The E9...
...and the C12P
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Vince Christian Ltd. E9/C12P
Loudspeaker System
Let's get the obvious out of the way
right up front. Yes, they are striking, sculptural, elegant, and oh so modern. In
fact, they look like they belong on the set of A Clockwork Orange or in a SoHo
gallery.
In fact, while working on this review, I've learned to
pause about 30 seconds into any conversation with a stranger that takes place in the open
door of my listening room. It doesn't matter who or what, the scenario goes down like
this: "Hi, Mr. Phillips. I was wondering if you'd . . . What are those?"
"Those" are Vince Christian's E9/C12P
satellite/subwoofer loudspeaker system, a collection of bright-white PVC tubes that look
like no speaker you've ever seen. The E9 is three sleek 6.5" cylinders, barely wider
than the drivers they contain, separated airily by 4" blocks. If you have spent (or
mis-spent) your formative years, as I did, building Revell models of fighter jets, the E9
might very well suggest the rocket clusters on the wing of an F-111 or something like
that.
The whole array rests upon a spidery stainless steel, black
crinkle finish and brass tripod speaker stand. The C12P, which is a powered 12"
woofer contained in a squat 14" tube, presents a far less martial image than the E9s.
It puts me in mind of a pet pig, rooting about between the satellite speakers proper. (I
suggested to Vince Christian that he outfit the C12P with a short-coiled lead -- it
needn't be functional, I added, it would just be our little joke. He demurred. Imagine
that.)
But here's what's interesting about strangers' reactions to
the Vince Christian loudspeakers: Usually when people ooh and ahhh over the
size or look of speakers in my listening room, the first question they ask is, "How
loud do they play?" No one ever asked that about the E9/C12P -- the most common
reaction was a hushed "Wow!"
Having listened to the system for several months, I was
forced to concur.
Not choice but habit rules the unreflecting herd
Chances are you've never heard of Vince Christian Ltd.
Bose, it ain't. But for almost a decade now I would encounter Vince demonstrating his
loudspeakers at CESes and Stereophile's variously yclept home-entertainment shows
-- and I would always wind up spending long periods of time in his listening chair,
luxuriating in the open, airy sound his speakers produced. And in the morass of poor sound
that every show generates, that was heaven.
So when Vince Christian emailed www.onhifi.com and asked me
if I would consider reviewing his new "concept" loudspeaker, I was happy to
oblige. After all those years, I reckoned he was in it for the long haul.
Christian is not, as he will happily confess, a
"real" speaker designer. If pressed, he'll cite his years as a professional
musician as bona fides, but he feels "real" designers tend to buy into theories,
which then dictate their designs. He has dipped into the various prevailing philosophies
of speaker design, but he seems inordinately ready to jettison theory when his ears tell
him it is leading him astray.
As a result, he employs a series-type crossover rather than
the first-order Butterworth array so revered by many audiophiles. (He's not alone in this;
Irving M. Fried and Robert Gross have achieved a sort of maverick notoriety for their
espousal of this controversial approach over the years.)
In a series network, all the crossover elements are
inserted into the electrical path between hot and ground -- and that path includes the
drivers, as well. Therefore, every filter component loads every other element. This makes
series crossover design enormously complex -- between the multiplicity of variables and
the physical properties of the drivers themselves, even the smallest degree of variation
can result in significant changes in system behavior.
This is what caused one industry wag to refer to series
crossovers as "the work of the devil." Very few people understand them (fewer,
in fact, than the number who claim they do). Series crossovers are unforgiving and require
the use of drivers with extremely wide frequency ranges.
Christian uses a crossover that appears to be what is
referred to as a "quasi-second-order" crossover. Electrically, it is a
first-order crossover, but one must take into consideration the mechanical roll-off of the
drivers themselves. Because the drivers used in the E9 work several octaves beyond the
ranges they are required to, Christian is able to obtain a variable attenuation rate
between drivers -- one that approaches 12dB at its maximum.
To some theorists, this is a less-than-ideal choice, but it
has its strengths. It maintains complete amplitude linearity within the crossover region,
and its phase linearity is unrivaled by any design short of a full-blown first-order
Butterworth filter.
But it ain't easy to pull off. When you do see it employed,
you can rest assured that you are not dealing with a "me too" product. Whether
or not that product will sound good -- that's another matter.
