Soon after I asked the Ø Audio Verdande to play music I realized they are, at heart, delicate and powerful creatures capable of single-driver intimacy coupled with full range reach while exhibiting the speed and lightning fast dynamics you’d expect from a horn-loaded loudspeaker.
A full-range single-driver sounding horn speaker. If that sounds like the result of a game of exquisite corpse played by a bunch of audiophiles, we’re headed in the right direction.
Some horn speakers sound like they’re coughing in my face, spittle and all. With some sounding sicker than others. Not all horn speakers mind you, just some. And sometimes they don’t sound sick at all and instead sing with a clear and compelling energized sound that makes music feel vital, alive in room and the Ø Audio Verdande are one such speaker. At first glance, heck even after a second glance, you might get the impression that their big 15″ drivers and big wide-mouth horns will shout like a giant trumpet affixed to the blow hole of a blue whale. But they don’t. In the least.
I’d also like to share that while I like some review gear more than others, the review process remains the same. Listen over time, typically a 2-month period, and try to describe the sound of the thing under review in a number of system contexts, how it compares to similar products, and how its sound impacted my listening experience. The main difference in the process between reviewing things I really like and things I like less is a level of excitement in the listening. I think that is kinda obvious but worth pointing out, especially for those readers who may believe that personal preference plays no role in hifi reviews. It always does.
Once I wheeled the Ø Audio Verdande out of their handy flight cases, easy exit ramp included, and had them sitting on the Barn’s A-Side playing music, I had more than a hunch this was going to be an exciting review process. Once I replaced the shipping casters with the proper footers and spent some time properly positioning the Verdande on the A-Side, I knew my hunch was right. Excitement ensued and never abated.
I don’t know how many reviews I’ve written or how many words comprise those reviews spanning the past 20 years. A lot seems to be a safe bet. And in all that time with all those products, a few have stood out as something special. In terms of loudspeakers that short list includes the Barn resident DeVore Fidelity O/96 (which is why I own ‘em) and the Rockport Atria II to name just two with the review DeVore O/Bronze perched to join as well. The Ø Audio Verdande leapt onto that short list soon after they arrived and the more time I spent listening with a number of amplification partners, the more I liked ‘em.
One thing the Verdande do not do is etch the sounds of music in space like a laser cutting through steel which is fine by me as I’m not a fan of what I consider to be an excessive and unnatural focus on resolution with a tilt toward the top end that draws my attention away from music towards sounds. Another thing the Verdande do not do is plump up the bass or fatten the midrange for a kind of bear hug of a sound that turns musical details, all important details, into mush.
According to my ears and tastes the Ø Audio Verdande exhibit a musically balanced presentation, with the end result being they get out of the way no matter the music in play. I wouldn’t go so far as saying they have no character of their own, not because I hear some coloration or exaggeration, rather because the level of music-driven excitement remained so high during their Barn stay I figure they must be doing something special.
I spoke to Ø Audio’s co-founder Jonathan Magnus Cook during the review period and one thing he suggested was to try moving the Verdande further apart than I normally sit speakers in Barn, adding that doing so would open up their sound even more, expanding the sound image in all dimensions while maintaining a rock solid center image. So I did and it did result in what Jonathan described which gets me to another standout quality—the Verdande produce an enormous sound image, in every dimension, when the music calls for it. That last bit is an important one because some speakers make everything sound HUGE, with acoustic guitars the size of elephants roaming the room. Thanks, but no thanks.
Which gets us to scale where unbalanced horns, the shouty ones, diverge from reality because all of the musical parts in terms of frequencies can feel fragmented and splintered. “Try moving further back.” the typical recommended solution for horn speakers whose drivers never seem to gel.
The Verdande ended up sitting about 9’ apart (on center), more than 8’ from the front wall, and about 10.5’ from the Barn’s Knoll knockoff listening couch. Thus situated, I got the sound I prefer which is a balance between speaker and Barn, the latter’s liveliness is something I prefer when it comes to listening to music as opposed to over damped rooms where music sounds like a corpse waiting for autopsy.
I don’t know about you but I move around when I listen, even when sitting, leaning way in when I want more immediacy, sitting up straight for a balanced room/system sound, and laying back for more Barn. Some speakers make leaning in not so nice where a hardness and harshness creeps in, while others make the full recline a bit too dull. The Ø Audio Verdande worked all over the place, even when I was up and about walking around the Barn’s 1400 sq ft of space. I’m also a fan of speakers that sound equally good well off axis and the Verdande filled the Barn fittingly. Nice.
