The Vox Olympian was always a statement product, albeit one that defied many observers' expectations by being a considerable commercial success as well. But even so, the number of customers for speaker systems at the Vox Olympian’s rarefied price point is strictly limited. The sheer time and effort expended on its development, as well as the experience garnered, have created the opportunity for more affordable models. Business logic pretty much demands them. The Vox Palladian/Palladian Basso system (let’s just get the whole quadruple-barreled name thing out of the way and also refer to the complete system as the Vox Palladians from here on) is the first such offering, while you can expect the next iteration of the Vox familiae to be unveiled at the Munich High End show next year.

So let’s examine just how the Vox DNA has evolved into not just a more affordable version of the original flagship model, but a speaker with its own musical vocabulary and voice. Starting with what Living Voice designer Kevin Scott refers to (at least somewhat tongue-in-cheek) as the "satellites," the Palladian’s four-way composite horn cabinet is essentially similar in size, form and materials to the Vox Olympian's, using the same 34mm plywood for the folded-horn bass leg, exactly the same machined wooden midrange horn and bronze treble trumpet. The differences (and savings) lie in the structure itself, which has been significantly simplified, and the choice, complexity and cost of the finishes applied. Gone are the exotic wood veneers, intricate inlays and piano lacquers, replaced with simpler, although still beautifully executed, surfaces featuring bare edges and a satin finish over more familiar wood veneers. The curved, lacquered elements in the superstructure of the Vox Olympian, that echo the twin bibs in the mouth of the bass horn, have been replaced by basic, right-angle-butted panels in a simple clear finish, while the complex conical feet that support the Vox Olympian cabinet have been discarded in favor of a traditional plinth-and-spike arrangement that actually makes the cabinet appear more substantial and visually grounded, as well as helping to control the air gap behind the bass driver.

Elsewhere, rather than gold plating, the bronze work on the treble trumpet and badges is chemically patinated to a deep, cloudy, almost Bakelite brown color, a finish that tones beautifully with the satin-wood veneers and is more resilient than the bright work on the Olympian. Seeing the two speakers side by side is a little like looking at a pair of water fowl, the brightly plumed male and the dowdier female, but that is to overlook the sheer quality of the finish on the Vox Palladian. It may not be as intricate, interleave as many contrasting veneers, or feature the high-gloss surfaces of the Vox Olympian, but the actual execution is every bit as exacting. Its squarer lines and clearer, more visible construction might be more Bauhaus than the rather ostentatious, almost baroque styling of the original, but then, with reputation established, it doesn’t need to make the same visual splash. The end result is a sharper, more understated and arguably classier-looking speaker than the flagship model. Beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder, but I for one significantly prefer the appearance of the Vox Palladian to its gaudier and (to my eyes, at least) visually shouty elder brother.

Dig a little deeper and you find that the differences between Vox Olympian and Vox Palladian extend beyond the complexity of the cabinet construction and finish. Although the Palladian’s Vitavox 151 bass driver and TAD 2002 tweeter are identical to the ones used in the Vox Olympian, both the super tweeter and midrange units are different. The TAD 705 compression driver used to fill out the upper ranges of the Vox Olympian is no longer manufactured, so Living Voice has laid in stocks, husbanding those resources against future Vox Olympian orders and the unlikely eventuality of warranty claims, making an alternative driver essential for the Vox Palladian. The solution was a joint Living Voice/Vitavox development, an exponentially horn-loaded, aluminum ring-radiator with a massive Alnico magnet, dubbed the LV4. For the midrange, Living Voice employs a different version of the same Vitavox S2 used in the Vox Olympian, with a simplified mechanical structure and modified suspension that alters the low-frequency resonance. The Palladian Basso subwoofer also uses the same drivers as the flagship Vox Elysian, but again the cabinet is slightly smaller and more compact, with a smaller footprint and less massive construction. It’s still a folded-horn design with the two drivers (accessed through the side-mounted "port holes") firing into a common acoustic chamber, but it employs a different geometry to that of the Vox Elysian and once again allows for a simpler construction.

Of course, the driver changes to the Vox Palladian satellites have in turn demanded substantial changes to the crossover, although in common with the Vox Olympian, the Vox Palladian network is notable for the absence of tricksy, audiophile components and fashionable brand names. It’s not that these weren’t tried. The exhaustive empirical testing and prolonged listening that mark the evolution of each Living Voice model saw those audiophile favorites assessed and rejected in favor of other, often more eclectic or exotic devices from far further afield. Open the Vox Palladian’s external crossover (the lids are hinged to allow fine-tuning of key crossover values in situ, when the speakers are installed) and you won’t see the Mundorf name, spread like a rash. There again you are unlikely to recognize the names you do see. Just as the Living Voice speakers themselves stand firmly against the flow of fashion, they eschew the easy answers (and marketing benefits) of fancy drivers or components from brand-name producers.

