While it’s sorely tempting to hook up the sub, set the controls to ‘Party’ and see how far the Colibris can go, really understanding what this speaker offers – and how it differs from the more traditional, run of the mill options out there – means starting at the other end of the scale. The Colibri C2’s ‘Super Power’ is its sensitivity – the one thing the mainstream opposition can’t get close to. Play a simple vocal-focussed track and you’ll immediately appreciate the immediacy and intimacy in the presentation, just how present the singer seems. There’s a real ‘in the room’ feeling to the performance. It’s a function of how easily the speaker responds to input, how easily it tracks the tiny shifts and nuances in the incoming signal. You are going to hear it whether it’s Dua Lipa, Taylor Swift or Beyoncé doing the singing. Just as importantly, you are going to hear it whether you’ve got a connected or not.
This is the secret sauce that sets the C2 apart in all taste tests. It’s what makes the speaker special and if you can hear it most easily on human voice, once you recognise what the speaker is doing, you’ll hear it on everything, whether it’s playing loud or quiet. You’ll hear it in the precise leading edges of synth lines and the insistent, slab like rhythms that underpin dance music. You’ll hear it in the attack of a piano and the distinctive blatt of a trumpet, the sinuous lines of a sax and the chunky chug of an upright bass. But most of all, you’ll hear it in the ease with which the speaker unwraps layers within recordings and penetrates the compression that swamps so much modern music. The Colibri brings clarity to the process and with it comes comprehension. There’s a directness and uncomplicated sense of drive and purpose to the music it makes, purpose that translates directly into communication and connection with the performer and their performance. At the same time, it’s exactly what’s missing from affordable audio systems with their prissy little speakers and limited dynamic range. The Colibri builds into a sub-€10K system that doesn’t just better the traditional approach, it pulverises it – not through excessive volume but simply by putting the listener closer to the performer.
If the bottom-end of the standalone C2 does just enough to satisfy, especially if judiciously tweaked, then it also proves the perfect foil for the truncated top-end. Do I miss the air, transparency and focus that goes hand-in-hand with extending high-frequencies, out beyond the audible range? If I go looking for them yes. But in all honesty, only if I go looking… Otherwise I’m too busy enjoying all that mid-band immediacy, dynamic subtlety and drama. Plus, the C2 has pretty much the same extension as more than a few soft-domed loudspeakers that get regularly praised for their warmth and ‘musicality’. Super-extension is a fairly recent phenomenon and not one whose absence blunted our musical enjoyment too much before it arrived. Besides which, few soft-domes deliver the musical energy at high frequencies that you can get from the C2. A bit like the diamond/beryllium dome debate, it’s a trade-off between how high and how much? Sit the C2 next to a speaker with a more conventional driver line up and you’ll hear the difference in air and focus – but you’ll hear the difference in attack, high-frequency presence and projection too.
