FYNE AUDIO F703SP Special Production
Floorstanding loudspeakers
The SP stands for Special Production version of F703 speakers. The upgrade has received a new chunky aluminium plinth with feet that can be adjusted from top, new parts in the crossover (Clarity Caps), new wiring (Neotech PC-OCC), and new bi-wireable binding posts (gold-plated WBT Nextgen). The cabinets are from birch plywood, bent and curved so that there are no parallel surfaces. Even the top part of the speaker is gently curved towards the rear. Deep finish is immaculate, and the appearance is stunning. I´d prefer black-anodized frames of drivers and more understated logosz, though. From the performance perspective, these Fyne Audio are perhaps the finest speakers they´ve produced to date.
Function and form
The concentric IsoFlare driver is the main attraction point here. It shines especially in small- and mid-sized rooms where its single-point coherence helps the speakers disappear. The concentric drivers, provided that that the tweeter and the midrange drivers are carefully phase-aligned, have alluring rightness in how they sound, and they are unbeatable in acuity of soundstaging. These advantages can be alleviated by listening to such speakers from bigger distance, where room reflections usually prevail and a conventional loudspeaker´s drivers can blend successfully as well. Still, because the tweeter´s dome sits in the centre of the cone, the cone works as a relatively deep waveguide that makes the highs more expressive, and a bit more directional too. In the F703SP´s IsoFlare, the 3” tweeter dome is titanium, the 10” midrange cone is paper/fiber, the same as in the Fyne Audio´s F1 range. To support the lowest octaves, the F703SP employs one more 10” driver, crossed over at 250Hz, and large plinth-firing bass reflex port. Fyne Audio uses its own BassTrax system, which means that the air flowing through the port is 360° diffused by a trumpet-like piece integrated in the plinth.
Fyne Audio also tried and moved the upper crossover point to 850Hz (from usual 1.2-1.5kHz) to avoid phasing issues in the frequency range where the ear is the most sensitive.
Bass management
After years, I have started listening to Rebecca Pidgeon and Spanish Harlem again. It's a beautiful piece, both in terms of performance, lyrics and sound quality. Through the F703SP, it was a special experience. Rarely can speakers literally mesmerize me right from the start and have me devouring the music from the first notes. When I had the little Fyne Audio F501s at home, I praised them for their clarity and depth of imaging. I can say the same about the F703SP, only it's all to the power of four. Listen to the way the opening double bass and vocals are set into the ambience of the recording. There, the Chesky Records' minimalist microphone technique combined with F703SP’s imaging capabilities recreate a virtual recording studio in the listening room. The vocals are sweet and rich, the double is bass tight and well textured. It evokes how a closed baffle speakers sound , the bass is fast and tight and has a nice firm body. Every pluck of a string jumps out of the speakers with a beautifully natural ‘pop’, you can hear the string ringing as well as the instrument’s woody and hollow resonances. Nothing comes across as overly ‘audiophile’ (in the sense of showing off), even the shakers behind the right speaker, with eyes closed, seem as if someone is playing them live in the room. A similar lifelike magic happens with the test track with a recording of an acoustic double bass placed a metre from the microphone. Through the F703SP, it sounds like... a double bass played a meter away from me. The illusion of an acoustic instrument in a real three-dimensional space is just perfect with these Fyne Audio speakers.
Clarity & delicacy
Although the F703SP are audiophile speakers, they are incredibly musical and a fun to listen to. It's the kind of high-end sound that draws you into the music and invites you to listen more. These Fyne Audio's have the ability to dramatize (in a good way) even such peaceful pieces as Vivaldi's Flute Concerto (performed by The Connecticut Early Music Festival Ensemble). The flute sounds fine, but my attention was drawn to the energetic strings and shimmering harpsichord, which conjures an image of a gurgling spring brook. The flute then just finish it off smoothly with the sing-song trills. Why so much poetry? With Fyne Audio, it was as if you were rediscovering music at its purest and most emotional form.
Tonal accuracy
The concentric driver takes the best from conventional dome tweeters as well as horn designs. It has a kind of sweetness and fidelity of the former, while the latter acts as a sonic accelerator, so that music flows into rooms with ease and effortlessness, but without the typical horn coloration. In Johnny Frigo's I Love Paris, the entire ensemble jumped right out at me from the F703SP. Or - to be more precise - individual musicians stepped out, some standing to the sides, others to the back of the space behind and between the speakers, just so they could interact with each other and had a fun playing their music for me. The cymbal work was sensational, licks of the guitar jumped out of the speakers with full uncompressed dynamics, and the whole performance was electrifying and top-down absolutely cohesive. The seamlessness of the Fyne Audio was exquisite, no matter how loud I played the music. With my eyes closed, there was no indication of how many drivers there were in the baffle. In fact, the Fynes were one of the most cohesive speakers I had heard in a long time. To achieve that, one needs to be seated at a distance of 2 meters or more, the F703SP are by no means small speakers and if you sit too close, the height of the concentric driver may not be properly aligned with ears of the listener.
Spatial resolution
As far as amplifiers are concerned, the Fyne Audio have above average sensitivity (94 dB) and impedance minimums dropping to 3 ohms. While they will play with practically anything, I still recommend not underestimating the choice of the amplifier and not following the usual silly guidelines, such as what should be the price ratio of amplifier, speaker cables and speakers in relation to each other. Give the Fyne Audios the best you can afford, and they will reward you. A sort of special synergy is Fyne Audio combined with Accuphase amps, where it's easy to see how much the F-703 SP's sound changes as you climb up the Accuphase’s catalogue. I wrote more about this when I reviewed the Accuphase A-300 mono amplifiers, with which the F703SP formed a sort of “dream team”. I have not heard such a refined sound before or since.
You really get a lot for your money in the case of the Fyne Audio F703SP. These are mature-sounding loudspeakers, and probably the best Fyne Audios I've ever had the pleasure of auditioning so far.
Recommended resellers
Perfect Sound Group, Praha, tel. +420 722 960 690
Manufacturer's website: http://www.fyneaudio.com
Associated components
- Sources: Accuphase DP-770 SACD
- Loudspeakers: KEF R-11 Meta, Fyne Audio F703SP
- Amplifiers: Accuphase A-80, Accuphase A-300
- Interconencts and speaker cables: Nordost Heimdall, Nordost Tyr V2
- Power conditioning: IsoTek GII Optimum, IsoTek V5 Sigmas, Nordost Qb8, Nordost Tyr V2, Nordost QSine/QWave
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