Despite the price, despite the sheer quality of the finish and the scale of the finished system, don’t confuse these speakers with some luxury exercise in cost-no-object consumption. These speakers are all -- and only -- about performance. In a market where an increasing number of products appear more concerned with their role as male jewelry than they do with their achievements in musical communication (the audio equivalents of tote bags with logos from the likes of Chanel or Dolce & Gabbana that are so big that they overlap the available surface), the Living Voice Vox-series speakers are a singular -- and singularly successful -- exception to that trend. If the general public struggles with brand recognition much beyond Bang & Olufsen or its spiritual descendent Devialet, if the likes of Wilson Audio are flying well below the popular radar, then where does that place the Vox Palladians? The simple fact is that nobody will buy them to impress their non-audio friends. You don’t buy them to impress your fashion-conscious audio buddies either. You don’t buy them to convince yourself that you are younger than you feel, and you certainly don’t buy them to impress your interior designer/decorator, who really isn’t going to understand the positional demands they dictate. You buy the Vox Palladians (assuming you can afford to) for one reason and one reason only -- to be transported by music. Arguably more than any other speaker system I’ve tested, they stand or fall by that measure alone -- and stand they most definitely do.

The absence of associative branding reflects the speaker's evolutionary development, honed over time rather than leaping fully formed from Solidworks, FEA and a CAD/CAM package. While it’s possible to see the Vox speakers as old-fashioned, it’s more accurate to see them as developed in the old way. You could argue that the Vox Palladian design is (albeit distantly) rooted in the original Vitavox Thunderbolt, the product of a company founded in 1931. Both the whole and the individual elements have evolved out of all recognition, technologically and performance-wise, but that evolution has been painstakingly, incrementally and empirically gradual -- a listen-tweak-listen procedure, repeated over and over again, a massive investment in time and materials (including endless prototypes) that has inched the speakers to the point at which we discover them today. Technology can confirm aural impressions or suggest design shortcuts, but at the end of the day, it’s the ears that decide. It’s the aural equivalent of acute repetitive strain injury: it’s neither comfortable nor particularly efficient, but you can’t argue with the results -- or arguably achieve them in any other way, at least if ultimate performance is your goal.

The first question anybody asks about the Vox Palladian/Palladian Basso speaker system is, "How does it sound in comparison to the Vox Olympians?" Which is another way of asking, "How much do you lose with the cheaper model?" or "Is Living Voice just cashing in on the Vox Olympian’s reputation?" But both suppositions actually miss the point. While the Vox Palladians are undoubtedly a thoughtful and effective cost-reduction exercise, the end result is more, much more, than that. I’ve already said that this isn’t a Vox Olympian lite or a scaled-down version of the real thing. Instead, it is a speaker system that is in many ways the equal of the Vox Olympians -- and in some ways their superior. It offers its own musical perspective and its own particular strengths and for many listeners that will make it a perfectly viable and possibly preferable alternative to its more illustrious stable-mate.

Before I embark on a dissection of the musical differences between these two speakers, perhaps I should point out two of life’s realities. First, I already spent a considerable amount of time and virtual ink describing what it is the Vox Olympians do and how I think that they do it. I have no intention of repeating or recycling that original review. So, just as the starting point for the Vox Palladians was the Vox Olympians, so the starting point for this review is rereading that one. Once we’ve established the (considerable) common ground, we can start to look in greater detail at and with considerably more likelihood of understanding, the musical distinctions. Second, just as this review looks forward to the emergence of a new product and new experiences, it also looks back, informing and extending the understanding of earlier products and experiences. Just as the Vox Olympian informs our understanding of the Vox Palladian, so the reverse is true. In particular, what the Vox Palladian review has done is provide a sense of context for the Vox speakers in particular and the pinnacle of speaker performance in general -- an elevated plane occupied by these and very few other designs.

What makes the Living Voice Vox speakers special (Vox being the patronymic for the company’s horn designs, rather than the far more conventional, far more affordable, but still excellent reflex boxes) is their ability to deliver the traditional horn attributes of speed, immediacy, presence and dynamic range while all but eliminating the traditional failings -- shrieky colorations, discontinuities, limited bandwidth and threadbare harmonics. When the company first demonstrated the Vox Olympian at the Munich show, listeners were as shocked by the coherence and rich colors on offer as they were by the price. The performance was astonishing, outstanding and remarkable by any standard. But perhaps most impressive of all, it was performance achieved in a conference room under show conditions. It was also no accident, the result of both intimate knowledge of the speakers and the system driving them, of painstaking care and exacting attention to detail when it came to setup. Those are important (and often overlooked) considerations when it comes to purchasing any state-of-the-art speaker. You can’t listen to that speaker alone; it needs a driving system and a room to live in, and both have a profound effect on the final result. When Wilson Audio launched the original WAMM, Dave Wilson installed every pair. When the company launched the WAMM MC, once again, installation was part of the price. It was an essential recognition of the challenges facing any speaker system that ambitious, if the owner was going to actually realize anything approaching its full performance potential.