The Verdande are a two-way speaker, featuring a proprietary Ø Audio 15″ mid/woofer with “well-damped” paper cone and carbon fiber dust cap and a 3.4″ Thin-Ply Carbon Diaphragm (TPCD) compression driver mounted in the company’s Quad Vertex SoundField Technology horn. The Verdande feature a first order, “high-quality crossover network.”
From the company:
The Verdande project was developed to showcase our new Quad Vertex SoundField Technology. This newly developed horn profile was created to provide very even dispersion and low coloration. This technology provides an even sound characteristic within the working area of the horn.
“The lower part of the feet are mechanically decoupled from the rest with ceramic balls to counter vibrations to and from the floor.”
What you can’t see are the 5 down-firing bass reflex ports that can be configured, i.e. plugged with foam, “depending on your room layout, speaker placement, and personal preferences.” I left them wide open.
The Verdande offer a single pair of binding posts per side and as the back plate tells us, their nominal impedance sits a 8 Ohms while the spec sheet details their 94db sensitivity and 26hz-20khz frequency range.
From Ø Audio:
Top quality drives, crossovers and other parts can only take you part of the distance. The enclosure is a vital part of the end-result.
The Verdande enclosure is meticulously designed to be the best possible housing for the drivers and other components. Both acoustically and mechanically. It’s a resonance-free design which is strategically damped and braced.
The review pair came in the High Gloss finish while a Matte finish is also available and I found living the Verdande a visual treat with their big bulldog stance. At least to my eyes.
During their near 2-month Barn stay, the Verdande got to play with a number of amplification partners including the recently reviewed Octave Jubilee Mono ULTIMATE Monoblocks (review), the Aesthetix Mimas Integrated Amplifier (review), Wattson Audio Madison Amplifier (review), Audio Hungary Qualiton 300B Integrated Amplifier (review), the Audio Note Meishu Phono 300B Konzertmeister Integrated Amplifier (more info), the Audia Flight Strumento Series N°1 evo Stereo Preamplifier & N°8 Monoblock Power Amplifiers (more info), and the Barn resident and newly re-tubed Leben CS600X. The kitchen sink was busy.
“Did you have a favorite?” I had a few and all things considered in terms of price and sensible system building the Aesthetix Mimas made for a stunningly good Verdande driver, a system I could easily live with. The Leben CS600X was another pleaser with its slightly more saturated and lively lit up sound, and the Audio Note Konzertmeister brought a truly exquisite touch, grace, and timbral realness that was about as seductive as reproduced music gets in my experience.
Digital front ends included the Barn resident Grimm MU1 (review)/totaldac d1-unity (review) combo, as well as the totaldac d1-CD Transport & d1-streamer-live (more info) with all AudioQuest cabling including the ThunderBird Zero speaker cables and ThunderBird interconnects (see full Barn and system details).
My time with the Verdande was largely spent playing music I wanted to hear through them, a subtle but important point as some review systems have me reaching for favorite test tracks in an attempt to understand what I’m hearing.
Florist’s self-titled album, released on Double Double Whammy in 2022, is a favorite Florist album even though I like every one. This recorded on the front porch kinda sound with processing and nature from around the rented home in the Hudson Valley where this was recorded adding to its subtle, slightly odd fragile beauty.
Emily Sprague remains out front on vocals and I find her voice soothing and quietly stunning and the Verdande embraced this record’s various sounds and subtleties in a very moving and convincing manner. Chairs creek, birds chirp, acoustic guitar strums along with whirls and swirls of electronic ‘nature’ floating around whipping the experience up into a fantastical trip, a return to simpler yet magical concerns. With the Audio Note Konzertmeister in play, all of these sounds took on physical form in Barn to a shocking degree, that kind of reach out and touch it realness that transforms passive listening into a journey detached from time and place. If you feel in need of a getaway without going anywhere, I recommend a trip with Florist’s Florist.
This level of reproduction approaches a kind of flawless realism that all but erases the difference between listening to a recording and experiencing a performance where certain sounds nearly appear as real as bubbles in the air. Pop!
