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Model: | MM de Capo i |
Category: | Speakers |
Suggested Retail Price: | $2500. (USD) |
Description: | 2-way tuned port monitor |
Manufacturer URL: | Reference 3A |
Model Picture: | View |
Review by rebbi on August 21, 2014 at 19:00:36 IP Address: 66.90.166.129 | Add Your Review for the MM de Capo i |
Reference 3A De Capo BE Review
Back in July 2012, I posted a very enthusiastic review of the Reference 3A Dulcet speaker. You can find it here.
http://www.audioasylum.com/cgi/vt.mpl?f=speakers&m=318237
Reference 3A has a generous program whereby customers who don't have a local Reference 3A dealership and thus must buy direct from the manufacturer are given a six-month trade up period. During that time, the purchaser will receive full price credit toward any more expensive Reference 3A model. You are only on the hook for the return shipping costs.
In speaking with a dealer in California toward the end of my first 6 months with the Dulcets, trying to decide whether to upgrade, his comment that “The Dulcet is terrific, but the De Capo is in another league altogether” pushed me over the edge. After about five months of ownership, I sent my Dulcets back to Reference 3A in Canada and eagerly awaited their replacement.
Unfortunately, the shipping company completely mangled the first set that I received, but Reference 3A was able to get a pair that had been shipped to another Texas city diverted to me. No harm done – the new pair was flawless. I got a pair of De Capo i/A’s (the “A” indicating the presence of the Surreal Acoustic Lens in the center of the main driver) in the beautiful, matte red-cherry veneer finish.
In common with the Dulcet, the De Capo is a rear ported design with a raked front baffle for better time alignment between the two drivers and a “crossover-less” design in which the house-built, woven carbon-fiber mid-woofer is run flat-out with nothing between it and the amplifier. A single capacitor in the signal path protects the tweeter. Also in common with the Dulcet, the De Capo’s are sold in mirror imaged pairs, meant to be positioned with the tweeters on the outside edge and the speakers firing straight ahead into the room with no to-in. The biggest difference is the much larger main driver (8 inches as opposed to 4) and the more voluminous cabinet. As you’d expect, these factors result in a more authoritative bottom end (although, especially considering its diminutive size, the Dulcet is no slouch in the bass department, either). The De Capo will also move more air and energize the room more readily than the Dulcet. And it will play louder without signs of strain, enabling you to be drawn fully into a large, symphonic piece without being reminded that you’re listening to smallish, monitor speakers. Finally, it’s more sensitive, rated at 92 db compared to 88 db for the Dulcet.
So then, how do they sound?
The De Capo’s are just sublimely musical, projecting not only the emotional core of the performance, but rendering it coherently as well. Coherence is a difficult thing to express in words, but you know it when you hear it.
For example, Paul Simon’s 2006 “Surprise” album is a collaboration between the singer-songwriter and electronica pioneer Brian Eno. Simon’s erudite lyrics and meandering melodies are embedded in Eno’s complex, layered and often dissonant electronic “soundscapes.” This album is a great torture test for a speaker. Lesser transducers will render many of the tracks on “Surprise” a noisy mess. But the De Capo has the ability to present the complex rhythms and sonic textures in these songs as, for lack of a better word, integrated performances that make musical sense.
Another aspect of this coherence is the uncanny ability of the De Capo’s to present precisely localized images.
Now I know that some of our fellow audiophiles deride imaging as smoke-and-mirrors artifact of the recording process. “You don ’t hear imaging at a live concert,” they say, which is largely true. But in my opinion, imaging can be one of the great pleasures of recorded music, and if the recording engineer went out of his or her way to provide imaging effects, then I want to experience them to their fullest.
Case in point: near the beginning of “Night Train,” the third track on Rikki Lee Jones’ musically sublime and beautifully recorded self-titled debut album [Warner BSK3296 on LP] a plucked electric guitar enters after a few measures. It is panned toward the right of the soundstage: not all the way to the right, but distinctly right of center. And on the De Capo’s, the firm plucking of that string is so palpable, and the guitar itself so precisely located, hanging in the air just to the right of center, that the effect is simply startling. The background vocals on this cut are also rendered beautifully, choral in nature, yet the individual lines are not obscured or blurred.
This seems like a good point to mention that not long into my ownership of the De Capo's, Reference 3A announced that their entire line was being upgraded by the substitution of a new, beryllium dome tweeter as a replacement for the fabric dome previously utilized. I was hesitant to do the upgrade because of the bad reputation that metallic leaders have for harshness. I got on the phone with Tash Goka, Director of Reference 3A (and very nice guy to talk to on the phone). He said something to the effect that "the metallurgy of beryllium is much different than that of the materials used in other metallic tweeters such as titanium and aluminum. You're not going to hear the kind of harshness associated with metallic drivers."