It’s no coincidence that full installation is also part of the package for both the Vox Olympian and Vox Palladian systems, speakers that, along with the WAMM MC, sit at the very pinnacle of current performance capabilities. So it’s worth taking a little time to really appreciate the value of that included cost. Both Wilson Audio and Living Voice insist on installing these products, not because the market demands it, or because they are precious about them or want to gild the lily. In fact, it’s a major cost and inconvenience, but both of them have independently recognized that it’s an essential step if they are going to actually deliver on the promised performance the customer is paying for. It’s a level of commitment and seriousness that isn’t unique to Living Voice and Wilson, but it is all too rare in what is (or should be) an ultra-performance-orientated industry. Despite their obviously apparent differences, these speakers are two (or three) of a kind, with a clear path to where they are and equally clear reasons for their superiority. It’s a quality that mere price alone cannot guarantee. It is also one that requires and depends on constant reaffirmation -- the ability to deliver not just once but again and again, in different situations, year on year.

In the case of this review, installation was a four-day exercise, the physical consummation of a discursive process that looked at everything from access to storage (for the crates), from the complex cable requirements and various alternative topologies to the ancillary system and source components. It also included a suite of known electronics to act as initial-installation aids (to get a handle on the room) and double as diagnostic backstops -- or stand-ins -- in case of unexpected problems. Having carted four very large crates and sundry other cartons half the length of the UK and the whole width of France, Living Voice was taking no chances. The end results certainly reflected all that care and attention, just as they have in Munich. It might be easy to assume that this was a reviewer getting the red-carpet treatment, but in reality neither the planning nor the flawless execution was unusual, being pretty much SOP and par for the course with Vox installations, setups that occur all over the world, often for the most exacting of owners. In one sense, in turning in those astonishing show (and showroom) performances, Living Voice is creating a rod for their own back. Wow a customer in Munich and you’d better be able to exceed that performance when it comes time to deliver -- in every sense of that word.

As to matching amplification, we ended up once again opting for the Engstrom Lars monoblocks (which had paired so brilliantly with the Vox Olympians first time around), fed from the Engstrom Monica, Connoisseur or Living Voice’s own line-stage preamps, along with Connoisseur or CH Precision L1/X1 phono stages. Sources were the Grand Prix Audio Monaco 2.0, with Kuzma 4Point 14 and Fuuga (or Grand Prix Parabolica with 4Point and Lyra Etna) and, for digital disc, the CEC TL2N transport feeding the Wadax Atlantis DAC. We did try other amplifiers, but there’s no escaping the fact that the clarity and articulation of the Lars are an almost perfect match for these speakers, the speaker/power-amp interface proving critical, as always. The input and gain flexibility of the Lars meant that matching with the various line stages was seamless, as was balancing noise levels in the system against musical performance. Cabling was Nordost Odin 2 throughout, and we opted to run the subwoofer amps/crossovers on short leads from the output of the Lars, with matching long speaker leads to both satellites and subs.

With everything wired up and working, setup commenced with painstaking positioning of first the satellites and then the subs, followed by adjustment of the woofer levels and phase along with exhaustive balancing of the satellite crossover values. With the Lars in circuit, we refined those settings again, before finalizing toe-in, cabinet height and the precise phase setting on the subs. It’s a process that’s a lot quicker to describe than it is to carry out -- hence the four-day setup -- but the musical results fully justified the investment. Never underestimate just how much a system settles in the first few days of use, this one being a case in point, the ability to leave things overnight and return to them afresh the next day, with another twelve or so hours of playing time logged, proving invaluable to maintaining a sense of focus and direction in the process as a whole.

The fact that the Vox Palladian is a distinct and distinctive performer in its own right doesn’t mean that it shares no common attributes with the Vox Olympian. While the two speakers are certainly distinct, they are also audibly and obviously cut from the same broad sonic cloth. Characterized by the even energy projection across the entire range, along with the seamless integration of the multiple horn-loaded drivers, the Vox DNA is clearly apparent in the Palladian’s presentation, the refinement and lack of hype or glare as unexpected (from the look of the speakers) as it is unusual in a full-range horn design. Devoid of those shrieky distortions, discontinuities, foggy soundstage and limited bandwidth that mar so many horn speakers, the Vox systems don’t actually sound like horns at all.

This is a degree of integration and musical coherence that makes the Vox speakers unusual, not just in terms of horn speakers but in terms of speakers in general. It’s a coherence that embodies a single, contiguous energy envelope, so instruments can project musical energy irrespective of frequency and, because of the speaker’s dynamic range, can do it with greater headroom and considerably less inhibition. Moreover, combine that with a remarkably natural tonality and they can scale frequency and output with equal ease, broadening the range of musical expression dramatically.