Are these the choice dishes the Doctor has sent us?
The E9s are hand-built from high-density polyvinyl chloride
(PVC). If you were primarily familiar with PVC from its use in plumbing, you'd be forgiven
for thinking of it as lightweight and resonant. When it has the mass of the E9 cabinet,
however, it is heavy and quite acoustically dead. Rap on the E9 with your knuckles and
you'll be using your hand gingerly for a while.
Because each driver is independently mounted in an
enclosure barely bigger than its mounting profile, there is no baffle to interfere with
dispersion. Additionally, the midrange/tweeter/midrange array is spaced so that it creates
what Christian calls "a specifically timed line source" -- one that is
phase-aligned in both the vertical and horizontal planes. The sealed cylinders that make
up the midrange enclosures are "tuned" with absorbent batting and lined with
polymer panels that damp the acoustic backwave.
The drivers consist of a pair of 110mm woven carbon-fiber
midrange units with edge-wound voice coils, Kapton formers, and vented pole pieces. The
drivers have rubber surrounds and cast-aluminum-alloy chassis.
The 28mm soft-dome tweeter boasts an aluminum former,
triple-stacked magnet structure, and a twin-layer, interlocking copper voice coil that is
ferrofluid cooled and damped. It has an aperiodic rear chamber vented into rock-wool
damping.
Each E9 has a single pair of brass five-way binding posts.
The crossover point between mids and tweeter is 8.5kHz; the
company claims 93dB sensitivity. They sell for $8800 per pair.
The E9s are supported by a pair of SST stands, designed and
constructed for Vince Christian Ltd. by Star Sound. These are handsome three-legged
affairs that employ "micro bearing solution" within their stainless-steel legs.
Brass spikes are provided for the stand/speaker and stand/floor interfaces.
The C12P employs a 12" aluminum driver with a 3"
voice coil, which is set into a hand-built PVC enclosure. The sealed cylinder is lined
with tuned polymer panels, said to dissipate backwave reflections and
"de-energize" the enclosure walls. The subwoofer is powered by a 250W amplifier,
which offers controls for continuously variable volume, 12/24dB filters, and phase
inversion. There are line-level inputs and outputs, making it possible to insert the sub
between pre- and power amp. My Musical Fidelity Nu-Vista has dual line-level outputs, so I
employed them and ran the satellites full range for the most open sound possible. When I
later experimented with the audibility of the sub's crossover, I found it slight, but
somewhat subtractive of low-level detail and airiness.
A power switch completes the C12P's control/input options.
The C12P costs $4700.
Leave to heaven the measure and the choice
The set-up of the E9/C12P system in my listening room was
fairly straightforward. Vince Christian and I placed the E9 satellites in the approximate
positions that the Roman Audio Centurions had established as good 'uns, and Christian toed
the speakers toward one another slightly. He then surprised me by placing the C12P between
the two and placing it so the driver faced forward in the room angling away from straight
ahead by about 30 degrees.
When I queried him on this, he responded (correctly) that
below 100Hz the woofer's sound was omnidirectional, and, that being the case, experience
had taught him that angling the woofer in this manner nevertheless reduced the audibility
of the subwoofer's location. It certainly did that, for it integrated with the
satellites about as seamlessly as any sub I've ever had in my house. I left it where
Christian put it -- I've learned not to tamper with success.
Before surrendering the sweet spot to me, Christian
performed one more tweak. He pulled my chair out of its far-field location (about 15' back
from the speakers) and moved it forward about five feet so that it formed an equilateral
triangle with the two satellites
The first thing I noticed about the E9/C12P system was its
phenomenal openness. Music was dynamic and lifelike, but more than anything else, it was
transparent, fast, alive -- ineffable.
If that sounds like a description of an electrostatic or
panel speaker rather than a conventional "box" type speaker, well, the E9/C12P
isn't really a box speaker. And, work of the devil or not, its series crossover must have
been doing something right, because the speaker sounded magically musical.
Oh there I go again, eschewing scientific terminology and
dwelling on that music stuff. I feel so ashamed. Except, of course, that I don't. If I
sound hedonistic and less than equivocal about the E9/C12P system, it's because it didn't
encourage my sober consideration -- it flat-out seduced me. I put in some long
hours auditioning this loudspeaker system and I enjoyed every one of them.
