˻ PREMIERE ˼

⌈ AUDIOPHASE is a one-man audio company founded by Mr KAROL GOLINSKI in 2017. One of the hallmarks of the new times is that audio companies are established not only in big cities, but also in rural areas - this is also the case here. AudioPhase is based in the village of Suków, located in the Kielce district. We are testing its floor-standing loudspeakers from the Instrumento series, model named VIOLA. ⌋

KAROL GOLIÑSKI STARTED HIS ADVENTURE with the professional audio world with cables. Tested by us in September 2017, i.e. just after Audiophase's launch, Devil was an AC power cable (the company's name is stylized as AudioPhase); more → HERE ˻PL˺. To this day, this type of product makes up the majority of its range. These are four AC power cables and two digital, USB and LAN.

In parallel, however, he developed also loudspeakers. My guess is that he needed good speakers to test his other products, and good and very good loudspeakers cost a fortune. So perhaps Karol had the idea that he would design them for himself, for his workshop. This is, by the way, how many very good devices and loudspeakers are born, ‘by the way’, as it were. Commercialized, they could be a new opening for the company.

The → COCAINE loudspeakers we tested in April 2018 confirmed the AudioPhase owner's talent for good products, and at the same time showed that he is not afraid of experimentation. And bold names. The combination of a SEAS coaxial driver handling the mids and highs and an aluminium-diaphragm transducer for the bass is perhaps not an unheard-of solution, but neither is it one we would be familiar with from many other designs.

That's why, when I first saw the Violin loudspeakers, and it was probably 2019, I knew this was the next installment of his unconventional ideas; test → HERE ˻PL˺. Probably in order to differentiate his range of round-shaped loudspeakers from the classic ‘boxes’ he had on offer at the time in the Classic series, he set up the Charles Martin company (a great ‘international’ name, by the way) with Marcin Niedźwiecki. Shortly thereafter, he ran it on his own, after some time he incorporated it into Audiophase, and the speakers belonging to it formed the Instrumento series.

At the time of the Violin test, the Cello model was also ready and there was talk of another three-way design. And there it is, the latest version of the Viola speakers, positioning itself between the two-way Violin and the three-way, five-driver Cello.

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A few simple words…

KAROL GOLIŃSKI
Owner, designer

WE HAVE ALREADY PRESENTED OUR TAKE ON the VIOLIN (instrument) in the form of VIOLIN speakers. Now it’s time to reveal our take on viola, the latest model of loudspeaker named... VIOLA, member of the INSTRUMENTO series. This loudspeaker is designed in the classic three-way system in a cabinet with a bass-reflex tunnel radiating backwards; the whole is based on Danish Scan-Speak drivers from the Revelator series.

Much of the credit for the final effect in the INSTRUMENTO series goes to the cabinets, designed to minimize unwanted standing waves inside them. Each of the components, such as the drivers, cabinet, damping, cabling, as well as the crossover components, have been meticulously selected based on listening and measurements. Visible finishing elements include natural Italian leather and solid wood, all mounted on an aluminum platform with brass spikes. KG

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▌ Viola

MODEL NAMED VIOLA is a three-way floor-standing design with a bass-reflex enclosure. A quick glance at it and it is clear - the manufacturer's idea was to depart from the standard appearance of this type of product, giving it an original touch, while at the same time using this aesthetic choice to minimize distortion. In fact, he opens his text on the website with a reference to the design:

The unmistakable shape and the use of top-class transducers and components combined with natural wood and Italian leather produced a beautiful and exclusive final result in the form of the finished product that is the VIOLA.

⸜ Viola, → www.AUDIOPHASE.pl, accessed: 30.07.2024.

So you can see that the appearance of these speakers matters to Karol. Anyway, if you met the Audiophase designer you would know that the aesthetics of audio products are an important part of experiencing music for him. And that's a good thing, they are connected vessels.

Unlike many manufacturers, not only Polish ones, the company from Daleszyce does not hide production techniques or the origin of components. It should be known that the use of other people's ideas is a big problem for small manufacturers, for whom the greatest asset is knowledge, easily copied knowledge, we should add. Apparently, however, the head of Audiophase believes that the skills of the people preparing the product also count and that a copy made by someone else will always remain just a reflection of what the original offers.

DRIVERS • The speakers feature very good, expensive drivers from the Danish company Scan-Speak, part of the Revelator series. Starting from the top, the treble is reproduced by a soft silk dome, often referred to as the ‘little Revelator’. It is prized for its linearity and precision, which is why it is used by many other manufacturers, including another Polish company, Sveda Audio, so a manufacturer mainly associated with the recording and mastering studio market, in the Blipo Home U22 Limited model.

The midrange driver is installed quite close to the dome, closer than to the woofer, which looks a bit like a combination of two-way monitor and passive bass. A 150 mm Revelator with an incised paper diaphragm works here. The woofer has a similar one, but with a diameter of 180 mm. The transducers are placed on a flat baffle that tapers upwards to help minimize wave deflection at the edges and thus reduce distortion.

CROSSOVER • These are very good drivers, but also very capricious when it comes to accompanying components. This is why you have to be careful with the choice of components in the crossover. The Viola model features some really high quality ones.