The final key ingredient is temporal (and spatial) authority: things happen when and where they should, meaning that the overall shape of the music is that much clearer (and more easily understood), phrases interlock that much more precisely (maximizing musical contrasts), and when things do happen, they do so with more concentrated energy (and to considerably greater musical effect).

It really is an audio tour de force -- one that is performed every bit as capably by the Vox Palladian as it is by the Vox Olympian. We can talk about performance, or we can talk about usable performance. As already suggested, we could go further and talk about achievable performance. But when it comes to the Vox speakers, there’s only one performance that matters -- the original musical performance -- and that’s as true of the Vox Palladian as it is of the Olympian.

What these speakers sound like is live. Few other speakers can match the Voxes’ sense of life and presence, the energy of real people playing real instruments -- and those that can can’t match their bandwidth or seamless continuity. Where these speakers excel is in reproducing the micro- and macrodynamics, harmonics and texture of actual instruments in a natural acoustic, doing it with a palpable sense of both humanity and inclusion, placing the listener in the same space as the performers. Solo piano or small-scale chamber works, guitar or solo voices, can be stunningly convincing, both in terms of the reproduced sound and their sense of scale. Larger orchestras have an almost physical power and vitality that project sound and color from the stage in uncannily recognizable form, while the systems’ broad dynamic sweep delivers contrast and drama in full measure, qualities that extend well beyond the acoustic and the classical. Scandi jazz, a bit of Blue Note, Kraut rock or Euro electronica -- all is embraced with an almost indecent gusto and unmistakable musical enthusiasm. What the Vox speakers do is master the trick of playing anything, but playing it on its own terms. For a speaker system that is at once demanding and incisive, honest and self-effacing, massively musically impressive and pushing hard at state-of-the-art audio performance, the Vox Palladian is also downright listenable. It’s something else that it shares not just with the Vox Olympian but also the other members of its select peer group.

Having looked at what the Vox speakers share, it’s time to look in more intimate detail, at how the Vox Palladian/Palladian Basso rig differs musically from the Vox Olympian/Vox Elysian combination. As described above, the latter achieves a phenomenal sense of presence, body and color, a vivid, fulsome and vital presentation that is all about the scale, energy and inner-dynamic of the musical whole. The Vox Palladian and Palladian Basso are big on presence, body and energy as well, but they sit deeper inside the performance, drawing out the interlocking phrases and lines, the structure of the piece, rather than its overall shape. It’s a more muscular, delineated presentation, more about individual as opposed to collective energy, leaning more toward how the piece is played as well as simply what is being played. It’s a difference that’s analogous to choosing seats in a concert hall: do you want to sit in the orchestra stalls or do you want a more midhall perspective? Do you want more direct energy or more reflected energy, with its rounder, warmer overall balance? In the concert hall, you pays your money and takes your choice. When it comes to speaker systems that cost well into six figures, there’s a bit more to it than that.

I might describe the Vox Olympian as inviting -- as in inviting you to step into the music. The Vox Palladian shares that attribute but takes it a whole stage further, inviting you into the music and, beyond that, into the performance itself, getting you up close and personal with the performers, their character and their idiosyncrasies -- and you don’t get much more idiosyncratic than Clifford Curzon under the direction of Benjamin Britten. Curzon’s 1970 recording of the late Mozart Piano Concertos Nos.20 and 27 [Decca SXL 7007] was captured at the Snape Maltings by the Decca "dream team" of Ray Minshull and Kenneth Willkinson, although it wasn’t released until 1978 as, almost immediately, Curzon felt he’d come to an even deeper interpretational understanding of the work, making him less than satisfied with the performance just laid down. Yet, Britten and the English Chamber Orchestra had already established a fine reputation for their Mozart, were playing on home turf and the combination of their intimate understanding of the hall’s warm but lively acoustic and a sympathetic production that centered on the musical performance rather than the sonic attributes, made this a wonderful record when it finally appeared. Curzon only released it on the understanding that he’d get "another go" at the 27th, but although that was scheduled for 1982, illness precluded its completion and the pianist was never to re-record a work that became something of an obsession and to dominate his later years.

Of course, Britten’s orchestral accompaniment is unfashionably fulsome in comparison with more modern recordings, yet the Vox Palladians never allow it to thicken, seem clumsy or unbalanced, keeping it lively and articulate, responsive to the soloist and suitably dramatic. But even so, it pales in comparison to the sheer depth and effortless complexity of Curzon’s playing. If you hear the special immediacy of the Vox Palladian/Palladian Basso pairing anywhere, you hear it on piano, the clarity of the strike and weight of each note, the utterly unforced yet incredibly precise placement and spacing. This is one of those discs that rarely sounds anything less than beautiful, but the Living Voice speakers bring a special sense of energy and vitality to the playing as well as a seemingly inevitable sense of collective purpose and direction, both in terms of forward motion and pacing but also in that peculiar presence that the best systems afford the best conductors. Factor in the Snape acoustic and the sympathetic recording and the Vox Palladian/Palladian Basso system reveals a rarely realized, holistic quality to the performance -- soloist, conductor, orchestra and hall in perfect harmony.

