Voxativ speaker thread, Hagen / Ampeggio / π / Zeth

Speakers
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Admin note: edited to include all voxativ models, below is specifically about the hagens

These speakers have some very impressive traits for the money, something I’d say is generally uncommon overall, but also some limitations that could make or break. I will say this is not like the typical single driver speakers in it’s voicing, it’s almost analytical lol.

Big standouts:

  • Coherency - Extremely coherent, moreso than most other speakers I have heard at this price point (but I do think that some of my other non single driver speakers can be more coherent, but that’s not a fair comparison)

  • Overall midrange - a more midrange focused speaker that does everything you would want in that area, pretty fantastic

  • Extremely lively - generally gives impressive life to good recordings, really impressive dynamics play into this

  • Nuance - Is able to provide a ton in this regard in a slightly more forward but never offensive manner

  • Tonal density - finds a really appealing balance of how much body things should have

  • Timbre - extremely organic

  • Overall refinement - they sound extremely refined and nitpicked

  • Image clarity - can place in pinpoint ways, with an extremely organic presentation and stage, stage will greatly adapt depending on material, so basically also general stage is great

  • Speed and separation - can really offer a lot here

  • Resolution - very revealing and can pull a ton from the recording to push toward you

Some qualms:

  • Limited subbass ability - generally doesn’t extend well, lacks impact and slam, missing out on a lot without a sub. But normal and mid bass are excellent

  • Limited sweetspot - treble could get really wack in the wrong spot, either overdone and peaky, or lacking altogether, but great when you get it right

  • Softness - treble could use more bite

  • Grain - does have some noticeable graininess, BUT it doesn’t really seem to bother me all that much

  • Control - it’s typically fantastic but it’s easy to have this easily become a negative depending on what music or how you drive them

Traits that don’t fit good or bad:

  • Super picky about what amp they sound good with, really haven’t enjoyed them on some amps

  • Unforgiving of poor recordings, doesn’t work as well with more inorganic genre

  • I wouldn’t consider it analytical, but it can get close, and potentially be fatiguing

  • Room size is weird, in my house they have struggled in the larger rooms, but in others I have heard it in, they sounded great, so ymmv

  • Fantastic nearfield and in a room (although don’t toe them in too much)

Some amp pairings I enjoyed:

Monoblocked LTA ZOTL Ultralinear+ - takes everything what I like about these speakers and enhances them, although doesn’t really address the qualms either, but I can get past that given what they do. Amazing clarity, resolution, depth, coherency, timbre, dynamics, control. All great. Although dryer leaning for sure and can get a bit gritty at times (but it does add more bite to the treble).

Eddie Current Studio T - Gives a bit more rich and bodied tone, again midrange focused with tons of clarity, strong micro focus, sweeter, more width in stage, a bit more laid back, a bit more meat on the bone, but can lean a bit too soft.

Octave V16 + SBB - Much warmer and smoother response, better bass quantity and impact. Slight reduction in clarity and slight reduction in liveliness, but still very good technical performance, made for a great more casual listening pick.

Arcturus 316a - Sweetness galore, great control, a slight hit to clarity but the fantastic stage, timbre, and overall organicness are worthwhile, maintains liveliness well. But there was something about attack and decay that was slightly off, but was still really enjoyable. Holographic stage as well.

Aries Cerat Diana Forte - fucking fantastic and elevates these speakers to a whole new level, addresses a lot of the previous complaints as well. Nuff said there.

Now onto some pairing misses:

First Watt F8 - Extremely dull, lacking emotion, technically meh, not a fan

Riviera AIC-10 - lack of clarity and openness, too recessed treble, but great control, more impact, and still great timbre with more sweetness, but I think the treble problems and general lack of clarity is a deal breaker

Accuphase E800 - sweet, warm, thick, and wide, but felt like it almost bogged down the speakers and dulled them out in the process, still good technical ability, but felt like balance was lost

Bricasti M28 - too dull sounding, great technical ability but lost it’s liveliness

Bakoon AMP-13r - mixed bag, it felt like it chilled things out too much, too loose sounding lacking real control over the drivers

Always an engaging listen with these, while they are picky a bit specialist, they really do offer a ton if they fit what you are looking for

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Thanks for this, I’ve always admired the Voxativ line. Your description may be the closest I ever get to it. Since a single point of reference we have may be the Philharmonic BMR monitors (which I think are a similar use type of speaker) how would they relate to one another? At a high level, no need to get into the weeds.

