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This depended on speaker placement, i.e. whether the woofers fired out or in. That choice made for significant changes and there cannot be any unanimous recommendation on what’s preferable. In my room the woofers-in orientation evened out timbres, the low bass was better and the midrange became more saturated. The soundstage also grew narrow and the general expansiveness of the sound reduced. With the woofers firing out the perspective widened without any central thinning. Things remained continuous. The tonal balance shifted up however because bass wasn’t as strong. Obviously a given room will remain the most important variable in this and just how the speakers are positioned within in (closer to the side wall, farther away from the front wall etc.) The earlier comments simply reflect my setup.


Though I mentioned a change of tonal balance, the Ketsus does not exhibit the skewed timbres typical of widebanders where both frequency extremes are clearly limited. That’s probably exactly what Eryk was after when he added the tweeter and modified the woofers. I’d say extension on either end is very good considering. The lowest bass is absent but the remainder is very resolved though not very selective which isn’t a contradiction. With the Ketsus Special following a bass line or a double bass workout is child’s play. Moreover the timbre of this range is so interesting that we notice elements within its melodic lines and player techniques which are often lost with speakers that produce more raw bass. Here bass detail reaches out more as though it were closer to us but that's not due to some emphasis or bloat.


Ketsus bass was simply melodic. Surprisingly this bass wasn’t the most selective though it did not result in a homogenized presentation at all. Impact and outline focus weren’t the highest but sustains were very clear, clean and pulsating. While the sound of bass instruments was rather soft in general, it was very active at its core.


The midrange was audibly different. Again the sound was very big and the virtual performers felt expansive. On recordings where a vocalist is merely one of many stage performers, the voice would be slightly recessed rather than placed forward. That’s of course a matter of taste as we do not know how things were recorded. The spatial relationships during live recordings tend to be very different from studio settings though most recordings are an attempt to enforce the impression that we are listening to live performers. Here the vocals were often in the shadow of the accompanists. This was true even for recordings like the earlier Marilyn Moore disc where the voice should have been clearly out front. But it still wasn’t presented right in front of my nose. The same held true for small ensembles as on Eva Cassidy’s Songbird.


Interestingly this was not about lack of depth. It was about reducing the size of the virtual source. The dimension of depth was actually very good. Instruments behind the voice were vivid and filled with breath. This clearly was not a muffled sound. The treble was active and clear. The upper treble was similar to what we get from classic loudspeakers - vivid and by comparison to classic tweeters without limitation. Its resolution and selectiveness seemed slightly higher than the rest of the spectrum however. Yet this was not a very saturated treble. It was pleasing and slightly delicate despite the significant amount of it but it was not very deep. The top and bottom octaves here acted as just a sort of focus for the midrange which was thus allowed to develop further than without the bracketing reinforcements.