Concentrate on the piano and you’ll marvel at the way in which Curzon makes the instrument dance, graceful and light on its feet, yet with weight and authority on demand. This is playing that, despite the apparent simplicity of the score, reveals nuance and depth, expressive complexity and emotional range. There is a crystalline clarity to the right hand, clean and precise, devoid of glare and never hard. His utter command of pace prevents the quicksilver lines of the first movement from tumbling over each other, his reflective pauses bringing stability and pathos that pull you beneath the flashy surface of the music. On the second movement Larghetto, there’s a spellbinding delicacy to the poised beauty of the melody in the right hand, the fragile, almost continuo of the left. If the third movement opens with its jaunty, almost jokey theme, Curzon quickly calls it to heel, his mastery of weight and pace being the perfect counterweight to the nimble fluidity of his lines, subtly lifting the hem to reveal the other side of the emotional coin. All told it’s a remarkable performance, both the original musical event and the speakers that bring it back, so vividly to life. I can sit and enjoy, analyze and marvel at, the recorded event simply because of the unprecedented access I’m being offered by the speakers and the system driving them.

The Curzon LP is about as close to one-take recording as dedicated recording sessions get. But we can take things a step further with the Benedetti Michelangeli Beethoven First Piano Concerto -- a live recording with Giulini and the Vienna Symphony [Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft SLPM 2531 302]. As regular readers will know, I never tire of this performance, and it has become a benchmark for system performance on CD, SHM-SACD and LP. Few such recordings manage to combine brilliant performance with the sense, presence and atmosphere of the original performance, but the better the system, the more "you are there" this recording becomes.

Unsurprisingly, the Vox Palladian/Palladian Basso speakers excel when it comes to this disc, capturing both the individual brilliance of the soloist and the accomplished direction and orchestral playing, wrapped in a palpable acoustic and an audience whose incidental noise reaches out and envelops the listener. Giulini’s deft control is manifest, but, once again, it is the piano that is the star of the show, Michelangeli’s playing as agile, delicate and fluid on the Beethoven as Curzon’s on the Mozart, but with the added weight and substance demanded by the German composer, the extra range and the discipline to deploy it. His ability to grasp and encompass Beethoven’s musical vocabulary is both obvious and remarkable -- quite how remarkable it has taken the Living Voice speakers to reveal. At the heart of this performance is the conversation between orchestra and soloist, maintained with almost preternatural ease under Giulini’s baton. What I’d never before appreciated is the parallel conversation between the soloist’s left and right hands, a whole new dimension in the complexity and structure of the piece -- one that seems obvious in hindsight but which, prior to the arrival of the Vox Palladians, had simply passed me by. Considering just how many times I’ve listened to this piece (and on how many different systems), that interplay is a stark illustration of the speakers’ fundamental musical integrity and superiority, their natural resolution and coherence and the ease with which they reveal the sense and structure in a performance.

A big part of that coherence is the even energy spectrum the speakers generate, one of the reasons they thrive on a diet of CD, with its linear spectral balance. Interestingly, the arrival of the CH Precision P1/X1 phono stage, with its user-selectable EQ curves, has allowed the Deutsche Grammophon LP (as opposed to the Speakers Corner reissue) to leapfrog the performance of the digital discs, despite the Wadax Atlantis DAC offering a significant step up in digital performance. Likewise the Decca LP of the Curzon over the Esoteric SACD. It reflects both the impact of correct replay EQ on the recording’s energy spectrum, but also just how critically revealing the Vox Palladian is of non-linearities in source components. Given that the transducers at each end of the replay chain face by far the greatest challenge when it comes to maintaining linearity, it’s an impressive indication of just how seamlessly those multiple horns have been combined to create a single whole.

Of course, that immediate, connected sense of communication is perfectly suited to the piano, where so much of its expressive range is dictated by the weight and placing of notes, but it extends to other instruments too. Almost all musical instruments respond to increased input from the player, and the Vox Palladian’s ability to accurately track and clearly delineate tiny shifts in level or dynamic steps brings that input and the player’s technique to the fore. So the fabulously elongated lines that open Batiashvili’s Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto [Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft 0289 479 60386] are as technically impressive as they are emotive. Her absolute control of bow pressure and the perfect pitch and length of her notes are remarkable, but to appreciate the full range of her virtuosity, her recent recording of the Prokofiev concertos takes some beating (Visions of Prokofiev [Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft 28947 98529]). Accompaniment is in the safe hands of Yannick Nézet-Séguin -- surely one of the most impressive as well as the most reliable current conductors -- directing the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. He provides the perfect backdrop for his soloist’s accomplished playing, playing that is almost ethereal in its grace and delicacy for the First, imposing, controlled and authoritative for the Second. The tonal range and attack she extracts from her instrument in the latter are as remarkable as the sheer dexterity necessary to generate them. The almost explosive energy and controlled acceleration required are as apparent as the supreme precision of the pianists already discussed, the musical results just as captivating.

