in a nut shell:
the corvos lower end could not be overlooked. the room/setup combo seemed to be adding to its bloom or presence. mids and aboe were seemingly on point. nothing inordinate or annoying there. overall a tuneful, pleasant, insightful and detailed sans any descernable harshness or too much leading edge on the notes. very nice.
true. only how well the sound is being reproduced or speaker performance can be the take away from hearing a system for the first time.
that said, the raven Corvos towers do a fine job. indeed with but 125wpc of glass powered monos.
incidentally, another pr of similarly priced loudsepakers, the Gershman towers 2.5 way units had a more involving, natural rendering with a cleaner more organic top end which possessed more sparkle.
the question then is would the Corvos emmulate the Gershmans were they in the VAC setup?
or would the Gershmans out run the Corvos .if raven sillouette were pushing them?
most of the time I spent in the Raven demo was getting to know what and who raven is, and their ideas on doing business, practicality, support, options, etc.
the larger towers were running as we entered. as the discussion grew the reference products were muted then the entry level affair lit up.
first impressions of the Corvos? Very nice. I’d like to say inpressive but I had just left a room displaying speakers costing three times as much and regretably though quite honestly, the Corvos presentation lacked by contrast in image specificity and tonal clarity.
that said as time passed the former room’s impact waning the Corvos towers became more interesting. I noted the price was comparible to another room just visited by myself and my friend Eevie, Gershman acoustics fueled by VAC statement pre and a pr of VAC statement 450s monos which in all could not be an apples to apples comp given the costs of the power train alone.
my point here being, given just the impressions of sonics alone, the raven room Corvos and Sillouette power line up were very very close across the bandwidth with the VAC & Gershman coming out on top with more clarity and top end distinction, but weaker in the lower octaves.
on the bottom end the Corvos were as expected tighter and maybe even more tuneful and certainly more robust in impact. the rooms of all three demos were very close in cuvic ft. size
the corvos system made me feel comfortatble with its lower registers and I do dig an outfit with great bass.
above the bottom end, I felt here was a speaker system worth its asking price unquestionably.
for the money I felt the Raven room Corvos and Sillouettes power train was where the value or bang for the buck lived. i told my friend eevie I could live with that setup very easily, though I’d give more thought to the source device being replaced or not in the equation at all. although I could find no fault with the MYDAc unit I feel stepping up the ladder there would be where the performance would be more easily improved.. that’s all.
the Cellest and raven’s 20wpc INT was where I became stunned. knowing nothing of what that outfit was using and knowing only a shift to a lesser cost speaker was in play, hearing the smaller sibling was one of my first big smiles at the show. hearing what all was in play the smile grew. in fact I said to my friend that outfit is a keeper for $7K (show price). no question about it. very impressive.
VAC & Gershman was triple the price or more in power train but about the same in speaker costs.
so it could come down to a choice in esthetics or avilability between the Ger’ and Cors.
if Raven offers in home demos, tthat might be worth the cost to secure. regardless the outcome.
I left that show with Raven now on my radar as it was never previously on it. so yeah, I feel its worth further investigation if speakers under 14K are the target and the power train pushing them is not in the lots o’ watts or six figures camp which is a real attraction for me…
good luck. hope that adds to the confusion. lol
for another viewpoint check out this link:
https://www.stereophile.com/content/raven-audio-celest-and-corvus-speakers-osprey-mk3-integrated-amplifier-and-silhouette-mk2