˻ PREMIERE ˼

⌈ Pylon S.A. is a company founded in May 2011. It is the largest Central European manufacturer of loudspeakers and cabinets sold under the PYLON AUDIO brand. What's more, it is also a manufacturer of cabinets that are ordered by many well-known companies from Europe (and beyond). They have their own, modern anechoic chamber, and they produce their own drivers, which they uses in many of their designs. We are PREMIERE testing the JADE TWENTY loudspeakers. ⌋

HEN AT THE BEGINNING OF JULY THIS YEAR a pair of Pylon Audio JADE TEWNTY loudspeakers came to the editorial office for a while, I knew that forty pairs had been manufactured and that all of them were immediately bought by audio salons. These are two-way floor/bookshelf constructions with a unique artistic design. The loudspeakers were with us for a while, because I wanted to talk to the company's boss, MATEUSZ JUJKA, and its chief engineer, MAREK KOSTRZYŃSKI, about their special version for the 18th birthday of "High Fidelity" (more → HERE |PL|).

The kind of joyful waiting for the premiere of this model can be justified by its unique artistic design. The project, referring to the 1960s, places Pylon among the group of producers who responded to the market demand. And retro fashion has been around for a few years and there is no end to it in sight. After the 60s, the fashion for the 70s and 80s came, and now we are entering the fascination with the "forgotten" decade of the 90s. All of them are present in the culture of the third decade of the 21st century at the same time and on an equal footing.

The idea for the Jade Twenty was not a „wild guess”, because their direct point of reference are the Klipsch Heresy IV loudspeakers, and perhaps the JBL L100 CLASSIC, Wharfedale with the Linton Heritage model, as well as the Classic series of the British SPENDOR. Let me add that this style was adopted even earlier by companies producing wireless speakers and radios, let me remind the Yoyo from Cambridge Audio, or new designs, also from the British company RUARK AUDIO. With the new model, the Pylon from Jarocin clearly fits the trend.

| The question of optics

THE QUESTION WE SHOULD ask when looking at speakers like the Klipsch Heresy IV or the Pylon Audio Jade Twenty are why they are placed on the floor, even though they are nominally stand mount speakers. The answer turns out to be as simple as it is interesting: to make them pretend they are smaller than they really are. To understand what I am talking about, you need to compare the Harbeth M40.1 standing side by side with the Pylons. Despite the fact that the latter were not placed on the floor during the test, but on low stands, they were visually much less dominant in the room than British "monitors".


And yet their dimensions do not differ that much. The Jade Twenty measures 380 by 640 by 405 mm and the M40.1 430 by 750 by 390 (W x H x D). And yet, as I said, the perceived difference was enormous. Even adding the stands to the Pylons does not change that. They are small and tilt the speakers backwards. We already know it from the Classic projects of the JBL company, but a similar project can be found in the offer of the German company Burmester. Its B15 speakers received stands and together with the all-in-one 161 device they form a retro system called Phase 3; the manufacturer calls this style "Bauhaus". ♦

▌ Jade Twenty

LATE ART DUDLEY, editor of the "Stereophile" magazine, in his review of the Heresy speakers in version III called them "living fossil" (interview with AD in the series "The Editors" → HERE). And that was in 2012, that is ten years ago. This model is still available and has gained followers over time. The original Heresy were introduced in 1956 as the "center channel" for the powerful Klipshorn models. They owe their name to the irony of the designer, Paul Klipsch, who called the departure from the horn-loaded woofer "heresy". Today it is the norm.

I bring back these American loudspeakers for a reason. In version IV these are medium-sized, three-way constructions with a large woofer and two horns for the tweeter and midrange drivers. The load of a large speaker is bass reflex. The speakers are intended to be placed on the floor. Since they are quite short, they are tilted back. In the real world, the sound seems to come from the floor. An important element of their artistic design is the brown fabric of the grille, referring us directly to the 50s and 60s of the last century.

