ESTELON Extreme MkII Limited Edition
Floorstanding loudspeakers
When Estelon debuted with their Extreme model ten years ago, it seemed as unnecessary extravaganza to me. I did not expect any mass success with such a concept, and probably it was not. Yet, with the years passing by, high-end customers changed and although the asking price for the Extreme is still out-of-range for most, it appears more affordable than it appeared back in 2015. Estelon’s knowledgebase has also expanded since then, so the new improved MkII model is worth your attention.
Funkce a forma
The Extreme’s cabinet, similarly to any other Estelon speaker, is moulded from resin-marble composite. That allows intricately curved shapes for eliminating parallel surfaces, as well as making the internal chambers for drivers a part of design. Still, the “corian” enclosure would not be acoustically inert and would keep ringing, so “strategically natural and synthetic dampening materials” are used to make it dead enough. The finish is an automotive standard as you expect at this price point.
The Estelon’s idea of a listening room integration is similar to that of Wilson Audio’s: the speaker’s versatile design allows to compensate for the ceiling height, the listener’s distance, and his ears’ height. Unlike Wilson Audio, the Extreme does it without the feast of diffractions and phasing issues. The cabinets are split into two parts: the bottom part is a subwoofer module that hosts two woofers, the upper one is a three-way speaker that vertically slides on top if it. Well, ‘sliding’ is not exactly what it does. It moves on a trajectory of curved spine that is mounted inside the cabinet, with the help of servo motors. The upper module of the Extreme can move up and down in the range of 300mm, +/-150mm from its factory-neutral position. The movement tracks a large circle perimeter, so the distance of the drivers remains constant for an optimally seated listener. However, the height is not adjustable continuously, Estelon predefined 5 discrete steps for it; that is the neutral position and two steps up or down from it. Because of this movement, the relative distance of the midrange driver and the tweeter changes. To compensate for it, the tweeter can be servo-moved forward or backward. Ane example: If, at its “0” position, the tweeter and midrange drivers are perfectly in phase, then by moving the upper module up the tweeter becomes recessed relative to the midrange and this needs to be compensated by moving the tweeter slightly forward. And vice versa, if the upper module is moved down from its “0” position, the tweeter should be backed off a bit.
It is very easy to decide which setting for the height and for the tweeter position is the best for you – you can change it on the fly (while listening) via remote controller that is supplied with the Extreme. As usual, the listener’s taste and opinion matters, so if you like the settings where the drivers are not in sync, be my guest.
Nízké frekvence
I would expect a sealed cabinet for a flagship speaker (like Magico and YG Acoustics do), but Estelon opted for the bass-reflex design to provide weightier low-frequency response with smaller drivers. The Extreme’s two 250mm aluminium-sandwich woofers are symmetrically positioned, firing diagonally forward. They are close to the floor to acoustically couple with the largest surface in the room and to maximize their efficiency. It has its reason: The floor distance is constant for every room unlike the ceiling height which will be always relative to the woofers depending on the room’s dimensions. Although Estelon does not specify the crossover points, it seems that the woofers are crossed over below 70-80Hz to prevent directionality and then the mid-woofer takes over. The mid-woofer is basically the same 250mm aluminium sandwich, just tuned to higher frequencies. The mid-woofer couples with the woofers and the floor and the ceiling and by moving it up and down, you can fine tune the bass response to your preferences. This adjustability I find to be the most remarkable feature of the Estelon Extreme.
The midrange driver sits above the tweeter, otherwise the tweeter would be too high relative to the listening seat. The 173mm midrange cone is ceramic, the 30mm tweeter is diamond. All the drivers are sourced from German Thiel & Partner and known under their Accuton name.
The crossover uses selected parts from Mundorf and Duelund and it is split to two parts that are positioned close to the drivers to “reduce the length of the filtered signal to the drivers and the signal loss”. It is good to know that Estelon uses Kubala-Sosna OFC cables throughout the Extreme, as you can see in the photo in the gallery.
