| WORLD PREMIERE |

⌈ CLOSER ACOUSTICS is a Polish brand, founded in 2013, run by JACEK GRODECKI in cooperation with his brother Andrzej and Robert Rolof, focusing on loudspeakers featuring wide-range drivers, also offering tube electronics. We are testing tiny loudspeakers with a full-range driver with an efficiency of 91 dB. This is their PREMIERE review. ⌋

GY LOUDSPEAKERS BY CLOSER ACOUSTICS belong to a group of products that are built and intended for people dissatisfied with modern technologies used for sound reproduction. Based on a hand-made, wideband driver, i.e. without a crossover in the signal path, they are designed to work with low-power tube amplifiers by default. They look and sound completely different than the vast majority of what can be found on store shelves and on the websites of other speakers manufacturers.

Mr. JACEK GRODECKI started his journey into these areas of sound with the modification of a Lenco turntable. This Swiss turntable was introduced to the market in 1967 and since then has been and still is (!) an extremely popular choice - first for "normal" users, and today for people associated with the "vintage" trend:

In 1967, Lenco replaced the proven L 70 model with a new top-of-the-line L 75 turntable. Although the veteran was reasonably priced and brought joy to many audiophiles around the world, there was nothing to regret. The Lenco L 75 differed from its predecessor only in a few, but very important, details. Its main advantage - a simple and reliable drive system - remained unchanged. The weight of the dynamically balanced cast platter increased to four kilograms, only the much more expensive Thorens TD 124 / II used an even heavier one, and the diameter of the platter with an integrated switch increased to 312 mm.

⸜ JOACHIM BUNG, Swiss Precision. The Story of the Thorens TD 124 and Other Classic Turntables, Schmitten 2007, p. 132.

This popularity of L75 was restored by the modifications it has been treated with in the recent years. Let me remind you two such cases, the Polish company NOMOS and the Dutch PTP Audio (model PTP AUDIO SOLID9 with the Audiomods SERIES FIVE tonearm).

The beginnings of the Closer Acoustics company were similar. As its owner recalls, after building his version of the turntable, called SuperLenco, he took it with him to show off his idea to other crazy people at the Lencoheaven Meeting in Beauvechain in Belgium. There he met an engineer from Germany who "came to boast of a minimalist system with very strange loudspeakers in resonant cabinets that used old Phillips full-range loudspeakers". As he adds: "It was a kind of revelation" (more HERE).

As a result of this fascination, research and reflection on technologies from years ago, the Adam and Eva loudspeakers were developed, based on the Supravox 215 Signature Bicone wide-range drivers. Large, heavy speakers with a labyrinth-like cabinet were a clear "declaration of faith" and were to be an important part of not only the listening system, but also the room in which they were located. As I wrote in their test, they were supposed to be a kind of "totem".

▌ OGY

OGY ARE DIFFERENT ON ONE SIDE, and on the other very similar to the rest of the company's lineup. Similar, because these are also speakers with a single full-range driver, in a housing with a short transmission line, and different, because they are tiny. The OGY, measuring 132 x 312 x 306 mm (W x H x D) and weighing 7 kg (pc), look like miniatures. And yet they are full-fledged speakers. Mr. Grodecki worked on their design for three years, and they premiered on October 7th. 2021 during the Berlin Audio Meeting (BAM!).

The basis of this model is an extremely interesting EMS LB5 wide-range transducer from the French company Electo-Magnet Speakers (EMS), with a diameter of 10 cm. It was designed by MICHEL FERTIN, a French designer who is a "living legend" in this part of the industry. He founded his first company, Fertin Electro Acoustique, with a partner in 1966; the first model was ready four years later. In the 1980s, he offered self-developed drivers with electromagnetic drive.

In 2001, he decided to retire and sold his stake in the company. His daughter, Catherine Fertin, however, persuaded him not to abandon the audio world and to do something together. In 2006 the company EMS was launched and a year later its first loudspeakers were ready. Electro-Magnet Speakers uses proprietary full-range drivers, assembled by hand by Catherine. The line of drivers was quickly noticed, and the LB7 model was used by the JADIS in their loudspeakers.

The smaller LB5 model features a paper diaphragm and a wooden, stationary phase cone. Its resonant frequency is very low, at 50 Hz (!), and the frequency response at the top of the band reaches 18 kHz. As we can read in the company materials, the enclosure used by Closer Acoustics "allows the lower range of the band to go down to the useful 40 Hz without any artificial rumble".