I ordered my replacement drivers, got out my soldering iron and giddily installed them when they arrived from Canada. I can confirm what Tash Goka said: there is absolutely nothing harsh about these tweeters. The sound is smooth, full of air and extension and very resolving, but not sibilant or harsh. I'm mentioning the tweeter upgrade here because to the extent that spatial cues are dependent upon high-frequency information, a perception that I felt not long after installing the new tweeters makes sense: the De Capo's ability to retrieve ambient information like recording space or auditorium echo and to place images in three-dimensional space is even more impressive with the new tweeter. At this point, you could say that I own a pair of "almost" De Capo BE’s, as the latest model is called. The only thing lacking is the slate gray, Nextel finish on the latest cabinets (which is said to further reduce the transmission of unwanted cabinet resonances).
Let me also say something about the low-end of these speakers (they are rated down to 42 kHz). In my medium small (and quite acoustically compromised) listening room, the De Capo's provide what I’ll confidently call a satisfying and convincing bottom end. No, they don't plumb the depths of the lowest octave (I suppose that pipe organ music aficionados need not apply without a subwoofer) but I have yet to play a genre of music through the De Capo’s that they haven’t rendered with conviction.
Allow me to share two very different examples:
I was 14 years old in 1972 when the album "Chicago V" [Columbia LP KC 31102] was released – I raced down to my local Sam Goody on my bike to buy it (on sale for $2.99…) It’s probably my favorite album by that band and I can't even begin to imagine how many times I've listened to it and how intimately familiar I thought I was with every lyric, note and horn riff. But in playing the track "A Hit by Varese" that opens Side 2, I heard something I had never noticed before. In the closing bars of that song (with the horn section playing triplet figures over the rhythm section playing four beats to the bar) I noticed that Pete Cetera – an underappreciated bass player if there ever was one – is playing a very deep bass note on the third and fourth beat of each measure. To be surprised with low-frequency information on a track that I thought I knew inside and out is a testimony to how well these modestly sized speakers "do" bass.
One other example: I was fortunate enough to be in the San Francisco Bay area recently while the California Audio Show was taking place and I managed to get to the show for a few hours. I picked up a couple of anthology CDs at the Reference Recordings table. It goes without saying that they are immaculately recorded! I was pleased to see that the classical sampler “Tutti!” [RR-906CD] concluded with the last couple of sections of the Maurice Ravel orchestration of "Pictures at an Exhibition." (Okay, maybe it is an overplayed "war horse" of the orchestral repertoire, but I love it anyway.) The orchestra really pulls out the stops during the final section of the piece, “The Great Gate Of Kiev.” To their credit, the De Capo's never lose their composure throughout the mounting volume and thunder of this climactic section of the work. But, getting back to the low-end, I was startled by how thrillingly the De Capo's managed to pull off the pounding and crashing of the timpani in those final measures of the piece. The big drums are somewhat "miniaturized," of course (insert audio review cliché about not being able to circumvent the laws of physics here…) But you get enough of those big guns to feel satisfied.
So, what's wrong with these speakers? Frankly, not a lot that I can put my finger on. Like their younger sibling, the Dulcet, I am regularly struck not only by how good they are, but also by how they keep getting better with time and break in. Of course, there is a lot of competition for your audio dollar at the roughly $3000 price point and only you can decide whether the De Capo is ultimately for you. But I will go out on a limb and say that this design, which has been refined fairly constantly for decades, is considered by some to be a classic and a reference with good reason. They are really quite something.
Product Weakness: | Not the last word in bass response. A great value but not %22cheap.%22 |
Product Strengths: | Convincing low end for stand-mount, airy and resolving high end, precise imaging, musically communicative and coherent presentation. |
Amplifier: | Manley Mahi mono-blocks: 20 W triode, 40 W ultralinear |
Preamplifier (or None if Integrated): | Manley Shrimp |
Sources (CDP/Turntable): | Sota Sapphire, Music Hall CD 25.2 with Musical Fidelity M1 DAC |
Speakers: | Reference 3A De Capo |
Cables/Interconnects: | A mish mash of Supra and AudioQuest |
Music Used (Genre/Selections): | Paul Simon, Chicago, Rikki Lee Jones... |
Room Size (LxWxH): | 16' x 11' x 8' |
Room Comments/Treatments: | Area rug on the floor, but room still suffers from some untreated slap-echo |
Time Period/Length of Audition: | More than a year |
Other (Power Conditioner etc.): | None |
Type of Audition/Review: | Product Owner |
Your System (if other than home audition): | Yes this is my system. |
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Edits: 09/26/14
I have the latest MM Decapo BE as well. Its a great speaker and with excellent clarity. I find it is very position sensitive and you can change the sound a lot with small adjustments.