However, when we take a closer look at the new Pylon loudspeakers, it turns out that the similarities are mostly related to the design. Structurally, this is something else though. The vast majority of loudspeakers from the 1950s and 1960s were built with low-power tube amplifiers in mind. So they had high efficiency and quite high nominal impedance. For example, Heresy IV has a declared efficiency of 99 dB, and a real one of 94 dB/1 m/2.84 V, which is a very good value anyway (more in the "Hi-Fi News" magazine test → HERE, accessed: 24.08.2022).

To achieve this, horn drivers were often used, and almost always woofers with paper membranes and a rigid suspension, characterized by a very short stroke. As Marek Kostrzyński told me, he approached it differently. He wanted it to be as universal as possible. However, he did not try to force it. Instead of the highest efficiency, he chose the best possible timbre equalization.

These are two-way loudspeakers and not three-way, unlike probably all the previously mentioned designs. The treble is reproduced by a horn driver made by Pylon, but the mid and low tones are entrusted to a quite ordinary driver. It features a paper diaphragm, but the suspension is made of rubber, thanks to which is is quite a long-stroke driver. It is loaded with a bass-reflex realized in the form of a long, narrow slot in front of the loudspeakers.

There is grill in front of the drivers, which is largely responsible for the vintage look of the Jade Twenty. It is thick, in which it resembles classic constructions. In the course of the development of the loudspeakers, this type of grilles was abandoned because they largely modify the frequency response. The material chosen by Pylon is, as the manufacturer declares, much more "transparent" acoustically than the old materials. And it looks great.

The speakers can be placed directly on the floor or on low stands. In both cases the tweeter will be much lower than in classic loudspeakers, be it floorstanders or bookshelf speakers. In the first variant, it will be only 60 cm from the floor. Therefore, if the appearance of the apartment does not require it, I would suggest using stands. With them, the center of the tweeter will be at a height of 77 cm.

To obtain a consistent on-axis frequency response, the speakers must be tilted backwards by 4º. This is ensured either by a wooden support, if the speaker is placed on the floor, or by the aforementioned stands. They do not look particularly solid, but they fit well with the appearance of the speakers. I am sure that sooner or later domestic manufacturers specializing in anti-vibration products will propose their own version.

▌ SOUND

˻ HOW WE LISTENED JADE TWENTY speakers are designed to be placed on the floor or on low stands. In both cases they are tilted quite strongly backwards. It is best to place them at such a distance from the listening position that the axis of the tweeter is directed towards our ears.

During the test, the Pylons stood at a distance of 250 cm from the listening position and 225 cm from each other (counting from the center of the front panel). They were 78 cm from the back wall, counting from the center of their rear baffle. The loudspeakers' tweeter is not on their axis, but has been shifted to the side. During the test, the speakers were positioned in such a way that the tweeters were on the inside.

I set the distance between the speakers and their leveling using the Bosch PLR 50 C device. More about setting speakers up can be found in the Micro-tuning article. So we set up the loudspeakers, HIGH FIDELITY № 177, January 1, 2019, HIGHFIDELITY.pl, accessed: 10/05/2022. More about the acoustics of the HF listening room in the article Room acoustics and how it works according to MARIUSZ ZIELMACHOWICZ, HIGH FIDELITY № 189, January 1 2020, HIGHFIDELITY.pl, accessed on: 12/07/2022.

⸜ MAREK KOSTRZYŃSKI and MATEUSZ JUJKA at „High Fidelity”

In the test, they were driven using the SOULUTION 710 power amplifier, and the signal was sent via SILTECH TRIPLE CROWN speaker cables. I did a separate test with the LEBEN CS-600X tube amplifier, with Western Electric WE16GA (NOS) cables. The HARBETH M40.1 loudspeakers were the point of reference. The music was played by the SACD AYON AUDIO CD-35 HF player and the MYTEK BROOKLYN BRIDGE file player.

