Devore Fidelity O/96 Speakers
I was able to listen to these twice over the past few weeks.
I found them to be terrific in the ways most people think they are terrific.
They definitely have an "it" factor to their sound, their own thing that, if it grabs you, it grabs you.
First, I have always loved the looks from photos, and in person they are beautiful. And that’s HUGE for me as I really like audio jewelry. When I pay for high end gear, speakers in particular, it’s going to be essentially new furniture in my living/listening/AV room. I spent a lot renovating that room to look as nice as possible and I don’t care to throw ugly or plain boxes in there.
The Joseph Audio Perspectives to me are lustworthy not only for their sound but for their great form and awesome cabinetry/wood grains.
The Devore O/96s strike the same "speaker lust" in me. They are funky looking, charmingly retro yet contemporary, with a gratifyingly high end level of finish. My wife even thought so from photos (not a common occurrence for her).
First impressions is that the 96s are significantly smaller in person than they looked to me in photos. That’s a good thing when I’m looking to downsize. Yet at the same time they sounded HUGE, more reminiscent of my big Thiel 3.7s. Everything took on an added sense of body and size, from massed strings, to horns, to acoustic guitars, to even wood blocks. And especially piano!
I was especially struck by a kind of crappy recording I played of a Satie piece. The piano has always sounded thin and distant and dull. But on the 96s the piano came closer to me and actually sounded large! And it actually sounded like it had a body, a sounding board. It was tweaking the "that’s a piano in front of me" parts of my brain, that grew up playing piano. Fascinating.
Timbre of instruments seem great: warm, and rich and organic. And they can do the "golden tone" that I love from a system.
They also sound really alive, open and extended giving the "instrument right THERE playing" impression. But without the mild aggression I felt from some other speakers on my list.
Two things that really stuck out are massed strings and drum cymbals.
Massed strings sounded substantial, with a heft many speakers miss with their more wispy, thin presentation of massed strings. And massed strings came with bow-texture, yet silky,. That combination that gets closer to the real thing vs the "this could be a sampled string section" sound from so many systems. I’ve rarely heard massed strings sound that much like themselves on a speaker. (The Joseph speakers do very well here too, but without as much size and weight).
Drum cymbals were amazingly realistic. I played a track with a drum solo I’m familiar with (if you want your system to absolutely bristle with the energy of a stand up bass played with frenetic energy, get bassist Koichi Osamu’s album The Chord. You’ll thank me later!). It felt like I was in the middle of the drum set and the cymbals had that BIG open splashing quality of the real thing. So rare to hear drum cymbals sound that real.
Soundstaging/Imaging: They did a surprising soundstaging act for speakers that look so squat. Sometimes images happened well off to the side corners of the speaker, some well back in the center, and usually BIG images. Though it was hard to get an exact read on this aspect. Sometimes it seemed like the 96s bring instruments forward in the mix (worried me about not getting the soundstage depth I’m used to) but other times seem to spread out the images in a very convincing manner.
When seated with head above the tweeter, they also sound taller than they are, which is a neat trick. Though still not as tall as the Thiel 2.7s which have a very realistic image height.
So great warmth of tone, fullness, allied to alive, open and convincing yet unfatiguing high frequencies. That is quite a trick!
The upper frequencies are definitely more directional than I’m used to at home. The Thiels (and in auditioning, the Josephs) sound much the same tonally almost no matter where I move. Whereas I found listener position more critical for the Devores to snap into focus, both tonally and in terms of imaging. Also, they seemed to snap into focus and bloom in imaging once I hit 8 feet from the speakers - as John Devore has suggested. On the other hand, some reviewers and others seem to use the 96s closer and seem happy. I tried around 7 feet off and on, which is about as far away from me as I’d be able to place them, and while they lost a teeny bit of coherence and snap, they did also become smooth and enveloping. Thing is I really should have toed them in a bit more when I moved a bit closer!