I think Roger Modgesky of RAM Labs made (makes?) an set 845 amp. If so, take a look on his website.
I just wanted to bring some clarity to the discussion of what kind of amp will drive the De Capo. This is from the owner's manual:
"Although 92 dB rated efficiency is not considered to be very high, the MM De Capo iA with its direct coupled driver topology (no crossover) does not waste amplifier power. It also presents very easy impedance loads to amplifiers. They can work very well with low powered purist design amplifiers of both tube and solid-state types. Well-designed SET tube amplifiers with only 5 or 8 W of output power are often used with excellent results."
So there you have it, straight from the manufacturer.
Thanks! rebbi.
Great review Rebbi! You really encapsulated the character of the DeCapos to me. I would only add the wonderful ability to connect to the music and performance without the distraction of constantly being reminded you are listening to a speaker on all genres of music. A music lover's speaker and quite something for sure.
Rebbi, glad you are enjoying your de Capo's and your system. Enjoyed your write-up here. I loved the little Dulcets, had a friend that owned them several years ago and they always made me smile. Enjoy! Tim
Excellent review Rebbi.
Try them with a SET amp...I had a very nice VAC 30/30, which is one of the great triode push/pull amps but a good SET was better still on my Master Control MMCs. I had a similar experience going from a softdome tweeter to the Be tweeter...a great upgrade.
Hi, morricab!
You got me thinking. The De Capo's are 92 db efficient, which (correct me if I'm wrong) seems kind of borderline for low-power SET amps.
In any event, right now, as stated in the review, I'm running mine with a pair of Manley Mahi mono-blocks. They are switchable from triode (20 watts) to "ultra linear" (40 watts). I run them in triode all the time, and in my room, the volume knob almost never goes past 9 o'clock; more would just be too loud.
All that said, what do you guys think of running the De Capo's with a SET amp? And if I did, what's the best bargain in SET's these days?
Thanks!
A friend is running his De Capos very successfully with coincident Frankenstein 300b monoblocks.
I'd give careful consideration to the several models from Music Reference (Ram Labs). Roger M. gets la lot out of his designs for very reasonable money.
I have two SET amps. One is the NAT Symbiosis SE, which is actually a single ended hybrid (MOSFET output) that actually produces a rather beastly 100 watts. This amp is neither small nor is it cheap. It is a reference level amplifier
The other SET amp I have is a JJ 322, which is a parallel 300B amp that produces an honest 15 watts at 1% THD and a bit more with increasing distortion. This amp is smaller, but still 42 KG, and was significantly cheaper but still not cheap. It sounds very nice though and is closer to reference level than it's price would lead you to believe.
Both will play my Master Control MMCs to loud as I can stand levels cleaning and very musically.
The other amps I have heard on my speakers and I know will work are KR AUdio (all models) and NAT (all models).
Apparently Antique Sound Labs work very well. I would try their 845 based model (used to be the 1006 model now called something else).
I would also give Ayon audio a good look. Not cheap but excellent sound.
It is hard to recommend cheap SETs because they tend to be very flawed in one or more ways. The best bet is to look for something that was expensive once and find a good used deal.
That said, I know that OTLs can sound truly excellent. When I demoed my MMCs and L'integrales I did it with a Graaf GM20 OTL amp. THat was amazingly good but I can't deal with the heat made by the OTLs (been down that road...at least with the 6C33C tubes).
A real potential is the Transcendent sound SET OTLs. They have one now that is 4 watts stereo but bridged makes a solid 12 watts per monoblock. THis could be the ultimate with SET sound and OTL clarity. Cost is under $2500 new if you can build them yourself.
Other really good SETs I have heard? STuff from Vaic, Mastersound, some Unison Research, Kondo, Wavac.
morricab ;
Have you experienced an 845 amp ? I've read that they are just as furnace like as OTL's but they would be a good choice otherwise ! I'm in central Florida and the furnace thing is not really desired !
Grinnell ; I listen to classic rock sometimes and do turn it up a bit , although our rooms our close to the same size. I thought I read that you moved on from the Decware .
rebbi ; Nice review , sorry if I hijacked your thread a bit .
Happy Tunes All
saki70
The best sounding 845 based amps I have heard are those from New Audio Frontiers...fantastic sound and beautifully made amps.