Recordings used in the test | a selection

→ SUPER AUDIO CD/COMPACT DISC
⸜ TSUYOSHI YAMAMOTO TRIO, Misty, Three Blind Mice/First Impression Music FIM SACD 062, SACD/HDCD (1974/2004).
⸜ CHARLIE HADEN & PAT METHENY, Beyond The Missouri Sky (Short Stories), Verve Records 5371302, Compact Disc (1997).
⸜ DIRE STRAITS, Brothers in Arms, Vertigo/Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab UDSACD 2099, „Limited Edition ⸜ № 1808”, SACD/CD (1985/2013).
⸜ THE DAVE BRUBECK QUARTET, Time Out, Columbia Records/SME Records SRGS 4535, Super Audio CD (1959/2000).
⸜ DEAD CAN DANCE, Into The Labirynth, 4AD/Warner Music Japan WPCB-10076, „Audiophile Edition”, SACD/CD (1993/2008).

→ FILES
⸜ GEOFF CASTELLUCCI, Sixteen Tons, Tidal, FLAC 16/44,1 (2021).
⸜ NATALIE MERCHANT Leave Your Sleep, Nonesuch/Tidal, FLAC 16/44,1 (2010).
⸜ JOHN COLTRANE, Blue Train, Blue Note/Tidal Master, MQA FLAC 24/192 (1957/2012).
⸜ KINGDM, Your Love FT. Soran & Reo Cragun, Capitol Records/Tidal, FLAC 16/44,1 (2018).
⸜ ANNIE, dark Hearts, Annie Melody/Tidal, FLAC 16/44,1 (2010).

MAYBE THE JADE TWENTY WERE STYLED FOR "vintage" speakers, but their sound is much more refined and more "contemporary" than most designs from several dozen years ago. Their timbre is even and they generate a large, spacious and dense sound stage. To some extent, they behave like large headphones. I know this from the best horn speakers on the market, and to some extent also from the Harbeth M40.1 that I use.

The thing is that when we sit in front of them, we are acoustically "coupled" with the speakers, as if there was no air between the speakers and us. In the sense that nothing delays the signal from reaching our ears. The driver is moving, and with it, at the same time, the eardrums in our ears. This is, of course, an illusion, because the delay, given a certain distance, is always present. And yet it is an extremely realistic illusion, it feels almost real.

The stage is not too deep, but it lacks nothing in that respect. However, it is wide and densely filled. This is important because horn and vintage speakers have a big problem with that. Pylons do it casually. Since their sound is incredibly fast, we have the impression of the "immediacy" of the presentation. When the cymbals hit, they are vibrant, full and fast. The same goes for the double bass.

I have the impression that the tweeter is of a higher class than the mid-woofer, but they have been put together into a very efficient whole. Their advantages seem to have been exploited and their weaknesses have been balanced. Perhaps that is why the Jade Twenty belong to a narrow group of horn loudspeakers, which do not sound shrill and aggressive. On the contrary. Listening to them was as if I were listening to loudspeakers with beryllium drivers. And these are a bit sweet and incredibly weighted.

This was the case with both CHARLIE HADEN and PAT METHENY's Beyond The Missouri Sky (Short Stories) and DIRE STRAITS’ Brothers in Arms, in the SACD version. However, it was a surprise for me to see how the TSUYOSHI YAMAMOTO TRIO album entitled Misty was presented in a perfectly balanced way.

Contrary to the first two, it was recorded on an analog 16-track M3 S-79 tape recorder, at a speed of 76 cm/s, and mixed into a Philips PRO-S1 stereo mastering tape recorder. The leader's piano sound is extremely vivid and distinct. It is the vividness and distinctness of the natural sound of the piano, listened to at close range, in a small room.

The Pylon Audio loudspeakers handled it exceptionally well. They kept the punch and attack, but added very good richness to it. So the sound did not break up into independent elements, but was coherent. It was similar with the THE DAVE BRUBECK QUARTET’s Time Out. I played it from a SACD with a single layer, which shows a lot of information about the treble. The Polish loudspeakers showed this richness without veiling, immediately.