Back in 2006, Nick Cave slapped on a thick furry horseshoe mustache and an even badder attitude and along with Warren Ellis, Martyn P. Casey, and Jim Sclavunos made a couple of badass records as Grinderman with the apparent point being to shout from the rooftops-we’re not dead yet! I had the great pleasure of seeing this badder incarnation of the Bad Seeds live and they delivered as high energy a performance as I’ve had the pleasure of palpitating through. Their first self-titled album arrived in 2007 followed by Grinderman 2 in 2010.
Jim Sclavunos makes drums sound like bombs while Martyn Casey’s bass growls down low propelling every track into the mayhem that Cave and Ellis have perfected to a dizzying degree. The Ø Audio speakers ate this music up and chugged and churned every last ounce of sound out into the Barn with live-like force, energy, and truly startling live-like dynamics. Here, the Aesthetix Mimas’s superb grip on the Verdande’s full range sound made this music come alive, throwing out a mass of sound filled with perfectly sculpted solid forms. Stunning, badass, and even during the most blistering overblown bits the Verdande/Mimas combo were ready for more, even when pushing up into high 90dB peaks. Whew.
Another result of the Verdande’s superbly controlled clarity is I found myself listening louder than normal in general, mostly unaware I was doing so as the impetus was driven by a desire to get even more overwhelmed by music as opposed to ‘testing’ their ability to play loud.
Among my favorite discoveries from my 1980s exploration of the weird and wonderful world of contemporary classical music while living in NYC was the music of Giacinto Scelsi. This is music that demands close unwavering attention, hanging on every note as it were, and I spent many months delving in deep back in the day.
Natura Renovator was released on ECM in 2006 and features cellist Frances-Marie Uitti who worked very closely with Scelsi along with the Munich Chamber Orchestra conducted by Christoph Poppen. I selected this music for this review to highlight the purity and tonal rightness the Verdande are capable of, without which this music fails to convey its deeper meaning. Scelsi was obsessed in his later years with “one tonal centre”. From the liner notes by Utti, “Sound became the grammatical focus of his later work, superseding pitch, rhythm, and harmony.”
This music hovers around that tonal center like some great slow ebb and flow of a deep sonic sea and if you listen carefully it can move you too, physically and mentally. The Verdande’s driver integration is seamless and its voicing rich, full, and resolving in a way that strikes me as natural and right. Instruments sound as they do in real life, the smallest movements are detailed with care, while the bigger swells have an engaging physicality that adds up to an open invitation to disappear into these works which I find stunningly beautiful and deeply moving. Bravo.
In terms of comparison, I mentioned the DeVore O/Bronze that are in for review as well as the Rockport Atria II which left a lasting impression with their completely captivating performance. The O/Bronze are a greatly improved version of the O/96 so as you can imagine, they have also become a favorite among favorites. The Ø Audio Verdande now sit comfortably on that shortest of short lists. If I had to pick one, I’d pick all three but I can be greedy that way. When we get to this level of performance, the only way to know which is best for you is for you to listen.
I’ll close out my listening notes with a recent release, DJ Haram’s debut album Beside Myself, released on Hyperdub in July. To my mind, this wild unrestrained music fits nicely in between a Grinderman / Scelsi sandwich with its enticing mix of musical styles, badass beats, and Middle Eastern influences that have some of that tonal center Scelsi thing going on. This is music you want to listen to loud, something the Verdande were made to do, and I reached Barn rattling levels without hearing the slightest sign of strain. If you’re looking for a refined party speaker, one that can dance at Jamaican sound system levels while floating the most delicate interplay between cello and viola in air like a feather, the Verdande have that span covered. And everything in between.
The Ø Audio Verdande are an anomaly of sorts as they offer what one hopes to get from a horn speaker combined with refinement and grace. Offering stunning immediacy, real life dynamic speed and impact, full range reach, and a rich live-like voice, the Verdande are one of a very few I can recommend without hesitation for anyone in search of their last speaker.
Ø Audio Verdande Loudspeakers
Price: $45,000/pair
Company Website: Ø Audio
US Distributor Website: Harmonia Distribution
Specifications
Sensitivity: 94db
Frequency range: 26hz-20khz
Impedance: 8ohm
Horn: Quad Vertex Sound Field – Constant Directivity
Woofer: 15″ ultra-linear long stroke extended range woofer
Feet: Polished stainless Steel with Tungsten resonance damping
Dimensions: 1150 x 500 x 593mm (HxWxD)
Weight: 100kg
Transport: Flight case