And on the most flexible, versatile and recognizable instrument of all? These speakers are not called Living Voice for nothing, and for once the performance lives up to the name. When Rega recently put its money where its mouth is and produced a minimalist, direct-to-analog-tape recording of Canadian songsmith Stephen Fearing (The Secret of Climbing, LP available through Rega), the result was predictably impressive, singer and guitar captured in the near field. A track like "Red Lights in the Rain" has a natural delivery of the vocals, their softer attack contrasting with the sharper rise of the guitar notes seeming utterly normal, allowing you to step away from the recording and engage directly with the performance. With such a minimal arrangement, the expressive range of the delivery depends on balancing the voice and guitar, the instrument underpinning and accenting the vocal phrasing, the sense of the lyrics. This is one of those "forget the system" records, at least when you play it on the Vox Palladians. A huge part of that is the speakers’ ability to be simultaneously equally assured with the guitar’s attack and the softer vocal dynamics. It’s easy to make a fast speaker, disturbingly easy to make a slow one, but making a speaker that’s both at the same time, that takes considerable care and capability. The naturally communicative quality of Fearing’s singing, the slight roughness in his vocals and the fluidity of his phrasing illustrate just how right Living Voice has got the Palladian’s performance in this most crucial of tests.

So why not lift the bar? Direct to tape is one thing, but direct to disc is quite another -- especially if it involves Eleanor McEvoy, simply because the popularity of her recordings and her frequent appearances at hi-fi shows make hers both a distinctive and, for many listeners, a familiar voice. Chasing The Dragon recently cut a live studio set with McEvoy, guitar and piano, direct to disc at Air Studios in London (Forgotten Dreams [Chasing the Dragon VALDC006]), a session I was lucky enough to attend. Playing the LP through the Vox Palladian pairing really was the closest I’ve ever come to time travel. When McEvoy sings "If You Had a Heart," she’s an almost physical presence between the speakers: the natural perspective and dimensionality re-create a life-size image and the acoustic around her, the distance to the piano and the space beyond. But it’s the sheer intimacy of the vocal that’s the killer, the way it transitions so easily from the spoken -- almost whispered -- intro to each verse, into the sung lyrics, the way the vocal accents and emphasis communicate the emotions behind this most personal of tracks.

As Linn used to ask, "Is she just singing -- or is she singing to you?" The Vox Palladian and Palladian Basso leave you in no doubt as to either the sense or the target of this singer and her song. That level of communication depends utterly on the system’s ability to preserve and reproduce the tiniest shifts in dynamic level and intensity, subtle steps in a dynamic range narrowed by both the nature of the song and the sparse arrangement. It’s exactly the sort of dynamic discrimination at which the Vox Palladians excel, and the resulting performance is a showstopper. I played this track to a number of accomplished listeners, and each time the response, as the last overtones faded, was a slightly stunned silence. In Munich two years ago, the Vox Palladians, playing the Batiashvili Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto, produced spontaneous applause from a room full of jaded showgoers -- listeners who sat through the entire first movement without a soul leaving the room. Impressive as that was, this McEvoy cut was significantly better.

Vox prices would be an awful lot to pay for a substantial speaker system that exists only to play recordings of solo instruments or voices. Although thus far that’s where I’ve concentrated my description, fear not -- the Vox Palladian combination scales its output with disarming (almost worrying) enthusiasm. Stepping up a stage at a time, they handle string quartets with the same musical authority and incisive presentation as the Vox Olympians, their slightly more muscular presentation leaning more on the sinews and structure in the music (as well as the sinews in the players), as opposed to the overarching shape of the piece as a whole, but the experience is, if anything, even more exhilarating and certainly no less satisfying.

Quatuor Voce’s superb performance of Bartok’s String Quartet No.1 (Lettres Intimes [Alpha-Classics 268]) is full of creative tension, angular interjections and clashing contributions. Exactly the sort of music that many (most?) systems struggle to elevate above the status of noise, it is exactly the sort of challenging music on which the Vox Palladians excel, bring pattern and shape to the tonal and melodic chaos, feeding on the energy and intensity, bringing the disparate, conflicting strands and shifting alliances to a single, triumphant conclusion. At the opposite end of the structural continuum, the vibrant energy and sheer joie de vivre of Amandine Beyer and Gli Incogniti (Vivaldi Concertos [Zig Zag Territoires ZZT 080803], which raises the body count to nine) is infectious, the absence of dynamic compression and the textural subtlety of the speakers laying bare the cut and thrust in the playing, as well as the complexity and beauty in the overlayering of the parts, the elegance of the counterpoint.

