By now, I hope I’ve conveyed the holistic nature and sense of dimensionality produced by the Auditoriums, as well as the musical drama that results. In large part that rests on the coherence with which they reproduce not just the soundstage but the whole acoustic space. You may think your speakers ‘do’ height, but few speakers that I’ve heard capture height in the effortlessly convincing fashion of the Clarisys panels. Is it accurate – or an artefact of the way they drive the room? Who can say, but it sure seems natural to me. To paraphrase the late, great Paul Benson, “If that’s (a system artefact), leave it in, I like it!” But something that goes hand-in-hand with that palpable acoustic space is a soundstage that stands behind (and beyond the limits of) the speakers. Particularly on larger scale classical recordings, although the acoustic space is inclusive, there is also a definite mid-hall perspective. That sense of distance is something that some listeners like (indeed, seek) while others prefer a closer, more obviously immediate presentation. Which brings me to the Divin Noblesse…
The medium-sized Göbel (the flagship Majestic is genuinely massive and musically, well, majestic…) offers a very different point of musical view. In many ways the most obvious differences occur at the frequency extremes. The high frequencies have an air and illuminated quality against which the Clarysis sounds rounded and rolled off. But just as that contributes to the Auditorium’s presentation of a coherent, cohesive acoustic, the Divin’s top-end creates a more separated, spot-lit view. At the bottom end, the speed and linearity of the Noblesse’s twin bass drivers, with their clever, symmetrical porting and carefully controlled enclosed volume, delivers remarkable low-frequency attack and leading-edge precision. One thing that big box speakers can do is deliver the sort of bass notes that bounce off your breastbone and the Divins do that with more ‘snap’ and ‘slap’ than any other equivalently priced speaker I’ve used, short of full-range horns like the Trio. Combine this with the focus, transparency and separation of their high frequencies and what you have is a clean, crystal-clear and extraordinarily articulate musical presentation, one that moves you much closer to the performers than the Clarisys, certainly in terms of distance. Individual images are precisely located, in space and one to another, but that comes at the expense of the overarching acoustic. In other words, the Divins emphasise the individual images as opposed to the whole. Rhythmically and in temporal terms they are extremely tight and even explicit, making for an immediate and engaging performance. But overall, especially on acoustic recordings, the Clarysis deliver a more convincing sense of the original event, both spatially and in terms of the essential musical relationships and ensemble as a whole.