The bass was very interesting on these albums. The use of a large transducer in a large cabinet could tempt the designer to squeeze the last juices from it when it comes to low frequencies. It's not the case. They are really well balanced with the rest of the frequency range. I would even say, that they acted somewhat conservatively. So these will not be loudspeakers with which we will wallow in the streams of bass. Neither with music played acoustically, nor with rock, nor even with electronics from the DEAN CAN DANCE, we will not get a low, flowing stream of low frequencies.

Jade Twenty has, it seems to me, a different purpose. They are fast, accurate, open, tight and extremely dynamic. Despite the wealth of cymbals, decay, etc., our attention is focused on the midrange. Thanks to that Brendan Perry's vocal on the DCD’s Into The Labirynth was big and massive, and Metheny's guitar on the already mentioned Beyond The Missouri Sky ... just low. It was audible that the bass played an auxiliary role in these loudspeakers. There is a lot of it, but it rather builds the scale of the presentation, rather strengthens the midrange, and does not extend the sound down.

Thanks to this, the presentation is perfectly balanced. Oh, how wonderful the recording of Sixteen Tons from the GEOFFA CASTELLUCCI album sounded! I played it from Tidal, where it is available in basic resolution 16/44.1, in FLAC files, and yet Castelucci's vocal was simply incredible in its presence and density.

It happened again in subsequent recordings, for example in The Peppery Man from the Leave Your Sleep album by NATALIE MERCHANT. There are low vocals of the accompanying bluesmen and a low-set tuba. Everything had a good place in space there, it was compact and perfectly harmonized with each other. The Pylons did not show any clear shapes on any of the recordings, but rather a dense, thick "wall of sound". Within its framework, everything had its place and time, which is probably the most important thing in music.

Despite the positioning of the loudspeakers below the axis on which our ears are located, I did not have the impression that the sound was coming from the bottom. It was as if there were large, Harbeth stand mount speakers standing in front of me. The sound had a very good focus, both on and off axis. Acoustic "coupling" with the loudspeakers meant that the instruments were more "visible" and unambiguous in presence than with most classic designs.

⸜ SOLID_STATE OR TUBE?

SWITCHING FROM the solid-state to the tube AMPLIFIER only slightly changed timbre of the presentation - an extremely interesting thing. The changes consisted in slight shifts of accents, and not in raising or lowering the band. The highest frequencies were slightly rounded, and the low midrange rose slightly. The "magic" midrange of tubes, sought by many music lovers, manifested itself not by warming, but by saturating the sound with small particles.

It was not as resolving, and therefore dense internally, as with the Soulution amplifier and the Ayon Audio preamplifier. But that's normal. Overall, however, the changes to the manner of presentation were smaller than usually when contrasting the two amplification techniques. Therefore, the Jade Twenty will be an extremely cool partner for any amplifier. Any good one, I mean. And with the Leben amplifiers, let's turn the "Bass Boost" knob to the +3 dB position, and going slightly beyond the tonal balance, we shall find lower and denser bass.

⸜ WITH OR WITHOUT GRILL?

ONE OF THE THICK GRILLS FEATURES, such as those used in the Jade Twenty, is suppression of selected frequencies. It is not a problem, if it occurs linearly, due to the gradual suppression of high-frequency energy. The problem, however, is that these grilles suppress non-linearly.

By removing the grills from the Pylon loudspeakers, we will not change the tone in any significant way. That is, the changes are obvious, but they do not have a significant impact on the frequency response range. The treble without them opens slightly, but more important is the fact that the upper midrange is also a bit stronger. As if it was reaching us faster, in a more distinct way.

I had no problem listening to good albums like Coltrane’s Blue Train, "WITH" and "WITHOUT" grills. After longer listening sessions, however, I found that more compressed recordings, such as KINGDM’s Your Love or ANNIE’s American Cars, were more coherent and pleasant with grills in their place .

▌ Summary

JADE TWENTY LOUDSPEAKERS are not unique on the audio market. Provided we acknowledge the existence of a "vintage" or retro market. Having said that, let's add that still they are a niche in a wide range of loudspeakers.

