These speakers are immensely satisfying, basswise and otherwise. Specifically, the Maestro's LF drivers have "ultrapowerful double ferrite magnets and 50mm voice coils," Bedel points out.īecause I'd read the frequency specs before I heard the Maestro Evos in my room, I was ready to write a vaguely annoyed riff about how all floorstanders that cost more than a nicely appointed E-class Mercedes ought to be truly full-range and how the Maestros just can't get all the way down to 20Hz. ![]() Also, although the Scala and Maestro woofers look the same, they're different in specs and build. First, he notes that while the specified bandwidth may be similar, Focal added a second bass driver and then applied the company's magnetic damping system to the woofers, which will alter the character of the bass. Focal's Bedel says that the Maestro isn't just an incremental improvement on the Scala. Yet the Maestro exhibits considerably more low-frequency slam, more bigness. Sensitivity, form factor, and materials are practically the same. The Maestros give you what's there, excelling in detail, but the tweeter range isn't goosed in pursuit of faux high-frequency resolution.Īnd the difference with my Scalas? The numbers are close: The Scala goes down to 27Hz flat (≦dB at 24Hz), the Maestro to 25Hz (≦dB at 21Hz). When John Atkinson wrote his review of the Maestro Evos' predecessors (also equipped with beryllium-dome HF drivers), he found that the speakers were "a touch mellow in the top octave." That's true with the Evos as well. Some fault metal-dome tweeters, including beryllium-dome tweeters, for sounding sharp and penetrating. Those textures I mentioned came through with astonishing control and liveliness. If you need convincing that the Maestros can do more than punch hard and low, the Mingus masterpiece is exhibit A. ![]() Add some flamenco-guitar passages, a lush classical-piano part, and a flurry of surprising chord changes and rhythm shifts, and there it is: an affecting musical triumph, undiminished by age. There's an obvious debt in the orchestration to Duke Ellington's Anatomy of a Murder, but Mingus is much brasher than the older man, taking improvisation to the brink of anarchy before pulling his musicians back into the fold of the written score. Muted horns sound like they're singing, wailing, protesting, mourning. The tortured bassist and his band paint with rich brass textures and trippy, furious colors. It deserves some commemorationplus a few awed relistensfor the offbeat arrangements alone. ![]() By turns lyrical and frenetic, the album turned 60 years old this summer. The album I've played more than any other this year is Charles Mingus's The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady (24/96 FLAC, Impulse!/Qobuz). It was easy to follow each bass line, even as they wrapped around each other. Though all multitracked parts play in more or less the same register, nothing sounded jumbled or crowded. Next up was "Slang" (16/44.1 FLAC, A440/Tidal), a Jaco Pastorius composition played by Brian Bromberg on both fretted and fretless basses. Sometimes I even put the "SUB BASS LEVEL" jumper on the back of the speakers in the rightmost position for a little extra bass. In food terms, this speaker is the 16oz ribeye (saturated fat and all), not the lean 10oz sirloin. The Maestros' super-beefy low end and their unapologetic boisterousness might be a little too much for some listeners. The listening experience was almost tactile. I also got bruising bass on "Prism" by British trip-hop outfit Submotion Orchestra (16/44.1 FLAC, SMO/Qobuz). The sound was so satisfying that I let the recording play four, five times in a row. I'd accidentally clicked the "loop track" button in Roon and was powerless against the repeats. My room is built on a concrete slab with rubber subflooring, but damned if my chair didn't shake. Through the Maestro Evos, the bass on Metropolis's "Planners and Thinkers" (16/44.1 FLAC, Soundtrack Classics/Tidal) slammed so deep and turned so seismic, it was almost scary.
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