Some sign of Expert line

[David A]

[quote="Pim" pid='107233' dateline='1669155226'

Hi Zoran,

It was the Sopra 1 and Dynaudio Confidence 20. Same room, same electronics, same song. I concentrate on the voice and how natural it sounds whenever I compare.

The Confidence sounded natural although a bit dull. I suspect that was because of the overly treated room (almost the whole side walls treated with 8cm thick absorption.

The Sopras sounded bright and not natural. Not just bright as in a balance towards high frequencies, but bright as in the voice sounding clearly coming from a tweeter that couldn't produce it properly. I was a bit surprised because when my mate was looking for speakers, the two Focals that he compared with the speakers he ended up buying (Fyne audio 502SP) were the closest to the Fyne sound and beat the 3 other brands in the same price range. I believe one was the Kanto range, but I'm not sure.

I have a theory on speakers nowadays. We've come to a point where you can get quite good sound at reasonable prices. For a company to get their speakers to stand out, they tend to go for 'higher resolution'. Just because you can hear more details doesn't mean you're listening to a better representation of the original sound. I'd rather hear the chest of the singer than the saliva on their lips. Hence my love for Vivid speakers, because they seam to be able to do both.
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@Pim ,

I haven't heard the Sopra 1's or the Sopra 3's, just the 2's.

All I can say about the 2's is that if you set them up well in your room voices don't sound bright, they sound clear and natural. If the setup isn't right the 2s can definitely sound bright and throw detail in your face. I spent a fair amount of time on speaker placement and fine tuning the location of my acoustic treatments. They are not a speaker I would just stick anywhere in the room, like Dynaudios I think they need room around them to breathe. When I first got my Contour 1.3 SEs I had to put them close to the wall because of the size of the room but when we moved house and I got a bigger room I pulled them well out into the room and the top end of the 1.3 SEs suddenly got a sweetness I had never heard from them and voices became noticeably more natural in sound. I've never tried the Sopra 2s close to the wall but given the way they respond to being out in the room and my experience with the Contours I don't think they would respond well. I've got the Sopras about 1.3 metres from the side walls, about 1.8 metres from the wall behind them, and the tweeters are around 2.6 metres apart so there's a fair amount of space around them.

Setup makes a difference to any speaker and my view is that it isn't the fault of the speaker if it does not sound its best because of bad setup. Dealer showrooms are often not a good place to audition speakers. My dealer has heard my Sopras in my home and his comment on a couple of occasions is that they don't sound the way they did in the showroom. I think that says something.