I’ve romanticized the single driver solutions just because of their elegance in the simplicity. Omegas are probable far more affordable than the Voxativ but it seems to me that no one had pushed this custom refined single driver solution more than Voxativ.

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IF they show up used, they are typically around 2-3k ish imo, which I think is pretty workable given what these provide. The part that could potentially kill it is source gear, as they are very picky and demanding there

Honestly really different, very opposite priorities perhaps outside of being neutral and revealing. I wouldn’t say they are total opposites, but they sound pretty dang different. I would also say from a technicality perspective, the voxativ are a few steps ahead

It depends on what sound you are after. Off the top of my head I’ve enjoyed omega, audio note, cube audio, a nod to devore which isn’t single driver but also has no xover, or for something more single driver horn loaded like rl acoustique, carfrae, etc, all depends. Lots of good options out there

I’ve heard designs that compete with voxativ, but they were more one off or harder to find, but voxativ has been one of my faves for single driver speakers (and I’ve also heard many great speakers that use voxativ drivers in them)

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This is the video I saw that made me aware of Voxativ for the first time. The manufacturing of the drivers is downright beautiful.

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these qualities in particular seem extremely interesing. definetly all points that i enjoy, you also mentioned however that it’s borderline analytical sounding correct? that’s almost a deal breaker lol. I mean, everything sounds generally borderline but man i think everything for me should have some real warm and delicious rich sounding qualities otherwise it’s a no go. Also, some things you mentioned would seemingly offer a very rich sounding experience but what in particular makes it sound borderline analytical?

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It’s very organic, but I could possibly see it being considered analytical because if the recording sounds like shit, it will to, and it won’t be very forgiving about it. So basically super organic, as long as you feed it right, otherwise it won’t sound organic.

Then this is not the speaker for you lol

It’s not really rich, it’s very accurate tonal density wise, but it doesn’t mean it’s always rich sounding. Basically how revealing it is, it’s tendency to be forward, it’s tendency to lose all positive aspects with poor material or source gear, and it’s mid centric signature can get slightly much at times

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ahhhh gotcha gotcha. very very interesting. well that’s fair eh. Well it sounds like an interesting speaker for sure, altho like a dangerously close to a miss for some peeps including myself. That reminds me, im always surprised by how rich sounding the alphas sound. Like it’s a studio monitor, but sounds sooooo dang good even if it is very telling about recordings. like in terms of space, it’s just evident when a recording is very lacking in spatial information.

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On the theoretical, how much would you say a speaker that you described thus can be coaxed into other the more forgiving territory with the right chain? Meaning amp, pre, dac. I know first hand how much of an impact the chain has, but at the very high end of design, is there a tendency for a speaker like this to embrace the color of a chain or resist the coloration introduced by a chain? Or is the answer it depends, just like it is on just about everything in the hobby? lol

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It depends lol. You can tilt it more warm, rich and forgiving, but then it doesn’t sound all that great to me. If you look at my pairing misses, that’s basically what ends up happening, it upsets the balance. So can you and will the speakers do that? Yes. Should you? Probably not, because you are better off getting speakers that do that natively instead. So while these will really reveal the source chain, it doesn’t mean it will sound correct doing it if you go to far, because if you upset the balance too much you end up with a bad result. Don’t try to make it something that it’s not, ideally you want source gear that emphasizes what it has and tries to correct what it doesn’t a bit, not transform it into something it isn’t

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That makes a lot of sense, that you can doesn’t mean you should. Really looking forward to the world eventually getting to a place of routine so I can make my way to an audio show or three at some point.

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It will be very nice when audio shows come back full force, they are a great experience

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A year or so before Covid when I started to get back into audio and I was looking and reading at everything I could find I rant across Voxativ. Holger Adle, a Mercedes ICE engineer back before starting the loudspeaker company, now Ines Adler has a factory in Berlin and makes every single piece of her loudspeaker driver in house. The cabinets are made my a German piano manufacturer so the cabinets are just pure craftsmanship. The upgraded cones are made of laminated compressed wood and she states that they’re 100 time stiffer than paper at the same mass.