Against the other ones though, they stand out with modern sound, that is, resolving, broadband and well-balanced. With the "vintage" speakers we get the sound building in a tight cocoon between the drivers and us, as well as the immediacy of the presentation. Despite the fact that they are not high-efficiency designs, their sensitivity is higher than average, thanks to which they will play with a wide range of amplifiers, whether solid state or tube ones.

Their appearance is unique as long as we like the design. The workmanship is very good and we are aware that their manufacturer produces cabinets for many European - and not only - high-end companies. Although I would prefer them to go lower in the bass, maybe a bit stronger, I understand the choices made by the designers.

I like these loudspeakers very much, both visually and sonically. They offer pure fun, not forgetting that we also want to know what components are in the system and which album releases we use. The speakers receive our ˻ RED FINGERPRINT ˺. Highly recommended!

▌ DESIGN

JADE TWENTY BY PYLON AUDIO are medium-sized loudspeakers that can stand either on the floor or on low stands. They measure 380 x 640 x 405 (W x H x D) and weigh 25 kg each. The stands are 220 mm high (at the front). The loudspeakers are a two-way design with a vented, bass-reflex cabinet. Their front and rear baffles are inclined at an angle of 4º. Below the drivers there is a wide and narrow bass-reflex port.

The cabinet is made of MDF boards finished with a natural veneer - also inside. The front baffle painted black is an exception. Both drivers are bolted to it, but the PST 25PO.8 tweeter is not on the axis, but has been moved towards one of the edges. The loudspeakers are delivered in mirror image pairs. The compression driver is loaded with a horn. In the tested unit, they were made on a 3D printer, but in production units they are to come from an injection molding machine - they are plastic. This driver features a powerful magnet and was designed and manufactured by Pylon.

The ø 332 mm woofer with a 50 mm copper coil is a powerful unit, manufactured according to Marek Kostrzewski's specifications by another Polish specialist - STX (W.32.4.MC); in the Pylon catalog it is called Pylon Audio PSW 32.8 CS. It has a paper, embossed and coated diaphragm, a large magnet and a basket made of sheet metal. A special feature of this driver is its high efficiency of as much as 92 dB. Both speakers are mounted to the housing with wood screws. It seems to me that such heavy units should be fastened with screws.

The crossover is mounted on an MDF board in a spatial assembly, without the use of a printed circuit board. It is bolted to the crossbar that forms the BR outlet. You can see polypropylene Cross-Cap capacitors by Jantzen Audio Denmark in the tweeter section, and electrolytic capacitors in the woofer section, as well as three coils, all core ones. The drivers are connected to it with not very thick OFC braids. The signal from the amplifier goes to individual speaker terminals. My reference speakers feature similar ones and they are not too sophisticated clamps. They are solid, though.

The loudspeakers can play with or without grilles. The latter are made of quite thick, but surprisingly acoustically transparent material in brown colors. It is stretched over an MDF frame, which is pushed into the forward sides of the loudspeaker. Classic fixing pins were also used, which do not look very aesthetically pleasing. Getting them off is made easier using a "label" with the company's logo attached to the bottom of each grill. This is a great practical help - the grills in the Spendor, Harbeth or Graham Audio loudspeakers are very difficult to remove. These are speakers that will look good in any room. ■

▌ Technical specifications (according to the manufacturer)

Nominal impedance: 8 Ω
Frequency range: 35 Hz - 20 kHz
Nominal power: 140 W
Maximum power: 220 W
Sensitivity: 91 dB
Tweeter: Pylon Audio PST 25PO.8
Woofer: Pylon Audio PSW 32.8 CS
Grill: Yes
Felt feet: Yes
Dimensions: 380 x 640 x 405 (W x H x D)
Weight: 25 kg/pc.
Warranty: 5 years (2 years standard + 3 years after product registration)
Available finishes: American walnut, PURE oil-wax