Bass on the 96s, in a decent size room with high ceilings, was fascinating. It had a bigger, bloomier quality vs the Thiels which are laser focused and punchy for bass. Certainly there was some additional bloom - a more critical moment would call it "bloat" - on the stand up bass in Talk Talk’s Happiness Is Easy. And a couple other tracks. But aside from those, the bass came across as quite nimble and yet having a rich, lively reach-out-and-make-you-feel-it quality. The result of the bass character WITH the dynamic liveliness, clarity and snap in the upper frequencies meant drums were always fantastic. I was made aware by the 96s, more than any speaker I can remember, of how the drummer was playing, the ebb and flow, the differences in impact between each snare hit, each bass drum hit. It was impossible not to boogey to these speakers.
Once at home playing the same tracks again on the Thiel 2.7, the Thiels impressed me with their massive soundstage, incredibly precise and dense imaging, punchy quality and great tone. If I missed anything sometimes it was the thickness and heft of instruments and voices on the Devores (though the Thiels are surprisingly good here), and especially the open, alive yet smooth quality of the Devore high frequencies. Acoustic guitars, drum cymbals etc don’t have quite the aliveness as on the Devores, and string tone has always been so-so on the Thiels (though helped by my getting into vinyl), but closer to exquisite on the Devores (and excellent, silky and clear on the Josephs).
So over all, a very promising speaker that has thrown a kink into my plans on route to the Joseph Perspectives. They are two quite different sounding speakers that do their own thing almost peerlessly. Both would be around the same price.
Drivin’ me a bit nuts.
One thing is the Devore Dealer would give me a good trade in price on my Thiels toward a purchase of the 96s. That would be nice, not having to sell them myself. But I do have some major questions as to whether their size/shape will work in my room, as it’s also my home theater room, and speakers too wide may impede the screen image.
Still lots to think about, but thought I"d share what I’ve heard so far.
(And I pretty much consider myself done in speaker auditioning. Right now it’s the Josephs or the Devores...or just sticking with the Thiels).
I was able to listen to these twice over the past few weeks.
I found them to be terrific in the ways most people think they are terrific.
They definitely have an "it" factor to their sound, their own thing that, if it grabs you, it grabs you.
First, I have always loved the looks from photos, and in person they are beautiful. And that’s HUGE for me as I really like audio jewelry. When I pay for high end gear, speakers in particular, it’s going to be essentially new furniture in my living/listening/AV room. I spent a lot renovating that room to look as nice as possible and I don’t care to throw ugly or plain boxes in there.
The Joseph Audio Perspectives to me are lustworthy not only for their sound but for their great form and awesome cabinetry/wood grains.
The Devore O/96s strike the same "speaker lust" in me. They are funky looking, charmingly retro yet contemporary, with a gratifyingly high end level of finish. My wife even thought so from photos (not a common occurrence for her).
First impressions is that the 96s are significantly smaller in person than they looked to me in photos. That’s a good thing when I’m looking to downsize. Yet at the same time they sounded HUGE, more reminiscent of my big Thiel 3.7s. Everything took on an added sense of body and size, from massed strings, to horns, to acoustic guitars, to even wood blocks. And especially piano!
I was especially struck by a kind of crappy recording I played of a Satie piece. The piano has always sounded thin and distant and dull. But on the 96s the piano came closer to me and actually sounded large! And it actually sounded like it had a body, a sounding board. It was tweaking the "that’s a piano in front of me" parts of my brain, that grew up playing piano. Fascinating.
Timbre of instruments seem great: warm, and rich and organic. And they can do the "golden tone" that I love from a system.
They also sound really alive, open and extended giving the "instrument right THERE playing" impression. But without the mild aggression I felt from some other speakers on my list.
Two things that really stuck out are massed strings and drum cymbals.
