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Living Voice OBX-R2 Review from
Hi-Fi Choice
Jason Kennedy
Living Voice does not go in for surround
systems or subwoofers - it doesn't even make a bookshelf or
budget speaker.
What it does is make full-scale horn
systems with over 100dB sensitivity (so that they will run
on ten, preferably valve, watts) alongside a small range of
floorstanders which attempt to emulate these horns from compact
and relatively affordable enclosures.
LV produces three Auditorium models
in basically the same cabinet, changing drive units and crossover
components as you ascend the range.
The ultimate model tested here is named
the OBX-R2, which stands for 'outboard crossover' because
its crossovers sit in separate enclosures which are completely
removed from the speaker cabinets.
This is not something you see very
often because it is expensive and rather untidy - you need
cables from amp to crossover and two sets from crossover to
speaker. It is also expensive without looking it - you can
get a high-gloss lacquer or an exotic veneer for the price
of a cabinet to put your crossover in. But it is beneficial.
We have long understood that electric
components are affected by vibration and put our source and
amplification on tables designed to maximize the energy produced
by the speakers.
Crossover components, however, usually
sit in the midst of this resonance, so by extracting them
from the speaker cabinet you are making their lives a lot
easier and giving them more space to escape from one another's
radiations.
Crossover components produce fields
that can directly induce other components to produce distortion.
You can get around by careful orientation but spacing also
plays a part, and the generous size of the OBX-R2 external
crossover's case (9.5 x 42.5 x 26.5cm) offers a far greater
area than most crossovers get to spread out in.
The Avatar is an elegant and compact
loudspeaker compared to many floorstanders, making it more
domestically friendly than most contenders of a similar calibre.
Beautiful real wood veneers contrast with three drive units
in a two-and-a-half-way configuration. Two 165mm doped paper
bass/mid units flank a costly Scanspeak Revelator tweeter
in the classic d'Appolito configuration with the tweeter offset.
The steel basket bass/mid units may not look very fancy but
they were not selected for their aesthetics - this is quite
simply the best 165mm driver that Living Voice can source.
The Revelator tweeter on the other hand is an obviously classy
unit and one which you'll find on speakers costing as much
as five times the price being asked here.
The changes wrought for the OBX-R2
compared to its OBX-R predecessor are chiefly in the crossover,
though there have been changes to pretty much everything except
the tweeter since our last review. The wiring harness, the
bass/mid drive units, capacitors, resistors and hand-wound
inductors are all revised. The current Avatar cabinet is now
built by Castle out of high-density chipboard - not a material
you'll often find in a high-end speaker but one that certainly
seems to have its strengths. The veneer is superb book-matched
yew, in this instance the single leaf variety that adds £400
to the price but results in a stunning piece of furniture.
The standard veneers are ripple maple and ripple cherry while
natural Santos and split leaf yew command a £200 premium.
The crossover has been completely redesigned
in order to increase overall impedance and thus make the speaker
easier to drive, and LV has also sought to extract even more
energy from an already dynamically superior design. The crossover
has shed the Zobel network on the HF (high frequency) system
and had a complete reshaping of the low pass (bass) filter.
Living Voice describes crossover topology as "the DNA
of a loudspeaker", which is essentially true. There is
a finite limit to the variations of drive units and cabinet
shapes you can practically combine but the choices in crossover
design are infinite, every change has multiple effects and
the interactions between components are a technical minefield.
SOUND QUALITY
Having used original Avatar OBX-Rs
for much of the last four years it was intriguing to hear
the changes brought about in this latest incarnation. Oddly
enough this makes it harder to hear the quality of the speaker,
the differences being far more obvious than the overall sound.
However, slipping in a couple of alternatives
at around the same price reveals that this is, as ever, a
phenomenally dynamic loudspeaker, its high sensitivity (92dB)
having been joined by a less challenging amplifier load to
create a product that's even more spectacular in this area
than its predecessor.
It's not something that many loudspeaker
designers prize so highly - you'll probably need to have spent
time with the kings of dynamics, horn loudspeakers, to pursue
this aspect of quality with such single-mindedness. But it's
well worth it if energy, vitality and life are what you are
listening for in your music - and if you're not, the chances
are you haven't heard it. It really is that fundamental.
The new crossover combined with the
Castle cabinets have brought about a significant increase
in dynamic energy and so-called micro dynamics - the small
changes in the level of individual notes or sounds that give
instruments their character. So not only do trumpets, guitars,
voices, you name it, have more pizzazz, they are also more
obviously played, recorded and treated in certain ways.
Sound is also more substantial and
three dimensional than many alternatives achieve. Jan Hammer's
keyboard with the Mahavishnu Orchestra for example, has greater
solidity and structure to it than you often encounter, while
the low frequency effects produced by a jet engine on Radiohead's
Breathe are all the more menacing, even disturbing. This track
also reveals the Avatar's ability to reach for the sky when
the right phase manipulation comes along, the sound expanding
and swooping around in waves.
Eminem's 'charming' Kill You reveals
that the bass is not only deep and tight, it is elastic and
fluid to boot, with deep rich tone and real texture. Comparing
old and new crossovers on the new speaker reveals that the
bass is now tighter but no less deep, while an upper bass
fullness has been eradicated to leave the midrange more transparent.
The effect is to reveal more low-level detail in the mix and
to allow denser passages to untangle themselves so that you
can hear precisely what's going on.
Although it wasn't the stated intent,
one effect of the changes wrought to this speaker is a greater
degree of neutrality. This is a less colourful speaker than
when it started out and therefore the character of partnering
equipment is all the more obvious. Unless you have a particularly
aggressive source component or amp this won't be a problem,
but when you put a better component in and then have to let
it go it's all the more obvious. And the pining lasts that
much longer!
For instance, the Exposure CD player
reviewed on p38 has a distinctly snappier sense of timing
than the Eikos used for this test, and Eminem doesn't sound
quite so perky without it. Timing is not an aspect of performance
that these speakers emphasize, or at least that doesn't seem
the case until you make changes such as this. Then you realize
how sensitive they are to this critical aspect of performance.
There are arguably two areas in which
these speakers concede ground to their peers, and those are
imaging and bass extension. A standmount such as the B&W
Signature 805 will produce greater image precision though
it's arguable that its relatively dry bass limits the sense
of expansiveness. A Tannoy TD8 on the other hand will give
you deeper and more powerful bass but whether it could swing
the dynamics to the same degree is hard to tell without comparison.
Above all else, the Avatar OBX-R is
a musical communicator par excellence. Its transparency gets
the message across in an effortless and engrossing fashion,
making it a genuine stay-up-all-night-going-through-your-music-collection
product.
Its high sensitivity also means that
tube amp enthusiasts, even those with a single-ended bent,
will be able to enoy their AC/DC albums at full bore. Yet
they also work a treat with our Gamut D200 solid state powerhouse.
A speaker for all seasons? Yes, and
a thoroughly enjoyable one too.
HFC Jason Kennedy
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