thought it was ever so slightly soft. This
is not to say that the treble lacked delicacy, detail, and definition. It was simply understated. Call it natural—like
the rest of the Rienzi’s sound.
The Rienzi is not designed to grab
attention in a showroom or to win an
audiophile shoot-out. At first listen,
you might even wonder what the excitement is all about. The excitement is
about the fact that there is no excitement. No hype. The imaging and
soundstaging were first-class. The
monitors appeared to float atop the
bass modules, which they’re designed
to do. I heard no muddying of midrange detail, no smearing of the treble.
The sound was clear and clean. And
quick, John.
The Rienzis performed well with
all types of music, including some rock
recordings that John Quick brought
along. Still, if I really pushed things,
especially with the powerhouse Parasound JC-1 amplifiers—if I tried, for
instance, to max out Mahler—I did find
that the sound became congested. Verity recommends a minimum amplifier
power of 25Wpc and a maximum of
200Wpc. I was using 400Wpc. The
Parsifal most likely has superior power
handling.
Sometimes, expensive stuff is worth
the money. Julien Pelchat told me that
he and Bruno Bouchard looked into
producing the Rienzi at a lower price
point, using conventional single-cabinet construction. “But the sound suffered,” he told me. “It wasn’t the
same.”
If the Rienzi’s price is too high for
you, remember that you can get the
monitors alone for $3195. That’s most
of the music—all but the bass below
60Hz—for only 40% of the full system
price of $7995. Did someone say
“affordable”?
Music Hall Trio CDeiver
About 20 years ago, in Las Vegas, a large
Japanese electronics firm (I forget which)
introduced something they called a
“CDeiver.” Whoever coined the term
CDeiver was not so sharp. People walked
by the booth and laughed.
Don’t tell anyone, but Roy Hall has
revived the CDeiver and called it a
Trio. But the canny Glaswegian calls it
a “compact music system.” It consists
of a CD player, an AM/FM tuner, and
an integrated amplifier, all in one tidy
box 17" wide by 33⁄4" high by 14" deep.
It costs $999.
The power output is specified as
50Wpc into 8 ohms. The Trio may
pump some juice into lower imped-
cutline
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S A M ’ S S PA C E
ances, too. The manual advises a minimum impedance of 2 ohms when driving one pair of loudspeakers, 4 ohms
when driving two pairs.
The array of features is surprising.
There’s a headphone jack on the front
panel, for instance. A digital out
(TosLink). Two preamp outs. Four
line-level audio inputs. Video inputs
and outputs (composite and S-video).
The Trio would serve nicely in a twochannel home-theater system—there’s
even a subwoofer output. Who needs
surround sound, anyway?
Better not lose that remote, though—
you’ll be in a pickle if you’ve muted
your system. Or if you want to toggle
between FM and AM. Or key in a
radio frequency. The idea is to put the
clutter where it belongs—on the remote—and keep the front panel clean.
The Trio tries to do everything and
manages to do it reasonably well. Just
don’t expect the superior performance
of good separates, and remember that
you’re paying $999 for a CD player and
CD transport and AM/FM tuner and
integrated amp.
Roy writes that the Trio has a “different set of priorities” from other
music systems. Gosh. Do you think he
means ----? Or blank and blank? One
such priority is power supplies, especially for the amplifier section. Roy
says the Trio has “a huge power transformer, with individual left/right
power supplies.”
Overall, the Trio’s sound was quite
smooth. For what it is and what it
costs, the Trio is about as good as you
might expect. Its FM reception surpassed my expectations—it wasn’t the
best at pulling in weak stations, but it
was still very good. AM was poor;
reception at my place (yes, I connect-
C O N TA C T S
Music Hall LLC, 108 Station Road,
Great Neck, NY 11023. Tel: (516)
487-3663. Fax: (516) 773-3891.
Web: www.musichallaudio.com.
Verity Audio Incorporated,1005
Saint-Jean-Batiste, Suite 150, Quebec City, Quebec G2E SL1, Canada.
Tel: (418) 682-9940. Fax: (418)
682-8644. Web: www.verityaudio.
com. US distributor: Tempo Sales &
Marketing, P.O. Box 541443,
Waltham, MA 02454. Tel: (617)
314-9296. Fax: (617) 314-9296. Email: [email protected].
www.Stereophile.com, October 2007
ed an antenna) was overwhelmed by
static.
I listened to loudspeakers that cost
between $8000 and $9000/pair—the
Verity Audio Rienzi and the BC
Acoustique A3. Both were bound to
reveal the Trio’s weaknesses, and they
did. That’s why I used them. Most listeners will use speakers that cost less
than $1000 or even $500/pair. Such
speakers tend to sound a tad rough,
raw, and unrefined (like me), and the
Trio might be just the ticket to tame
them. At this price, no one is likely to
lament or even notice a lack of
microdetails.
THE TRIO TRIES TO
DO EVERYTHING
AND MANAGES TO DO
IT REASONABLY WELL.
I tried the Trio with my AKG 701
headphones. Nice—but neither the
greatest low-level rez nor the strongest
kick-butt bass. As with speakers, most
listeners will likely use cheaper
’phones and not much care.
The Trio is compromised. It has to
be. The good news is that it isn’t actually flawed. It may be just the thing for
friends and relatives who simply aren’t
going to spend a lot of money on a hifi or a home theater.
But for not much more money,
those friends and relatives could begin
building a seriously good hi-fi system.
Start them off with a Creek Classic
integrated amplifier, for instance.
(They probably already have a CD
player.) Give them that pair of speakers that’s been sitting in your basement. A Creek Classic is something
you can build a great system on. A
Trio isn’t.
But hats off to Hall: I don’t think
Roy could have made the Trio any
better without raising its price. Other
manufacturers would likely have
made it a lot worse with relentless
penny-pinching at every turn. You
know, shaving a nickel here, a dime
there on parts. No bean counters
work at Music Hall.
The Music Hall Trio is all you
might expect it to be—nothing less.
You get a quality product. You get
your $999 worth. It may be all you
need. But is it really all you want? ■■
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