Whether it’s the focussed power and intensity of a choir singing the ‘Confutatis’ from Mozart’s Requiem KV-262 or a solo female voice, lamenting lost love, the El Diablo has an uncanny ability to capture the mood, emphasis and expressive intent in the performance, to track switches in density and the sense a singer brings to a lyric. Some speakers tell you exactly what’s being sung or played. The El Diablos answer a different question. They tell you why. That balance between ‘what’ and ‘why’ is at the heart of any system and key to a listener’s preferences and prejudices – especially when it comes to equipment and system selection. Do you want a nitty-gritty, up close and personal presentation that lets you hear every squeak from a sax reed, the spit hitting the microphone? Or do you want a more holistic, all-embracing delivery that recreates the performance as a single entity rather than an assemblage of parts? In most cases, the goal lies somewhere between these two extremes – a sense of the whole, but enough detail to see into the performance…
(Not)Explicit
In the 1990s high-end audio took a swerve towards resolution and transparency über alles – and away from rhythmic coherence and musical flow. The result was a tendency towards systems and sources that delivered an etched, spot-lit and sterile sound. You could argue that in many ways, we’re still trying to find our way back, although my own view is that that overstates the case and has resulted in an over-correction in the opposite direction – although the current fascination with high-res file replay and the obsession with sample rate and supposed sonic benefits over musical content and quality does signal a regressive move.
It all plays into the question of the balance between what is being played and why. What’s refreshing is that increasingly, loudspeaker manufacturers seem to be understanding that it’s possible to have both, tilting the balance of their products rather than slamming them into one or other of those end-stops in the presentational argument. But as speakers get more compact, achieving that perfect balance of immediacy and resolution without sterility becomes increasingly difficult. The Stenheim A5-SX is one response, trading bandwidth and dimensionality for dynamic vitality and intimacy. The El Diablo is another, one that arguably tilts in the opposite direction. The Peak’s holistic musical presentation delivers the performance as a whole, with a distinctly mid-hall balance and perspective when compared to the likes of the A5-SX. In that, it sits far closer to the presentation of the original A5. But its saving grace is the relaxed way in which it tracks musical dynamics and maps the expressive range and shifts in a performance, the substance with which it projects musical energy. It doesn’t stand performers right in front of you or fire notes at you. It places the band on a stage and you in the audience – but that doesn’t stop the band firing notes of its own. It’s an important distinction and one that allows the El Diablo to be both holistic without being distant, communicative and immediate without being raucous. If you are thinking that implies that the Peak is rolled off, it isn’t. There’s plenty of air, locational information is precise and upper harmonics are a joy. It might lack the ultra-clean, focussed transparency of diamond tweeters or the speed and extension of beryllium, but musically speaking, it’s beautifully balanced against the rest of the speaker and it’s certainly musically satisfying.