The EMS driver is mounted in a narrow and deep cabinet with a transmission line having an outlet on the front panel. The structure is made of glued and milled birch plywood. There are no damping materials inside, while the internal elements are impregnated. From the outside, the speaker is covered with another layer that stiffens the enclosure - this is Corian, an "artificial stone", a material originally invented for the furniture industry, now also widely used in audio. The signal comes out through solid, gold-plated terminals from the American company CMC.

Ogy are available in three finishes. The most expensive one is the one that you can see in the pictures, i.e. in Corian polished to the effect of a piano lacquer gloss. PLN 9,819 a pair costs a version in white, semi-gloss polished Corian, and without Corian on the outside, with an oiled plywood finish it will set you back 8280 PLN. Let me add that the front is mounted in them using magnets, and under it you can see a natural veneer. Ogy come in simple but nice looking bags and the speakers themselves look great, as well.

▌ SOUND

⸤ HOW WE LISTENED I positioned the Closer Acoustics OGY speakers a bit differently than usual - I place them closer to each other and closer to the listening position. The manufacturer says that they will work best in small and medium-sized rooms, although it does not exclude even 40 sqm areas. It is important, however, that the Ogy does not stand too far from the listening position. So during the test, they stood at a distance of 140 cm from each other and 150 cm from me; they were 100 cm from the back wall, and 60 cm from the bookshelves behind them.

It turned out that while positioned so far away from the rear wall they offer an excellent stereo base, but their bass is too light. After some experimenting, I decided that the optimal distance to the wall behind them would be 30-40 cm. But it can be different in other rooms. I performed the first part of the test with the Soulution 710 power amplifier through Siltech Triple Crown cables to check distortion, dynamics and speed. Then I switched to a system with a LEBEN CS600X tube amplifier, with Western Electric (NOS) cables and Belden interconnects (NOS).

I moved the loudspeakers back to the 100 cm distance from the rear wall, and I compensated for the bass drop with a switch in the amplifier, changing the "Bass Boost" setting to + 3dB - that's what the Japanese use them for in their amplifiers. For the test, I used the old, solid Sonus faber stands.

The Ogy are very narrow, so they must be placed on a stable surface. To provide proper stability, I placed the Acoustic Revive TB-38H platforms with three CP-4 pads from this company on the top plate of the Sf stands. That’s what I call a cosmic harmony - the depth of these loudspeakers turned out to be exactly the same the top plate of the Japanese platforms ...

I determined the distances between the speakers and their leveling using the Bosch PLR 50 C meter. You can find out more about speakers setup in the article, Fine tuning. Setting up speakers (HIGH FIDELITY № 177, January 1, 2019, HIGHFIDELITY.pl, accessed October 28, 2021). During the test, I listened to SACDs and CDs.

⸤ Recordings used for the test | a selection

⸜ FRANK SINATRA, Duets II, Capitol Records ‎C2 7243 8 28103 2 2, Reference CD (1994).
⸜ MARK KNOPFLER, One Take Radio Sessions (The Trawlerman's Song EP), Mercury 9870986, Studio Digital Clone CD-R (2005).
⸜ ARNE DOMNÉRUS, Jazz at the Pawnshop. Vol. I, II & III, Proprius/Lasting Impression Music LIM UHD 071 LE, 3 x UltraHD CD + DVD (1976/2012).
⸜ MAGDALENA HOFFMANN, Nightscapes For Harp, Deutsche Grammophon 486 1724, COMPACT DISC (2022).
⸜ KORTEZ, Mój dom, Jazzboy Records JB 034 2 CD, 2 x CD (2017).
⸜ ARETHA FRANKLIN, A Rose Is Still A Rose, Arista Records 18987-2, Master CD-R (1998).
⸜ ART BLAKEY AND THE JAZZ MESSENGERS, First Flight To Tokyo: The Lost 1961 Recordings, Blue Note Records/Universal Music LLC (Japan) UCGQ-9028, SHM-SACD (2021).
⸜ HERBIE HANCOCK, Head Hunters, Columbia/Sony Records Int'l SICJ 10014, 7-inch paper sleeve, SACD/CD (1973/2020).

»«

I CONDUCTED THE FIRST PART of the Ogy listening test driving them with the Soulution 710 amplifier. It is a powerful "beast" of a special design, ie using a deep feedback, but with such a high speed of signal transmission that the solution has only advantages, without disadvantages. However, loudspeakers with full-range drivers of this type usually don’t work too well with this type of amplifiers.

And yet I whenever I listen to designs such as NUMBER 4 III |PL| by Avatar Audio, or the Ogy by Closer Acoustics, I start with this setup. The reason is that it shows me how clean such a loudspeaker is (the amplifier does not add much from itself) and to what extent the distortions it brings with it affect the coherence of the presentation. The timbre is usually unsatisfactory, the whole thing sounds thin and has no saturation, but the purity and dynamics are presented perfectly.