The Blockheads might have only numbered six, but they had big amps and one of the tightest rhythm sections I’ve ever heard. Put Ian Dury out front and the deliciously sardonic vocals and pliant rhythms, as well as Chaz Jankel’s hooks, make for another memorable Vox Palladian moment. The band’s ability to shift in scale and shift gears gives any system a dynamic workout, but the Living Voice speakers barely seem to notice. Jump and it’s exactly how high? Big and it's precisely how big? All while retaining that ability to be almost unfeasibly delicate and intimate, especially given the size of the cabinets. Subtlety is about more than just small. These speakers can do big subtle too, and often both together. So whether Dury is being partial to your abracadabra, sweet Gene Vincent or Billericay Dickie, the almost elastic articulation of Norman Watt-Roy’s bass is ever present, the deft cymbal work of Charley Charles just as important as his pile-driver beats, the jangly guitar and keyboard fills giving depth and texture to the melodies. It’s a musical sophistication that matches the vocal gymnastics and sly intelligence of Dury’s wordplay, one that’s fully realized with this system, a model of musical insight and definition without resorting to stultifying grip and over-damped control.

The punch, articulation and rhythmic authority of the speakers mean that jazz holds no terrors for them, whether it’s Miles’s horn or the Count’s big band. In fact, these speakers might have been made just to reincarnate Basie’s most memorable music. But for really big, we need to come full circle, back past concertos and on to full orchestra. I could spend a lot of time on just how compelling the Vox Palladians can be with orchestral music, whether it’s late Beethoven (Kleiber, of course), Sibelius (with Barbirolli) or Holst (the Mehta Planets), but one piece will serve. The Petrenko/RLPO Shostakovich Fifth Symphony on CD [Naxos 8.572167] is a hauntingly affecting performance. Petrenko's perfect tempi make stunning use of the massive forces available (the scoring is for three sections of violins and two each of violas and cellos as well as listing contra bassoon, bass tuba, timpani, snare, bass drum and tam-tam, bells, xylophone, two harps, piano and celesta), dovetailing their contributions and chromatic contrasts perfectly. The jokey second movement is sandwiched by the stark, angst-ridden spaces and underlying cold demeanor of the first and third, with their angular, jagged crescendos, followed by the emotional roller coaster of the fourth, with its flickering light and shade and shattering conclusion -- all replayed at realistic levels. It’s quite a trip. The towering dynamic capabilities and precise control of the speakers, wed to their effortless structural clarity, simply pick you up and pull you into and along with the music, all the way to that massive release in the finale. To embrace the subtle textures and shadings of the string parts while also scaling the massive peaks this score demands is a challenge for any orchestra, let alone a hi-fi system, yet this one simply takes it in its stride, barely even noticing that there’s an issue. I’ve heard (and had) systems that can play louder, but few that do so with such grace or so intelligibly. Sure, play the Gravity soundtrack [Silver Screen Records SILCD1441] and the Wilson Alexx and Thor’s Hammers deliver even greater scale and sheer weight, whilst maintaining superb separation and texture -- but they needed four Naim Statement S1 power amps to do it.

Back to the Shostakovich Fifth, and from the frigid shiver of the strings that murmur beneath the opening of the first movement to the massive drum beats and crashing chords that signal the close, the speakers keep abreast of Petrenko’s pacing and respond effortlessly to his dynamic demands. This is a taut, purposeful and prosaic presentation, with none of the cloying warmth and roundness that some systems add, necessary to mask their sins of commission. Yes, you hear the strain, but it’s the strain of musicians trying to reach further and play louder. The sound is neither lean nor stripped; it’s not lacking body or color, and it’s not harmonically bereft. It’s just more Festival Hall in London than Disney Hall in Los Angeles -- in a world where the Vox Olympian is perhaps more Musikverein.

What’s the purpose of this laundry list of listening experiences? To demonstrate not just the character of this speaker, but how (and why) that character translates into its musical versatility, the speaker's ability to play all types of music with equal communication, authority and insight. Its combination of structural clarity and dynamic discrimination is fundamental to that performance, establishing and maintaining the relationship between player and instrument, one instrument and another -- and another and another -- as the scale of the piece grows. Just when you think that individual intimacy and textural subtlety have been swamped in sheer numbers, a calm moment and a solo part will reach across the distance of that larger acoustic to re-establish the connection. It’s not just about what happens within the soundstage but also the rare ability of these speakers to reach forward and include the listener in the same space as the performers. It’s a combination of dynamic projection, focussed energy and bandwidth -- and there are few systems that manage all three.

