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P/review of Jupiter Audio Europa speakers pt.1
So, I've had Mr. Singh's speakers now for over a week now and I'm
prepared to pass along my impressions of the speakers. First of all, some background. The room is 16 X 14 X 9.5 feet. It's carpeted. One side wall (the right) has a permanent opening about 6 feet wide by 8.5 feet tall. the wall behind the speakers has a permanent opening of about 3.5 feet wide by 7 feet tall in the dead center of the wall. The walls are cheap "fake wood" paneling and there's a single sized window on the left side wall with horizontal louvers. On the back wall behind the TV is the record rack, which covers the wall from the corner to the previously mentioned opening in the back wall. On the right side is an equipment table. Directly in front of the TV is the turntable, on a low spiked amp stand and to its right is a subwoofer with the receiver, Dish network receiver, and DVD player on top. The subwoofer has been disconnected for the term of the testing. There is a sofa on the opposite wall to the system and two 7 foot tall bookcases between the window and the record albums. Distance from the sofa to the TV is about 9 feet. The room is a bit crowded and, while not dead, certainly isn't a lively room. There's very little overhang if you perform the clap test. Even considering the unusual placement of openings, this is a pretty good sounding room, although it would obviously be considered only an average sized room. I happen to think that coupling the room directly to two other rooms via the openings smooths out the FR a little. That's just my own opinion though. As to my musical orientation, I listen to a pretty wide variety of music and I tried to choose good examples of different things to test the range of the speakers. I used both CD and LP. I also tried some things that I knew had certain deficiencies as well just to see how they were handled by the speakers, including music that you wouldn't normally think would be well-served by them. I decided not to evaluate movies and I've stuck only to music. Here's the basic system: Denon 2802 receiver. ProJect One Turntable/Grado Black. Panasonic DVD RV31 DVD/CD player. Sony 200 disc player. Theta ProGen 3/EAD T-7000 transport. Micromega Stage 5 CD player. I used various interconnects but I really don't want to get into that ball of wax. This wasn't a test of CD players, so I tended to use what was convenient, although I tried to use the various CD players at different times. I also used the Fisher X202 tube integrated amp and I will mention it specifically when applicable. I also had available a pair of Klipsch Cornwalls, which are the speakers normally in this system and a pair of Allison CD8s from the bedroom. The Cornwalls are a 3 way large horn driven system with compression horn drivers for the midrange and tweeters and a 15 in. woofer in a large cabinet. Specs and graphs for the speakers can be found he http://www.belgaudio.com/kcmap.htm They are rated at plus or minus 5 dB 38 to 17,000 Hz with 3% max total modulation distortion. They are tested as being pretty smooth from about 25 hz to 20,000 kz however. The CD8s are rated down to about 39 hz - 3dB and 33 hz -6dB. They, like the Europas have an 8 inch woofer, but they also have a 3 1/2 inch midrange. The CD8s are 4 ohm speakers. Here are the specs for the Europas: http://www.jupiter-audio.com/pages/europa.html Trotsky supplied me with a set of stands, since I don't have any need for stands in house. These stands are just that, stands. They have no particular worth from an audio standpoint as they are just made of pressboard or the like, although they *do* have spikes and they *do* get the speakers at the height that they need to be at. They seem to be the stands in the photos on the web site. I started by just putting them in front of the Cornwalls for the first couple of days and playing various things through them, mainly just to get an initial *very* general impression of their "sound". I did this because I was waiting for the stands to arrive and I didn't want to move the Cornwalls out until I was ready to go. As it turned out, the position that they ended up in for the remainder of the test wasn't that far from where I set them up initially. However, of course, there was a pretty big difference since the Cornwalls *are* bulky and kept the speakers from having a lot of depth and air. Once the stands got here, out went the Cornwalls. I started the process of placing the speakers. I started out only about 2 feet from the rear wall (or, more precisely, the records and equipment stands). They sounded OK but not particularly tight and focused. I was expecting this as they were almost parallel to the rear plane of the TV. As I moved them in, I noted an improvement in both imaging and balance. I was not willing to move the TV out of the room for the tests. I think this is fair, since these speakers will be used by many in just such a HT type situation. Due to the position of the TV and the "subwoofer stand", by necessity the speakers are *not* placed equidistant from the side walls. I can't quite bring the right speaker in as much as I'd like. I can only bring it in about 13" from the side wall (and there's an opening in that wall anyway). The left speaker has to be in about 25" from the bookshelves on the left side (and they are 13 inches deep as well). I tried having the left speaker about the same distance from the bookshelves as the right speaker is from the wall, but they didn't image well spread that far apart. So I brought the left speaker in closer to the center of the room and the image "locked" into place. what this does however is shift a center-positioned vocalist a little to the left. This happens with the Cornwalls as well due to the displacement caused by the bookshelves. I've long ago acclimated myself to it and adjust my perception accordingly. But enough of all of that. Let's get to the character of the sound, speaking non-specifically at first (I'll be talking about specific pieces of music later). First of all, I value a deep bass, but it has to be round without being flabby, taut without being drawn and pinched and powerful with a sense of slam but not overbearing. Maybe these descriptors sound contradictory, but I think that most music lovers know what I'm trying to impart. The problem with the Europas is what you'd expect from just about any relatively small bookshelf ported speaker with an 8 inch woofer. It just doesn't go as deep as you need to be really "realistic". In this respect, I have to quibble with Greg's statement that they are "neutral". I think he's confusing "neutral" with "lean". I understand what he's trying to say, since many speakers tend to go overboard with the bass, trying to hit deep notes with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. The Europas offer a very nice bass response up to a point. What bass is there is everything that I treasure in a speaker. However, it falls short when it comes to the foundation necessary to create a "lifelike" image. The bass approaches the Quad standard more than it does the Cerwin-Vega standard (to give an example of an egregious offender). But this isn't Quad bass. Sorry. It just doesn't quite approach the richness and "palpability", to use a well-worn catchword, that I remember from Quads. Another problem with the speakers is one that you would expect with a two-way design. The upper bass/lower midrange gets blunted or a bit "congested" somehow. You don't notice it as much with combo jazz or classical but with rock and roll or things with substantial energy in that region, the impact is lessened and things start sounding cluttered. Another negative isn't really a negative of the speaker. If the source material tends toward the sibilant, this speaker will exacerbate that tendency slightly. Note the word *slightly*. It's not nearly objectionable as other speakers I've heard in the past. This might be considered an indicator of the basic "accuracy" of the speaker as it certainly doesn't cover up that flaw. Nor does it blow it out of proportion. The final negative is the somewhat unregulated nature of the woofer. It is *very* prone to subsonics. Frankly, I don't have my Denon manual handy and I've been unable to find the subsonics filter on the thing (I assume it's buried in a damn on-screen menu somewhere). When I play LPs, there are some wild woofer excursions at higher volumes, but I haven't been able to pick out any particular degradation in the bass at those levels once the music starts. I have no such bad excursions with the Klipsches (the Belgian web site explains this as a function of the "self dumping" nature of the woofer below 20 hz - I assume they're referring to damping), or at least none that I've noticed. Associated with this was a funny phenomenon. I put on The Grateful Dead's Wake of the Flood, which I didn't know had a warp (not super bad but bad enough to drive these woofers crazy) This wouldn't have bothered the Klipsches because I've played it through the Klipsches and didn't notice the warp. Well, the excursions literally knocked a portion of the stuffings through the port! It was like the speaker was sticking its tongue out at me. But have no fear, I tucked it back in and all returned to normal. Now that we've got the negative stuff out of the way, let's talk about what the speaker does right. The speaker, despite what I've previously written *is* well-balanced in general. There are no glaring problems with the sound as you find in some speakers. It's neither "thin-sounding" nor "boomy". I think that it certainly approaches a lean, agile sound (unless you're playing loud rock and roll, and still, certain types of rock and roll are well served - I'll get into that later). The speakers are especially pleasing with brass and cymbals/bells/chimes. The tweeters have bite without being biting or harsh. The speakers image well. There's a coherence to the sound that was pleasing to me. Voices and instruments were placed where I expected them to be (within the room limitations that I've previously mentioned). With the exception of the lack of deep bass, the speakers portray a reasonable sense of "slam". Make no mistake though, these speakers WILL NOT reproduce a rock concert realistically. I like the sense of air that the speaker imparts to the music, especially acoustic music. The soundstage seems about what I would expect considering the limitations of my room. Once the speakers are positioned optimally, the image does tend to fall into place. In part 2, I'll be talking about specific music and how I perceive the speaker when playing those specific pieces. This has gone on too long already. Hopefully I'll get this part sent by Tuesday at the latest. I wanted to get this out fairly quickly and I'm actually writing this before I get the chance to compare with the Cornwalls and the Allisons. That will come in part 3 later in the week. Who knows, I might modify some of my impressions when I get the chance to do that. The problem has been one of time for me. I've been working sort of day on day off in the last week and I haven't been able to string a couple of days off together until now. Finally, to close out this part of the commentary, my thoughts on Greg's prose on the web site: "So what's the bottom line? "The sound quality is tremendous". I would say that the sound quality is impressive for a first effort. "The Europa has a zippy, dynamic quality that speakers costing ten times as much often can't equal". I disagree. Of course, you can probably find some speakers costing ten times as much that don't match the "zippy, dynamic quality". But you might be able to say that with any number of "inexpensive" speakers in the price class of the Europas as well as finding similarly priced speakers that will hold their own with the Europas. Quads for example are quite a bit better, to my mind (talking about more expensive speakers of course). However, I'm not above saying that the Europas, while not necessarily giving them a run for their money, would *not* fare badly in a direct comparison. "It also has a neutrality from top to bottom that is exceptional". I think that I've already addressed this. " Bass guitar notes sound like bass guitar notes". I don't disagree. I just think it's a "smaller" version of them. The Europas *do* maintain a measure of the richness of a good bass guitar though. If this sounds contradictory, I apologize. They need to go lower or be augmented by a subwoofer to really offer the bass response that I think is necessary for reasonably loud material, or even to portray acoustic bass instruments like tubas or string basses with the requisite realism that they deserve. "Runs on a piano don't hit "sour spots" in the frequency response. The tweeter response is crisp and articulate", I would absolutely agree with this verbiage regarding the tweeter. "with a wide open sound that is very fun to listen to". Once again, agreed EXCEPT for the tendency to thicken in the upper bass/lower midrange that I mention in the body of my evaluation. "The woofer, while being very accurate, also has a robust quality to it that produces bass that is very tight and authoritative". Only to a point. The nice thing about the bass is the fact that it's never "woolly" or "soggy". And watch those dastardly subsonics. " And these speakers don't have the typical "goose" in the high frequency response that is often equated with high end sound, thus lending themselves to extended listening sessions". I would agree that the high FR is quite "lively" without being overblown. Brass has the bite that you expect from brass without being "spitty" or "brittle". " Lastly, they are an easy load to drive, with above average efficiency, thus allowing for a wide range of electronics. But make no mistake: the better the electronics the better the Europas will sound". No quarrels here. I'm looking forward to seeing how they sound with the Fisher tube amp. I'd love to hear them with some truly high end gear. Sorry for the length. |
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