The Extreme is bi-wireable and uses Furutech binding posts affixed to a carbon fiber plate. Each cabinet weighs 250kg and Estelon employed Stillpoints Ultra 5 to decouple it from the floor. Moving the speakers around the room is facilitated by a smartly made forklift provided by Estelon, which is padded with felt not to scratch the speakers. On paper, the Extreme is a 4-ohm speaker with 91dB sensitivity and 20Hz – 45kHz response. With the maximum height of 207cm and 82cm depth it is predestined for more spacious rooms. The manufacturer recommends 50-200m2. In our room, we were at the bottom limit of it.
Čistota rozlišení
In the context of my review set-up, the Extreme behaved as a very neutral pair of speakers. They did not induce warmth, nor did they make the sound colder, they were analytical enough but not too much, their frequency response was not tilted to bottom nor to the upper side of spectrum. As this type of neutrality is something typical for emmLabs electronics I used for the review, I assume that the Extreme are ‘true to source’, that is not imparting any colorations. However, don’t mistake the neutrality for boredom. If the music asks for it, the flow of energy nails you to your listening chair, as it happened with Brian Bromberg’s Freedom Jazz Dance. The grip and the enthusiasm with which they send the music into the room was apparent with non-audiophile racks like Saxon and their last album that played with the verve of a live concert, or Massive Attack, whose Angel trained the subwoofer units of the Extreme with its subterranean bass pulses. There is a cliché saying that audiophiles buy expensive speakers for female jazz and classical music. Some perhaps do. I am lucky that audiophiles I know buy expensive speakers to play rock music through them. The good news is that the Extreme speakers manage all genres with ease and make compromises neither with Patricia Barber, nor with Metallica. Enter Sandman was appropriately crunchy and heavy through them, and Hammet’s guitar solo cut through the air like a knife through butter, without trying to saw my ears off.
Tonální věrnost
The soundstage of the Estelon Extreme was expansive yet precise, thanks to the diagonally firing woofers that added volume and ambient information, combined with the front firing midwoofers that added definition and punch. As a result, the sound enveloped me and drew me into the music. It is refreshing to listen to a pair of speakers that is not too forward-sounding. If your listening room allows it, you would hear how the individual instrumental tracks are layered in Natalie Merchant’s Peppery Man.
Prostorovost
The Estelon Extreme is not an experimental design – the company’s engineering is founded on acoustic science and years of research. The Extreme’s biggest advantage is in its adjustability to virtually any room. Although it may seem that ‘focusing’ the sound is all what it is about, I think that it is the bass what benefits the most from the motorized adjustability. In a typical room with the ceiling at 2.5m height, there is a frequency null in the middle of the floor to ceiling distance. That is at 1.25m, which is about the height of the ears of a seated listener. That means a massive dip at around 70Hz, everywhere in the room. Although the Extreme cannot eliminate the dip as such, by optimal setting of the upper module you can change how the bass interacts with boundaries and thus ameliorate the dip to a great degree for the ears, as the music signal is dynamic. You can think about it as an acoustical variation of DRC, yet without the setbacks that any digital processing always has.
To be able to move the upper modules up and down, the servos must be powered, which means that a DC cable leads to each speaker. If you don’t want to demonstrate a moving loudspeaker to your friends, then you can set the speakers once and forever and remove the DC cables not to interfere with the rest of your power scheme. However, I have found that sometimes it is good to readjust the position of the upper module, depending on how an album is recorded. This way you can re-balance the sound and fine tune your listening experience. No other loudspeaker can offer this. The Estelon Extreme is a powerful concept and the versatility projects into price: you need to sell your kidney to afford it…
Doporučení prodejci
HI-FI studio TYKON, Ostrava, tel. +420 723 449 894
Web výrobce: http://www.estelon.com
Připojené komponenty
- Sources: emmLabs Meitner DA2i streamer/DAC, emmLabs Meitner PRE
- Amplifiers: emmLabs MTRX2 monoblocks
- Interconnects and speaker cables: emmLabs, Shunyata Research Omega and Omega v2
- Power conditioning: Shunyata Research Everest 8000, Shunyata Research Omega X and X QR, Alpha X NR, Sigma X QR
Galerie
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