SOLTANUS ACOUSTICS, Euridiche
SOLTANUS ACOUSTICS, Mezzoforte
I will now tell you about the listening experience of a Soltanus set composed of a Euridiche S electro static headphones and a Mezzoforte Amplifier/energizer.
It must above all be understood that I have never had the opportunity to listen to a combination that offers from near or far, such distillation and here’s why.
The first thing that makes you dizzy is the size of the overall soundstage, since it is this screen size that dazzles you instantly. The width of the scene is simply the most impressive I have ever heard, even in some competing models whose only quality it was. Depth, on the other hand, is a prodigy of stratification as much as of precision of placement. Imagine that your ears then become eyes and eyes that can easily observe each row of a concert hall by counting each spectator and his precise place in the stands. So you can decide to focus on an actor in this show and observe only him as if your ears could « crop » the space to zoom in and perfectly define this new shot. Height management is therefore a logical consequence of this hyper acuity that already allowed you to make the perfect point, on the horizontal plane and on that of depth. There is an immediate « first person » perspective effect, which means that you are no longer dissociated with music but in personal immersion as an actor of the moment.
This audio parallax suddenly transforms your very notion of ouille limit. Indeed, the experience with headphones, in such a mastered technical framework, allows, in the same way as in the cinema, a much more readable apprehension than in a real concert hall, where the resonances of the play itself blur the message transmitted by the performers. It is then a form of augmented reality that is offered to you, with pleasure to increase all the more in the idea of global perception and sensory delight.
Because yes, it must be understood that the technicality of this set does not result in offering you an amusement park attraction, but in projecting you into a mandatory and enjoyable emotional involvement.
Scalpel clipping, visceral dynamics, tonal balance, are parameters that only exist if you voluntarily decide to leave the sharing experience to become just an observer with measuring tools. Thus, yes you will see that the message is not shortened either at the top of the spectrum or at the bottom of it, that the amount of micro details is amazing even in front of the best headphones on the market, and that it is the same for everything that can be measured or quantified and even: qualified. But once again, this is only of interest for the admiration that we can have for Zoltan, the creator of such a technical masterpiece.
From a listener’s point of view, the result is very simple, it is a continuous dose of dopamine, and better than that, a dose that cannot dry up on the pretext that our ears get used to it and would always ask for more, because we are already here « over the rainbow » which means that no other real experience, lived by your ears will be able to offer you even as much.
The number 1 asset of electrostatic technology is a liquidity of the sound that largely erases the fragmentation of the digital signal, so this fluidity brings to your ears a usual format, the one you hear at every moment in life, and this greatly contributes to the likelihood of the musical message which becomes a natural continuity.
There remains the question of physicality, that of feeling your body vibrate from the waves of a column of wild festival line array, and this no helmet will be able to generate it, it is a simple limit related to the fact that your rib cage does not receive sound. But rest assured, the tactility, especially the low frequencies and low bass of this set is absolutely delirious compared to a classic approach to electro static headphones. The punch, the ability to rumm or stun the combo is as incredible as the one to restore the slightest nuances. A great gap as fabulous where the extreme dynamic micros and macros allows you to capture each interpretation inflection even though the artist was distributing an apocalyptic sound wall at that time.
Reconciling both the extreme sensitivity of a classical music lover on the lookout for the slightest twitching of the conductor’s wrist, and that of the rock fanatic whose passion flows in the blood like electricity in a stratum bordering on rupture is a performance that lets us understand, that finally, the maturity of the restitution of sound and music is at hand. And this, not at the price of a Bugatti Chiron but at that of a Lotus Elise.
As an admirer of my peers, it is logical and exciting to rediscover at least 30% of the sound message that was hidden in my fetish recordings, but what is more surprising and perhaps even more unbelievable: it is to rediscover about 15% of the message of my own works that were buried under the masks generated by a sound chain unable to speak readably enough to express each sign, every silence, every breath of the music.
The Soltanus set is not an « end gamer » but a « dream to reality maker ». Indeed, it is above all the end of an obsessive quest and the beginning of the here and now, perfect, true, absolute.
Congratulations Zoltan and thank you Soltanus.
Mia Edenberg & Benjamin Shielden 