Which is not to say that they are perfect. I have a few
quibbles -- others might think them major objections, of course, but, for me, they were
minor annoyances. If that.
They sounded a bit lightweight, overall. Even with the C12P
fully engaged, I never had the sense of effortless slam that a loudspeaker like the
Dynaudio Evidence Temptation brings to the show. I'll grant that the Temptations are
$30,000 loudspeakers and, thus, ought to sound awfully good, but the Christians are
over $12,000, so ditto.
The bass that's there was taut and there was no doubling,
but it just didn't have the authority of most speakers in the E9/C12P's price range.
The lack of cabinet coloration, overhang, and sludge that
the C12P brings to the party is impressive, but I suspect that a major part of the
E9/C12P's breathtaking transparency is connected to its missing bottom octave. In this
respect, it reminded me exceedingly of the Krell LAT2s, which are also fast, uncolored,
and not-quite-full-range.
My other E9/C12P quibble was with image specificity. The
speaker system reminded me a lot of live music in that it didn't have that
mosquito's tweeter kind of pinpoint accuracy many audiophiles demand of their hi-fis.
Never mind that I have never in my life heard this property in live music venues, it has
become an audiophile obsession over the years.
If you want left-to-right or even front-to-back
localization, the Christians will generate those cues. In that, they resemble the
live event quite nicely. But if you want to focus on the resin flakes flicking off Yo-Yo
Ma's bow onto the soundboard of his Davidoff Stradivarius, the E9/C12P is probably not the
speaker for you. On the other hand, it probably will tell you when Ma is playing
his Strad and when he is playing his Montagnana, which is what I'd prefer to know.
Come, and take choice of all my library, and so beguile
thy sorrow
The Roman Audio Centurions make an interesting comparison
for the Vince Christian E9/C12P speaker system. While the Christains do cost twice the
Centurion's $6000 price tag, the two had many similarities -- not least that the Roman
Audio loudspeaker's DiAural crossover is also a series filter. Since the Centurion was
also the speaker I replaced in my system with the E9/C12P, the comparison also had the
virtue of simplicity.
Jerome Harris' Rendezvous [Stereophile 013] is never
far from my just-played pile (when it is, it's usually next door in the to-be-played
pile), so I immediately cued Jerome's stop-and-go transcription of Ellington's "The
Mooche." This is such a great test of timbre, dynamics, and power that it almost
always finds its way somewhere into an audition.
The E9/C12P system handled it all like a champ. The
system's exceptional transparency gave the transcription's stop, then start, then stop
pacing a precise pulse that was completely controlled. It sounded as though the band took
a cleaver to a long roll of Ellington and gave it about 40 short, sharp, thwacks.
The Centurion also handled the rhythmic complexities of the
arrangement well, but the starts and stops didn't seem quite as abrupt. The piece had
slam, but the extremes between full-blown playing and absolute silence did not seem as
pronounced. Nor did Art Baron's trombone blattiness seem as near to a square wave
-- it was rounder and less rude.
However, Harris' burbling acoustic bass guitar seemed
deeper into the mix and less pronounced on the Christians. This is not a completely
inaccurate portrayal of the mix, which probably would benefit from a tad more
guitar presence, but I did feel the C12P didn't quite grab hold of Jerome's sound as
solidly as it might have.
Cantus, the male choral group from Minnesota, is another
audition staple for me and, despite the uncomfortable memories I have of the recording
sessions in a frigid stone chapel, I love the sound of their . . . Against the Dying of
the Light CD [Cantus Recordings CTS-1202]. The E9/C12P reproduced the sublime Randal
Thompson Alleluia like the spreading warmth of an early spring dawn. It rose out of
complete silence and grew and grew in tonal warmth until it dashed itself against that
nothingness and then withdrew. My listening notes indicate that I caught a whiff of
harshness in that piece -- one I was not aware of with the Centurion. This bothered me
because my overall impression of the Christian loudspeaker system was its almost complete
lack of coloration.
