The mid-band gains an uncluttered clarity and transparency to go with the cleaner bottom end, reflected in the explicit weighting of Evans’ piano notes, especially on the beautifully reflective ‘Detour Ahead’. The note-to-note articulation and tonality in his succinct phrases have a natural grace and fluidity, the delicacy, placement, range and shape in his playing, belying the piano’s percussive nature. But as obvious as the individual sonic shifts are, it’s the whole that counts, the holistic nature of the performance that results. The active speakers conjure the performance more convincingly and make it more present in the room. They breathe life and power into the playing, yet also exerting delicacy and restraint as required. It is not a small difference, to the extent that once you’ve heard the speakers running active, it would be difficult (indeed, almost impossible) to step back to passive operation. Again, that’s no real surprise, mirroring a similar reaction to the active/passive comparison with the similarly impressive Avantgarde Trios. And just like the horns, the superiority of the active option isn’t in itself a reason to ignore the passive version. Instead – and as reflected in the review – the passive speakers offer their own musical perspective and price/performance equation. The active option offers a significant step up that is as enticing as it is reassuring for anybody buying the passive speakers and looking for an upgrade path.
Price, performance and the competition…
The Auditorium pitches straight into a highly competitive and arguably over-populated sector of the market. Of course, there’s more to price than RRP. Like a Ferrari it’s not just the cost of buying the product, it’s the cost of keeping (or in this case getting) it running too. Especially in the case of the active Auditoriums, the bill for the matching electronics is going to be significant. The crossover will set you back €23,000, with the six channels of amplification, three sets of interconnects power and speaker cables adding pretty much as much as you want or are able to spend. That shifts the Clarisys speaker away from its immediate price peers, like the Wilson Alexx V and into the altogether more elevated company of speakers like the Göbel Divin Noblesse and the Stenheim Ultime 2-X: exalted company indeed. Direct comparison with such models is beyond difficult, due to issues of availability, practicality and sheer mass. Even if you could assemble two or three such speakers in one place, a proper comparison demands replacing one speaker with the other – you can’t simply stand them side by side. Just to do that requires considerable man-power. The U2 has wheels, but neither the Auditorium nor the Noblesse do. Having achieved that, each model then demands exacting set up in its own right. You can approximate positioning, but that is only a starting point in what can be a lengthy process. So those readers clamouring for detailed, back-to-back comparisons are going to be disappointed. But that doesn’t mean that it’s impossible to discuss the musical and presentational differences between these speakers.