I fell in love with the idea of a full range high efficiency crossoverless motor as being the purest form of getting a signal from an amp to your ears. Every loudspeaker design comes with advantages but since in physics you don’t get something for nothing, there are also disadvantages. A full range drive is being asked to do a lot, go down low, extend up high and it’s not easy to get that done with one cone. There are engineering solutions that help, the low mass, very stiff cone, super high efficiency (100 dB @ 1W @ 1 meter) help with the bass speed and and a large 8" driver move more air but still, you’ve got to throw a lot of technology at a driver to make up for the difficulty of a full range design and that’s why you see most of the loudspeakers in the world not going in that direction.

After moving into my apartment I had the opportunity to completely rethink what I wanted in my 2 CH system and I had a long term vision of a low power high efficiency amp and speaker combination as the end goal. Single full range drivers image well. I kind of discovered that with my Zu speakers, well Zu isn’t really full range single driver but mostly it is. The Omega speakers I had after the Zu took everything a step further in that single driver design but leveraging the high efficiency, “the first watt is the most important” is what they say. It’s where the Nelson Pass amps get their name.

So cutting to the chase, I couldn’t plunk down the money for a pair of Voxativs as I was purchasing all my other source gear and to be honest, Voxitiv stuff doesn’t come up for sale in the used market all that much. This weekend the planets aligned and a pair of Voxativ Zeth showed up for sale. It was the same pair that had gone up for sale about a month or two ago in Florida… they were sold and that was the end of that. This time around however they were in NYC so much closer. A guy that tried them in his system, poor synergy and decided to move them quick. His trial and error, my gain. He paid to get them to NYC from Daytona Beach FLA and I got a bit of a discount on the original sale price, so I’m a happy camper. They’re not flawless, (I’m the fourth owner) but a little bit of elbow grease will get them back up to a 9 from the 8 I’d rate them at now. One nice thing is that these have the upgraded PiFe version of the 1.8 drivers in the Zeth, the PiFe drivers have the laminated wood cone instead of the paper cone and the wood phase plug. Basically bringing the efficiency up to 100 dB instead of the standard driver’s 94 dB rating and the wooden phase plug is supposed to take away any potential harshness up top.

I got them home, unboxed, they’re sitting quietly as… I don’t have a cable to use on them! They need bare wire or banana, and I can’t use the spade terminated cables I’ve got home. The only cable I had with bananas I gave to a neighbor a few months ago. lol

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Very beautiful, and until I figure out a cable situation, I can’t play them so it’s a good thing they’re so beautiful. I’ve got a vibration isolation solution in the works but I’m not in a rush to get these things complete. I want to enjoy the experience of setting them up to my liking as they may be the last high end piece of audio gear I buy for a looooong time. Thank you for listening to me ramble on, it’s exciting.

@M0N any recommendation for an all copper speaker cable solution? Ines says they like good copper no fancy alloys so clean slate. I would have tried them with my Kimber Ascent but I’d have to get them reterminated and I’m not going to bother with that and they probably deserve something better anyway.

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They have their own brand of cables but I’ve not tried them personally, I mean you have a lot of potential options, literally just for the joke why not purist audio design? Solid copper cables that sound quite good, use Neptune diamond and it’s quite nice. Generally a bit warmer and richer leaning cable that I think would be quite nice overall as it’s well balanced, works well with sensitive speakers, and would probably work well in your setup but can’t say for sure

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gorgeous speakers, congrats on the purchase!

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Temporary solution until I find a suitable cable. Banana to spade adapters, at least I can test the couple of cables I have here now and get a sense of where I am and where I want to go.

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Good idea, figured you had ruled something like that out already lol. Yeah really it’s best to see what direction they lean with what you have and go from there

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Didn’t even know they existed! Decided to do a search and… lol Derp.

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Another question I forgot to ask you, your original comments at the thread start, are they general on a few of the Voxativ models or primarily based on your experience with the Hagen monitors? I’m thinking that some of the qualms in your original comments will be negated with the larger driver and large enclosure if they’re primarily based on the Hagen monitors?

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Ah they’re for the hagen specifically, I edited the thread to include all models, but initially was only a hagen thread, so will edit that to clarify

Honestly I think some of them were also solved later on with better source matches and better positioning/placement lol, but yes I think I can def hear the limitations of the hagen in comparison to some of their bigger models I’ve heard

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