Massed strings sounded substantial, with a heft many speakers miss with their more wispy, thin presentation of massed strings. And massed strings came with bow-texture, yet silky,. That combination that gets closer to the real thing vs the "this could be a sampled string section" sound from so many systems. I’ve rarely heard massed strings sound that much like themselves on a speaker. (The Joseph speakers do very well here too, but without as much size and weight).
Drum cymbals were amazingly realistic. I played a track with a drum solo I’m familiar with (if you want your system to absolutely bristle with the energy of a stand up bass played with frenetic energy, get bassist Koichi Osamu’s album The Chord. You’ll thank me later!). It felt like I was in the middle of the drum set and the cymbals had that BIG open splashing quality of the real thing. So rare to hear drum cymbals sound that real.
Soundstaging/Imaging: They did a surprising soundstaging act for speakers that look so squat. Sometimes images happened well off to the side corners of the speaker, some well back in the center, and usually BIG images. Though it was hard to get an exact read on this aspect. Sometimes it seemed like the 96s bring instruments forward in the mix (worried me about not getting the soundstage depth I’m used to) but other times seem to spread out the images in a very convincing manner.
When seated with head above the tweeter, they also sound taller than they are, which is a neat trick. Though still not as tall as the Thiel 2.7s which have a very realistic image height.
So great warmth of tone, fullness, allied to alive, open and convincing yet unfatiguing high frequencies. That is quite a trick!
The upper frequencies are definitely more directional than I’m used to at home. The Thiels (and in auditioning, the Josephs) sound much the same tonally almost no matter where I move. Whereas I found listener position more critical for the Devores to snap into focus, both tonally and in terms of imaging. Also, they seemed to snap into focus and bloom in imaging once I hit 8 feet from the speakers - as John Devore has suggested. On the other hand, some reviewers and others seem to use the 96s closer and seem happy. I tried around 7 feet off and on, which is about as far away from me as I’d be able to place them, and while they lost a teeny bit of coherence and snap, they did also become smooth and enveloping. Thing is I really should have toed them in a bit more when I moved a bit closer!
Bass on the 96s, in a decent size room with high ceilings, was fascinating. It had a bigger, bloomier quality vs the Thiels which are laser focused and punchy for bass. Certainly there was some additional bloom - a more critical moment would call it "bloat" - on the stand up bass in Talk Talk’s Happiness Is Easy. And a couple other tracks. But aside from those, the bass came across as quite nimble and yet having a rich, lively reach-out-and-make-you-feel-it quality. The result of the bass character WITH the dynamic liveliness, clarity and snap in the upper frequencies meant drums were always fantastic. I was made aware by the 96s, more than any speaker I can remember, of how the drummer was playing, the ebb and flow, the differences in impact between each snare hit, each bass drum hit. It was impossible not to boogey to these speakers.
Once at home playing the same tracks again on the Thiel 2.7, the Thiels impressed me with their massive soundstage, incredibly precise and dense imaging, punchy quality and great tone. If I missed anything sometimes it was the thickness and heft of instruments and voices on the Devores (though the Thiels are surprisingly good here), and especially the open, alive yet smooth quality of the Devore high frequencies. Acoustic guitars, drum cymbals etc don’t have quite the aliveness as on the Devores, and string tone has always been so-so on the Thiels (though helped by my getting into vinyl), but closer to exquisite on the Devores (and excellent, silky and clear on the Josephs).
So over all, a very promising speaker that has thrown a kink into my plans on route to the Joseph Perspectives. They are two quite different sounding speakers that do their own thing almost peerlessly. Both would be around the same price.
Drivin’ me a bit nuts.
One thing is the Devore Dealer would give me a good trade in price on my Thiels toward a purchase of the 96s. That would be nice, not having to sell them myself. But I do have some major questions as to whether their size/shape will work in my room, as it’s also my home theater room, and speakers too wide may impede the screen image.
Still lots to think about, but thought I"d share what I’ve heard so far.
(And I pretty much consider myself done in speaker auditioning. Right now it’s the Josephs or the Devores...or just sticking with the Thiels).