Playing in Room F210 on the top level atrium of Hall 4: Two pair of Focal Scala Utopia EVO loudspeakers ($39,995/pair) with lots of Naim electronics and cabling. Also in the system was a VPI Prime Signature turntable, but it wasn’t in use when I was in the room. The key items in this room, though, were some footers: specifically, IsoAcoustics GAIA-Titan Theis isolators—not so humble after all, on second thought, since they cost $899.99 for a set of four. The loudspeakers—white and green—were arranged in alternate pairs, their acoustical centers shifted by a few degrees.
The six-shelf Naim Fraim equipment rack held a lot of Naim gear: an NDX2 streaming source ($7499) with an XPS2 DR power supply ($6599); a NAC 252 preamp ($11,999) with a SUPERCAP DR power supply ($7699); a 300 DR stereo power amp ($14,999) with its companion 300 PS power supply (included); a Stageline phono preamp ($695). Cabling—speaker and interconnect—was Naim’s Superlumina. IsoAcoustics OREA pucks (starting at $49.99 each) were used under everything. An IsoAcoustics Delos isolated butcher block support was under the VPI turntable; the Delos will join the IsoAcoustics lineup later this year. Crucially, a custom-made, audiophile-grade, remote-controllable switch box lay on the floor to the right of the Naim Fraim.
Why two pairs of speakers? Because the green pair was equipped with factory spikes while the white pair stood on the above-mentioned vibration-isolating feet. The music could be remotely directed to one pair of speakers or the other via the switch box, allowing a direct comparison of the sound of the speakers with spikes and speakers with the isolation feet.
I sat down in a good seat and tensed up, as I often do at demos, expecting an unpleasant, difficult, public test. But when the music switched a few seconds in, the sound changed utterly. No subtlety here.
The soundstage flattened—in the sense of becoming less center-filled and curved around to the sides. Now it extended straight out beyond the edges of the speakers. When I say it flattened, I do not mean that soundstage depth collapsed. It didn’t. Instead I mean that the sonic canvas, which previously had been a bit loose, suddenly stretched tight.
This happened when the sound shifted from the speakers with the spikes to the speakers with the footers. There was also a small shift in the center of the stage, because one pair of speakers was slightly shifted relative to the other, but that shift, while easily audible, was subtle compared to the other things that were happening.
The effect on the soundstage, described above, is, I think, a matter of taste. You might prefer the greater concentration of the image toward the center, as presented by the speakers with spikes. But the other major change I heard was an unambiguous improvement.
It’s hard to describe timbre—hard to put this change into words. So let’s just say that timbres changed—timbres of instruments and voices, radically and for the better. In addition, with the footers, voices stood out more distinctly from everything else that was going on sonically, especially in a pedestrian, very busy Michael Jackson recording.
The point I wish to emphasize is the size of the change I heard. If I were to quantify it it in terms of the totality of the sound, I’d say it was a 20% change. This was a far bigger change than in any cable demo I’ve experienced. It was much larger than the difference between two similar DACs. With volumes matched, changing amplifiers never makes this big a difference in the sound, as long as the amplifiers are well-designed and performing correctly. The only component changes that make a difference this big are transducers: loudspeakers, phono cartridges.
This was not a perfect test. The footers added a bit of height to the loudspeakers, raising the drivers by an inch or two. One pair of speakers was, as I’ve said, rotated relative to the other by a few degrees. But such small changes could not account for such a major change in the sound. It had to be the footers. I’ve asked for a set for a trial.
Photos courtesy of IsoAcoustics.
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