I have NEVER experienced heat from an amp like I experienced with my old Silvaweld OTL reference monoblocks. It has to do with the power consumption of those darn 6C33C tubes...their filaments suck up amps of current!
I have not had an 845 based amp at home; however, I replaced the OTLs eventually with 2 KR Audio VA3350i amps in the same room. Those have a tube that is at least as big if not slightly bigger than an 845. Even with both of those running on my biamped, 4 panel electrostatic monster, the heat was only a fraction of what it was with the OTLs. The room never got hot like it did with the Silvawelds. Same was true when I had the big KR Audio Kronzilla monos in for a review...nowhere close to the heat generated like the OTLs.
My current NAT gets pretty warm as it has 4 huge heat sinks that get basically too hot to touch (still nowhere close to tube hot) and it dissipates about 800 watts of heat. The JJ doesn't heat up the room significantly despite having 4 300B tubes.
I would say that an 845 based amp should be ok overall even in Florida.
A bit off topic but speaking of 845 or 211 if you choose based SET and quasi OTL in one package, this may be the holy grail, now to only hear it. A quite interesting design but an insane price tag.
http://www.davidberning.com/products/zh_211_845
The price may be insane but these are insanely good amps. David Berning brought an early pair over for me to hear in my system, where i've been using custom-designed 845 SET monoblocks for the last 10 years which I always thought were pretty damn good. They still are, but the Berning P-P monoblocks are in a WHOLE other league.
Yes Dave, I have been living with the zh270 for 12 years. Have heard the monoblock prototype amp that Allan Bhagan owned, 1 thousand farad amps at a show several years back. The level of effortless sound was beyond anything I had heard before or since. Actually it was quite amazing how well the zh270 fared in comparison but still... I spoke with Allan recently concerning the new amp of which he has one. He indicated it will be at a show next year in LA and TAS will be doing a review in the coming months from what I understand. I expect it will be something quite special or David wouldn't bother. All his designs are clear improvements over his previous offerings. I am waiting for a loaner of the zh230 which has a higher bias than the 270 and the signal carrier frequency is 500kh, similar to the 200 watt Quadrature but the feedback is set using tube combinations, to maximize damping with the speaker used. This amp can probably be favorably compared to any SET out there, is technically beyond virtually all of them although some will prefer the richer tonal density that SETs generally offer over a PP or OTL design.The new 845 may prove the best of both worlds.
Saki70:
Don't worry about hijacking the thread. I kind of did it myself when I started asking about SET's.
I second the recommendation of using an Ayon. After starting with a Cal Icon Mk II about a hundred years ago, I chumped off and got a Musical Fidelity A308. Sideways move at best in spite of the many years difference in the two. After improving the sound with a Lavry Engineering dac I got a chance to get an Ayon 07s which is the much upgraded 07. This will give many turntables competition. Great sound in three dimensions plus the emotional one.
It sounds terrific with my Grand Veenas which tell me exactly what the Ayon is doing and my Quicksilver 88 monos are another great match.
Edits: 08/24/14 10/06/14
I have posted this before but I run my De Capos with a 4 watt Decware mini torii. Not loud but very comfortable in a 20 x 12 room open to the sides.
I have also run them with a Grommes phi26 a 1.75wt SET/ 6 wt SEP and it was also very comfortable volume.
I would really like to get some big old 2 way cornscala with a 15 in woofer and horn tweet :)
Grinnell,
Thanks a lot for this. On paper it doesn't "sound" as if a 4 watt SET should be able to satisfactorily drive a 92 db speaker, but I'm glad to know that the Torii Mini is working for you. That's cool. And my room is even smaller than yours.
Out of curiosity, I wrote to Steve at Decware to find out which of his SET amps he thinks would be a good match for the De Capo's in my room. I'll report back.
Steve Deckert said that, maximum volume aside, the Decware 6 watt SET SE34I.4 should blow my Manley Mahi's out of the water (my words, not his) and the price is certainly right, just under $1300. He also suggested that if that wasn't enough power, the 25 WPC Torii MKIV would definitely drive the De Capo's with no trouble, but at $3500 in the stock configuration which is out of my budget range...
Food for thought!
Can't wait for the answers to that last question !
That is the next path that I want to take with my De Capo i's too .
I would think that we would want power at least in the low teens .
Saki70
of one of my longtime favorite speakers ( in it's many incarnations.)
I'll bet your amps spend most of their time in triode mode.
Thanks for the positive feedback.
Yes, triode mode it is! :-)
Great Speakers--great choice -
Thank you for a fine review and posting
Good listening
Des
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