I’m a big fan of boxless speakers. Over the years I’ve owned no-box speakers from Apogee, Magnepan, Carver, Spatial Audio, and now – a Decware Clone born in the style of the Decware Model ZF15M (let’s call these new speakers “OBs”, for the sake of clarity and simplicity).
My most recent soirée into the boxless realm of loudspeaker design didn’t end well – [review of the Spatial Audio X3], but I’m not one to be deterred. I have to say that this Decware clone was entirely an impulse buy. I was scrolling my local Craigslist and these things caught my attention. I was intrigued by their small footprint and simple fullrange/crossoverless design. They seemed like something I might use in my second system, which was laying idle following the sale of the Altec Valencia 846b a few months back.
A little research led me to the website of the Lii Audio F-15 drivers You can see the specs at the link provided, most remarkable of which is the efficiency of 97dB. (Add baffle gain and the finished speaker should be around 100dB).
Nothing else remarkable to note from the Lii Audio website, except of course the rather reasonable cost of the F-15 drivers themselves, on sale at $400/pair plus shipping. It’s interesting to see the cost of the finished speakers from Decware, from the various options the closest to my OB clones come in at around $4,000. Given that these are crossover-less, and the drivers are only $400 or so a pair, that puts the material and woodworking cost of the baffles at around $3500. Solid hardwood is expensive, but I think you could do it for a lot less if you’re relatively DIY-enabled.
When the OBs arrived, I didn’t really have a suitable power amp on-hand to drive them. Sure, I have the big Allnic A6000 monoblocks with their quad of 300b tubes per side and their 60w power output via the EML 300b XLS tubes. But that’s almost as much overkill for these little 100dB efficient speakers as my 250w ICE amp from H2O Audio. Since the big Allnic amps need $4-5000 for a retube, I decided to throw the OBs on the H2O Signature 250, just for grins and giggles, then have a look around for a flea-powered tube amp on the used markets.
Here’s a rather poor photo with the speakers just dumped in the music room, prior to proper setup.
I decided not to disrupt the main rig too much by moving the heavy Piega C40 out from the room, so I just rough-assed the positioning of the OBs, setting them down a couple of feet in front of the Piegas, about 6.5′ apart, and 7′ from the front wall. Proper setup and positioning would come later when I acquired a suitable power amp and moved them into the other room.
Listening Impressions
They’re instantly recognizable as open baffle speakers, even with this not-so-optimal setup. The sound was large and spacious with good stage depth, height, and width. They’re entirely without the typical boxy colorations that ALL box speakers have, no matter how well the cabinets are constructed and damped. Image placement in the soundstage is quite precise, but not really holographic. Later I decided to add the subs into the equation and use the Lyngdorf TDAi 2170’s Room Perfect feature to integrate the subs and get the whole thing optimized for the room.
I quite enjoyed the presentation, but it was obvious the upfront gear wasn’t really suited to these 100dB efficient speakers, but for a week or two they were a fun alternative to the rather more serious Piega C40.
Finding The Right Amp
I spent a while thinking about the right amp choice to drive these and landed a Dennis Had Inspire KT88 SEP after a few weeks of looking around. The Inspire KT88 is described as a ‘tube rollers dream’, and it surely is, with its wide range of options for power tubes, rectifier, and input/driver tubes. My Inspire came with:
KT88 – Genalex – Gold Lion – a pair.
Sovtek 5AR4 – one.
Tung-Sol 6SN7GTB – one.
On hand I have various viable plug-and-play options, including KT66, EL34, KT90, KT77, 6L6G, and one or two others, but I started out with the tube setup as delivered with the amp. (The amp was purchased used and everything is fully broken-in).
Other Equipment
Moving the speakers into the smaller second system room, the partnering equipment was a Wyred4Sound STP-SE preamp with stage 2 upgrade, and an older but quite competent OPPO BDP-95 universal player as source. Cables were Aperion Audio silver, later replaced by Cardas Golden Cross, with Bogden Audio RCA’s between source and amp-preamp. I also have a dual TT setup in the second room, a VPI TNT MKI with ET2 arm, and a Wilson Benesch Full Circle with ACT 0.5 arm. Phonostage is an Allnic Audio H1202.