As Dave Wilson was fond of pointing out, in many ways it is the speakers that have the hardest job in an audio system, having to deal with the electronics and the room in which they find themselves. The Vox Palladian is a versatile partner, but just as system selection is important, the niceties of setup and infrastructure are crucial too. The system allows you to hear the speakers, but the speakers also allow you to hear the system, and with so much musical clarity on tap, a mucky AC line, sloppy cabling, poor housekeeping and inadequate or ill-considered supports can all erode performance to a startling degree. Take unwarranted liberties and they’ll come back to bite you, but given the chance this speaker will not only reveal the character and strengths of the partnering electronics but weld them to its own musical integrity. Coherence is the watchword here, the benefits of a carefully considered and balanced approach to system infrastructure being even more clearly audible than usual -- as is its absence. Past experience with the Vox Olympian was invaluable in pre-selecting matching components, but even so I wasn’t ready for the extent to which the Vox Palladians exploited the unforced fluidity, musical articulation and rhythmic dexterity of the Engstrom amps (or the utter transparency of the Berning Quadrature Zs, and the almost naïve self-confidence of the Sugden integrated).

With most most products, there comes a point, an instant of clarity, that encapsulates the experience of listening to them. It’s another aspect of the Vox experience that sits these speakers alongside the Wilson WAMM MC. On first listening to the Wilson flagship, I marveled at the way their tonality and acoustic perspective vary with listening distance -- just as they do in a concert hall. It’s a performance attribute that demands a mental adjustment on the listener, one in which your descriptive vocabulary shifts from that used to describe hi-fi to the one you use with live performances. That shift is forced on you by the elevated experience delivered by the WAMM MC -- and similar mental gymnastics are imposed on the Living Voice Vox speakers and their uncanny grasp of the nature and patterns of the musical energy generated by acoustic instruments. It’s not that the sonic portrayal of these speakers is indistinguishable from the live event. No speaker re-creates a perfect facsimile of the original performance. But what a great one does is capture an essential sense of the experience, a gestalt quality that’s communicated in the same way as the original performance and with the same directness. With each of these speakers there’s an immediately recognizable (albeit distinct) aspect of performance that owes more to the live event than to the norms of recorded music and reproduction, that places them closer to that live event than they are to other audio systems. The specifics of the picture, the precise perspective might be different, but they preserve those core musical qualities perfectly intact.

By now it should be obvious that the Vox Palladian/Palladian Basso is one of the finest speaker systems I’ve had the pleasure of hearing. Such absolutist statements are littered with pitfalls and should come with a government health warning and a string of caveats. Chief amongst those is that what I’m talking about here is my room, the system I had on hand and, above all, my particular taste in music, artists and recordings. Other providers are available and may prove preferable -- certainly as far as you are concerned. Then, of course, there’s the most important qualification or caveat of all -- those systems I have heard under familiar or representative conditions and, more critically still, those I haven’t. Chief amongst the latter (surprisingly short) list are the Stenheim Reference Statement and Tidal’s La Assoluta. The Stenheims promise much, but I’ve still yet to hear them scale these dizzy heights, while a date with the Tidals hovers, a tantalizing prospect for the near future. At that point, it might become possible to define the wider context, draw up a balance sheet that positions these competing designs in a way that was possible when the Infinity IRS and original WAMM were strutting their stuff. That’s for another day and another article -- but it’s a day that’s drawing significantly closer.

Meanwhile, the squad list for my personal fantasy audio system would include both the WAMM MC and the Vox Palladian speaker systems. So what about the Vox Olympian? The relationship between the two Living Voice speakers is fascinating but actually refreshingly clear. The Vox Olympian costs more, has significantly more impressive (or ostentatious) finish and aesthetics and offers a rich, fulsome, holistic view of the recorded event. The Vox Palladian is more affordable and considerably plainer to look at while offering a more purposeful, rigorous, dynamically resolute and muscular presentation. These speakers are in all important respects qualitatively equal but very different systems that will appeal to different listeners. For me, the structural clarity and immediacy that underpin the stunning musical insight and integrity of the Vox Palladian win out. The quality of that insight and the directness of the musical connection that results cover all genres -- and embrace all ambitions.

Back to audio fantasy and the unlikely event of my ever being able to afford either of these systems -- I’d take the Vox Palladian/Palladian Basso without a moment's hesitation. I could happily live with the Vox Olympians (who couldn’t?) and I can absolutely understand why others might prefer them, but for me the Vox Palladian and Palladian Basso speak my musical language. Compared to its illustrious older brother, it’s at least somewhat more affordable, more approachable and more immediately communicative; and it’s a genuinely more versatile performer. It’s not exactly the Volks-Vox, but at least it’s getting closer.

Prices: Vox Palladian, from £252,000 per pair; Palladian Basso, from £198,000 per pair.
Warranty: Five years parts and labor.

Living Voice Ltd.
Stanhope House
Harrington Mill
Long Eaton
England NG10 4QE
+44 (0)115 973
www.livingvoice.co.uk
www.voxolympian.co.uk