Look at the Stenheim range and the natural assumption would be one of continuity and ascending quality, from the Alumine 5 to the 5SE and then the Signature – but that is not the case at all. The 5 and the 5SE are very definitely cut from the same cloth, spaced rungs on the same performance ladder, with a balance that puts energy, coherence and musical generosity front and centre. The Signature is something completely different: so different that in some respects it is hard to believe that they employ the same drivers and essentially the same cabinet. If anybody doubts that the crossover is the critical pinch-point in speaker design, they need look no further than these contrasting Stenheim models. Given my high regard for the standard models, where does that leave the Signature? The obvious answer is in a different place, doing a different job for a different listener. So, perhaps the question you should be asking is, are you that listener?
Up Close and personal…
Where the Alumine 5 and 5SE concentrate on the relationship of phrase to line and line to whole, the Signature’s focus is on a more granular level, individual notes and the note-to-note pattern within a phrase. It could be summed up as concentrating not on what is playing, but on how it is being played – but that is an over simplification. Both Canaletto and J.M.W. Turner painted Venice, yet for each of them, the artistic perspective and the view they give of the same city are very different, not just in how it looks, but in how the elements within the painting combine to overall affect. Yet despite its concentration on definition (and unlike many other resolutely high-definition designs), the Signature doesn’t pull apart bad recordings or dismantle the music – at least not when you have everything just so. But getting it just so is an exacting process that makes this one of the most demanding speakers I’ve worked with – to the extent that part of this particular Just So story extends to your choice of preferred format – be that silver disc, high-res streaming or vinyl.
When it’s good, the Signature is spectacularly good. I seriously doubt that there are many speakers out there that can tell you more about the inner workings of a performance or recording. These are sonic microscopes – and that makes them super demanding to work with – and almost as demanding to live with. It’s this level of insight that reveals their monitor DNA, more clearly and emphatically than anything else. You can talk about resolution, transparency or neutrality; you could list a host of other attributes or qualifications; but at the end of the day, it’s not about lists, but the purpose to which those strengths are wed. The Signature is going to take you closer to the elements within a performance. If that’s what you crave – the smallest aspect of technique, the finest musical warp and weft – then look no further than this Stenheim speaker. After all – that’s what it does day in and day out for the man who voiced it. If you are prepared to meet its demands then it will place you not so much at, but within the original event. In contrast, the 5 and 5SE present a different, more ‘audience-like’ perspective, that almost inevitably offers if not a greater sense of the whole, then certainly a more obvious one. Perhaps, at the end of the day, that is in musical terms, the real difference between an ideal monitor and a domestic speaker system.