Positioning The Decware Zen Master Clones
I admit to struggling for a few nights trying to get the speakers to disappear. Part of the issue initially was with the Aperion Audio Silver speaker cables which were too short to allow for more liberal placement experimentation. Removing these and adding the lengthier Cardas Golden Cross solved that problem and also introduced a little more warmth to the sound, which was appreciated.
The main problem with getting these dialed in was with juggling the issue of poor low-frequency performance and getting the speaker to remove itself from the sonic picture thus minimizing instrument localization. I could get the speakers to do a pretty good disappearing act, but only at the expense of mid-bass and low-bass performance. Remember, these are a full-range driver and don’t really go down all that low to begin with. After several hours of going around in circles, I settled for a placement that gave an optimum presentation of sound without instrument localization issues, then switched on a sub. I guess what I’m saying here is that in my room, to get the speakers to disappear, I had to compromise an already compromised low-frequency ability, so the only way to make these speakers ‘playable’ in my room was with a sub. It’s quite possible that more experimentation with placement might yield a position in the room with both adequate bass and the sense of a soundscape detached from the speaker. I may revisit this at some point and if anything changes I’ll post an addendum.
It’s quite normal in my experience to have to wrestle out the maximum performance from a new speaker system, they rarely give it up without a fight. The question becomes, is it worth the hassle, does the end result produce something musically satisfying and enjoyable? In the case of these little buggers, absolutely! With the contribution from the subwoofer dialed down to the bare minimum, the coherence and seamless output from these full-range drivers is quite remarkable. The first thing that struck me was that they appear to have horn-level dynamics without the typical horn colorations. These things are fast.
Tesla fast. Top-end extension is everything it needs to be, they render detail and subtle spatial cues better than speakers 5 times their cost, in my experience. They present brass instruments in all their glory with ample bite and sparkle but free from harshness and glare. Voices are delivered with a sweetness and purity of tone like I’ve heard from few other speakers. Playing ‘The Beast in Me’ from Johnny Cash – American Recordings, his voice is deep, gravelly, husky, and his image takes shape projected in front of the speakers in clear space. When we hear talk of cohesiveness and midrange purity, etc, then these little open baffle speakers with their Lii Audio drivers exemplify those virtues.
Listening to ‘Mining For Gold’, Margo Timmings’ acapella opening on Trinity Revisited, she’s right there in the room with you, and the ambiance from the church venue literally lights up the whole back of the room, wall to wall, floor to ceiling, with ample front-to-back presentation of the stage. Exciting stuff.
For simple acoustic music, jazz, and even light classical, these are fantastic speakers that remind me very much of my vintage Quad ESL57. They have almost the same level of transparency, create a larger more ‘lit’ soundstage than the Quad could ever do, have the same degree of transient speed and microdynamics, but also have the ability to play loud and present more of a macro dynamic feel. Though macro dynamics are far from what you’ll hear with a larger speaker with more of a full-range sound. They miss that bottom end that comes with something like the Altec Valencia, or even the Khorns. The subwoofer helps, but one needs to keep the sub dumbed down to avoid it interfering with the coherence of the F-15 drivers, so it’s always going to be a compromise running these with subs. Without this reliable and solid foundation, they do become limited in the type of music you’ll want to play. Also, they do start to sound overwhelmed when you push them hard on complex music. Playing ‘Squonk’ from Genesis, ‘A Trick of The Tail’, and cranking it up into the low 90’s decibel levels, the instrumentation starts to become homogenized, poorly separated, and congested. It feels like too much information is being pushed through too small a transducer, though the Lii Audio F-15 is hardly a small transducer, that’s how it sounds when pushed hard.
For now, I’m happy to live with these in listening room #2. They do things with acoustic music that my reference Piega C40s can’t quite do. They allow for an intimate connection with the music that few other speakers can accomplish, outside of something like the venerable Quad ’57.
Highly enjoyable!
CAH October 22
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What subs did you use? Any tip on sub setup for these dipole speakers?