Ogy in this setup turned out to be extremely clean sounding loudspeakers. Both FRANK SINATRA from the reference disc released by Nimbus Records Duets II and MARK KNOPFLER from Master CD-R One Take Radio Sessions, which after changing the content was released as an EP The Trawlerman's Song EP, which is swing music and intimate but intense guitar playing, had the speed and dynamics I expected from them.

The loudspeakers, however, needed more richness, more filling in - I could already hear, that they were small designs that would not deliver much in terms of bass range. So it was high time to change the amplifier - the Leben CS600X was the natural choice for me. It is a push-pull design, working in the AB class, but it turned out to be what Ogy expected and needed. The sound filled in, became complete and also scaled up nicely. It also became incredibly natural.

The most important advantage of the tested loudspeakers is the absolute coherence of the sound. You would expect it from such designs, which is why they use a full-range driver after all. However, this is not a rule. The unevenness of frequency range of such transducers is considerable and their problems often obscure their advantages. Unfortunately, it is often the case that designers, adhering to their ideal of sound, do not notice it and create loudspeakers are hard to listen to.

Ogy are different. These are loudspeakers with very fast and well-organized sound. They are also very resolving. When we play recordings made with microphones placed closely to instruments during the recording, let it be the Knopfler disc, the presentation is shown close to us, almost in front of the line connecting the speakers. On the other hand, with ARNE DOMNÉRUS’ Jazz at the Pawnshop. Vol. I, II & III, where the microphones had a bit more "breathing space" and where some of the sound had been added from the "ambient" microphones, I saw the performers in a nice perspective, behind the speakers. So with the tested loudspeakers we will "see" the sound sources in a similar way as the microphones "saw" them.

Apart from the amazing coherence of the sound, these speakers also offer naturalness. Their presentation is absolutely hassle-free and stress-free. You can listen to them for hours without getting tired and irritated. It might seem that they are not suitable for audiophile analyzes, because their frequency response is clearly limited at the bottom. However, it is not quite so. They show a lot of information about the recording and about the music, so we can analyze anything we want. It's just that it happens differently - through the music, and not "despite" it. This means: music is the most important factor here and listening to it, one can come to conclusions that are interesting for us about pressing, release and recording.

The loudspeakers placed far from the rear wall will slightly emphasize the midrange in the 1-2 kHz range. We will therefore perceive them as quite "light". But let's bring them closer to it, and the sound will fill up nicely and we will absolutely forget that we are listening to such small designs. Especially since Ogy disappear from the listening room. And this is a great achievement for loudspeakers with a full-range drivers.

Designers passionate about vintage designs will tell you that all such designs "disappear", and that's not true. Inequalities in the frequency response mean that we pay attention to them, and thus to the loudspeakers themselves - at least I do. When something "does not work" in the timbre, the illusion of being alone with the music disappears immediately.

Polish loudspeakers do not have that issue. They really disappear, really build a holographic soundstage in front of us. They do not show clear textures of the instruments, but they are so suggestive in showing their timbre and chords that we do not think about it. So the harp from the recently released MAGDALENA HOFFMANN’s album entitled Nightscapes For Harp, KORTEZ from the Mój dom, the recordings from the ARETHA FRANKLIN A Rose Is Still A Rose album, in the Master CD-R version, prepared by the mastering studio for Arista Records, sounded very suggestive, very good.

▌ SUMMARY

OGY ARE SPEAKERS that, when properly driven and properly set, will deliver with a large, incredibly tangible sound. They sound beautifully coherent and show an incredible amount of detail about the recording. However, they are never exaggerated in what they do. You have to listen to them placed quite close to you and they will never surprise you with bass performance. But these are precisely such designs - full of life, energy and colors. On the one hand, they could stand in the recording studio as near-field monitors, and on the other hand, they would be perfect as a companion for long night listening sessions in the living room.

These aren't speakers for everyone, but they weren't meant to be. I would rather listen to jazz and small classics with them, but also vocal recordings, avoiding heavy music. Then to those who understand the assumptions behind them and who are delighted with them, they will offer a lot of joy. ■

▌ Technical specifications (according to the manufacturer)

Driver: EMS LB5 by Electro Magnet Speaker France
Nominal impedance: 8 Ω
Sensitivity: 91 dB
Frequency range: 40 Hz – 18 kHz
Power handling: 15 W
Dimensions (W x H x D): 132 x 312 x 306 mm
Weight: 7 kg/pc.