Recently, however, I heard Cantus in concert here in New
York. As I sat in the fourth row of the hall -- which had a noticeably warm acoustic -- I
was once again aware of that slight clang in Cantus' sound. It was them. The
Christians had reported what Cantus really sounded like better than just about any other
loudspeaker I have listened to that disc through.
I cued the Boulez/Cleveland Mahler Symphony No. 4 [DG 257
693-2] and was entranced by the sound of the E9/C12P system. Boulez's Mahler is somewhat
controversial, but I'm a fan of the conductor and I find the absolute clarity and
crystalline purity of his vision of the composer fascinating. That doesn't mean I'll give
up Barbirolli's Mahler, but Boulez and Cleveland find the joy and the freshness in
Mahler's vision and they make a compelling argument for their conception of this music.
The second movement's scordatura violin solos came
across as particularly passionate through the Christians. The contrast between the stark
solo instrument and the tutti ensemble was vivid and breathtakingly clean -- and
the differentiation between the one instrument and all of them was spectacular.
The Centurions traded a portion of that dynamic contrast
for a small extra degree of warmth -- although it was hard to tell whether the Roman Audio
speaker was adding warmth or the Christian was failing to reproduce it. I suspect
it was a bit of both, since I have heard the disc with other speakers and it has a rich --
but not extremely rich -- acoustic. Part of the Centurion's timbral richness seemed to
reside in its superior reproduction of the low woodwinds and strings.
Which speaker would I personally choose? That's an
extremely tough call to make.
All other things being equal, strictly on a performance
level, it would be the Vince Christian E9/C12P. I adored its lack of obvious coloration
and its apparent speed, transient snap, and timbral truth. But all things aren't
equal; the E9/C12P costs about twice the price of the Centurion and, to my ears, it's not
twice as good.
You pays your money and you takes your choice
But that's me. The thing about preference is that it
doesn't have to make sense on a cosmic or absolute level -- it has to make sense to you.
It's subjective.
Take the look of the loudspeaker, for instance. I find it
striking and sculptural, much the way I find a Barcelona or Breuer chair striking and
sculptural. I admire the look, but for me, it's hard to beat a Stickley or Eames chair.
You find the Eames expensive at $3000 -- or uncomfortable? Fine by me. You're more than
welcome to plant your tired buns on something Miesean. That's what preference is all
about.
That's exactly how it is with audio. Your wallet doesn't
have to fit in my pocket -- and your ears don't have to live on my head either.
The Vince Christian Ltd. E9/C12P is a hand-made,
limited-production, extremely high-performance loudspeaker system. In terms of timbral
accuracy, fast response, and open, uncolored sound, they rank at the top of any list of
the good 'uns.
They aren't as authoritative at the bottom end as some of
the other loudspeakers that make my most-favored-speaker list, but it's possible that this
in itself contributes to their transparency and openness, so you have to either accept
that or cross 'em off your shortlist.
But the qualities that are impressive in the E9/C12P system
are awfully beguiling and have more than a touch of music's palpable magic -- I've
heard speakers that cost far more that don't get as close to the real thing in some very
significant areas. You'll have to listen for yourself and measure your own version of the
cost/benefit ratio of owning this singular speaker.
This is the crux of the matter. The Vince Christian E9/C12P
speakers aren't me-too products. Their complex interweaving of strengths and weaknesses
make it impossible to come to a snap judgment. If you are a music lover who feels that
reproduced music without a foundation of granite-hard low frequencies is a hollow mockery
of the real thing, the E9/C12P is not the speaker system for you, no matter how
long its list of positive attributes. On the other hand, if above all else you savor the
subtle interplay of minute tonal shadings and the almost atmospheric ebb and flow of music
as a living thing, these loudspeakers belong on your "must audition" list -- and
they just might end up in your living room.
As for they way they look, whether you love 'em or hate
'em, almost everybody agrees on this point.
"Wow!"
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhifi.com
Vince Christian Ltd. E9/C12P Loudspeaker System
Price: E9 loudspeaker, $8800 per pair; C12P subwoofer, $4700 each.
Warranty: Three years parts and labor, with extension at manufacturer's discretion.
Vince Christian Loudspeakers
P.O. Box 800
Moss Landing, CA 95039
Phone: (831) 455-9308
Fax: (831) 455-0650
E-mail: vince@vincechristian.com
Website: www.vincechristian.com
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