Speaker Asylum: REVIEW: Vienna Acoustics Mahler Speakers by Chris Wynn General speaker questions for audio and home theater.

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When I auditioned Vienna Acoustics flagship Mahler speaker, I randomly chose a set of arias sung by Jessye Norman as my first test disc and was unprepared for her startling holographic materialization in the vicinity of the giant Mahler towers occupying the front of the listening room. Ms. Norman seemed to dance slowly around and between the speakers as she sung, her movements across the stage as aurally “visible” as any I have heard. I was simply awestruck by this holography, which was unblemished by distracting tonal aberrations, the kind that immediately distinguish reproduced from “live.”

The Mahlers sound spectacularly accurate in the vocal range. Combined with their broad, deep soundstaging and pin-point imaging, the speakers seem to vanish. They seem lost, totally invisible in the vast soundfield they create. Only one other speaker (that I have auditioned), the Legacy Focus, has displayed this same sonic genius with vocals, soundstaging, and imaging.

The Mahlers remind me of the Legacy speakers in many ways. Chiefly, their sonic shapes or acoustic signatures are broadly coterminous. Switching to a disc of piano works did highlight differences however. The piano disc revealed a loss of brilliance in the “presence” zone (1 kHz – 5 kHz) that left the piano sounding faintly dulled. This loss of “presence” was far less destructive with orchestral strings which sounded subtly muffled and therefore less harsh and easier on the ear. In fact, orchestral strings revealed a characteristic in the Mahlers which I think defines the speakers, a characteristic I call “romance.”

The Mahlers burnish sound with rich, warm, golden hues. These are the supersaturated orchestral colors that concert goers the world over would recognize. The Technicolor soundscapes that the Mahlers create, closely resemble my own experience in the concert hall, sitting in the middle rows of the main orchestra.

The Mahlers possess the broad dynamics that only big speakers can create. Those five drive-units, a Scan-speak tweeter, two Scan mid-woofers, and two ten-inch Eton woofers mounted in the side of the cabinet, are capable of moving a lot of air.

In terms of strict accuracy, the Mahlers sound just a wee bit thick and slow in the upper bass. This sonic richness, currently out of vogue, represents the antithesis of the fast, lean, hard sound which is currently all the rage. To their credit, the Mahlers get the vocal range dead perfect, and but for a loss of presence “brilliance” and upper octave (15 kHz and up) extension, the speakers would compete with the very best in terms of accuracy.

This “romantic,” full-bodied style of music making is simply very difficult not to like and the Mahlers make far better living companions than speakers from the “ruthlessly analytical” school.

The Mahlers sounded stunningly effective with jazz music, where the speaker’s broad soundstaging, precise imaging, and transparent mid-band, once again created just the kind of acoustic alchemy to aurally convince me that I had “materialized’ in a nightclub.

I would take the Mahlers any day over speakers from the hard, thin, shrieky school of speaker design. The speakers enthrall me with the way they generate a soundstage and fill it with singers, instrumentalists, bands, and orchestras. No, the Mahlers are not accurate in the unflinching, harsh, unlistenable sense of the word. They are simply good at enveloping a listening room with music. Hopefully that listening room will be large, as full-range speakers like the Mahlers do not appreciate confined spaces. As big and heavy as these six-foot tall speakers are (they feel like wood veneered concrete), they are not difficult to place acoustically, and provided the room is large and the speakers are given adequate room to breath (kept clear of walls) the Mahlers will enthusiastically go about their job of recreating music with an absolute minimum of fuss.

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