It was made using products from Mundorf and Jantzen-Audio. The coils are wound with thick wire, Mundorf Evo-Oil capacitors are also used, and Jantzen-Audio Alumen in the tweeter section. And then there's Mundorf Mresist resistors, QED cabling, and the speaker terminals are from WBT's nextGen series and it's a gold-plated pure copper version; these are single terminals, hooray!

CABINET • The shape of the enclosure resembles an instrument and converges upwards and downwards. As we read in the manufacturer's materials, the walls are made of ‘high-quality sandwich-type MDF’ .

As you can see from the photos, they are milled on the inside in a shape that helps to break up standing waves. The interior is further dampened with felt sheets and fleece. Although the speakers look as if the side walls have been bent, they were actually made using a much more time-consuming and many times more expensive technique, gluing together many individual components going from front to back. And than:

The design is specially developed, calculated and tested to eliminate standing waves to a minimum. The enclosure is free of parasitic resonances due to its unique design.

⸜ Ibidem.

The side panels are finished in natural Italian leather in black, while the front and back are solid wood panels in Old Walnut. The speakers rest on a CNC-cut aluminium pedestal with brass spikes tilting the cabinet backwards ‘for even better timing’. The logo is milled directly into the wood, which looks very good.

VIOLA look great and are superbly finished. This is another design by a Polish manufacturer, after → DIVINE ACOUSTICS BELLATRIX and → GEMSTONE GEMINI ˻PL˺, to name the first ones that came to my mind, whose design and workmanship are of the highest, world-class standard. Bravo!

▌ SOUND

HOW WE LISTENED • The Audiophase Viola loudspeakers were tested in the HIGH FIDELITY reference system. They were driven by a split amplifier consisting of an Ayon Audio Spheris III tube preamplifier and a Soulution 710 solid-state power amplifier, with the signal sent to them via Siltech Triple Crown cables. The sound sources were an Ayon Audio CD-35 HF Edition SACD player and Lumin T3 file player.

The speakers stood at a distance of 236 cm from the listening position and 280 cm from each other, counting from their vertical axis, almost exactly where the Harbeths M40.1 stand every day. They were 85 cm from the rear wall, also from their axis and top edge. However, they can be freely placed very close to the wall, and bass fill will benefit (although stage depth will suffer slightly). The speakers were pointing directly onto the listening position.

I determined the distance between the speakers and their leveling using Bosch PLR 50 C meter. For more on loudspeaker positioning, see the article Mikrodostrajanie. Czyli ustawiamy głośniki, HIGH FIDELITY № 177, 1st January 2019, → HERE. For more on the acoustics of the HF listening room, see the article Pomieszczenie odsłuchowe „High Fidelity” w oczach Mariusza Zielmachowicza, HIGH FIDELITY № 189, 1st January 2020, → HERE.

» RECORDINGS USED FOR THE TEST ⸜ a selection

⸜ BUD POWELL, Jazz Giant, Norgran/Verve Records/Universal Music Japan UCCU-5062, „Jazz The Best No. 62”, CD (1956/2003).
⸜ KING CRIMSON, In The Court Of The Crimson King (an observation by King Crimson) 50th Anniversary Box Set, Atlantic/WOWOW Entertainment [Japan] IEZP-128, „2019 Remix by Steven Wilson”, 3 x HQCD + BD Audio (1969/2019).
⸜ THE BEALTES, Let it Be, Apple Records/Universal Music Group International UICY-16030/1, 2 x SHM-CD (1970/2021).
⸜ CANNONBAL ADDERLEY, Cannonball Adderley Quintet In Chicago, Mercury Records/UMG Recordings UCGQ-9056, „Acoustic Sounds SACD Series”, SHM-SACD (1960/2024).
⸜ PLÍNIO FERNANDES, Cinema, Universal Music Classics/Tidal, FLAC 24/96 (2024).

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THERE ARE SOME TRENDS IN AUDIO that are followed both by users of playback systems, their manufacturers, but also by journalists. It could be timbre, dynamics, attack, saturation, depth of sound and its naturalness. But nothing beats, I think, what is used to be called ‘soundstage’, and what we increasingly call ‘imaging’ or ‘stereoscopy’.

It is a function that places phantom images, because these are not real sound sources, but symbolic representations of them created with the help of two channels, in the space in front of us, and sometimes next to us, or even behind us. And this very soundstage is something that many audiophiles seek above all else. Therefore, when I set up the Audiophase loudspeakers and played a few mono discs, I already knew that they should be listened to by all those who are looking for the hard-to-find thing, namely the absolute ‘disappearance’ of the loudspeakers from space.

This ‘disappearance’ is similar to phantom images, in the sense that it is not a matter of physically erasing the speakers from the room in which we listen to music, but of them creating a sound that causes us to stop paying attention to them, because they seem unrelated to the instruments, vocals and, in general, the sounds they generate. And this is exactly what the tested Viola model from Audiophase is.

It is truly exceptional to play mono material in such a way that the sound comes from a place a few metres in front of us, exactly on axis. Interestingly, with the tested speakers, the so-called ‘sweet spot’, the place where this phenomenon occurs, which is the best place to listen to music in the room, is not at all that narrow. The sound remains stable and large over quite a wide leftright range.

Of course, by tilting our head to one side or the other, the sound moves with us. But in this case, it doesn't blur, ‘roll off’ or ‘collapse’ towards the speaker we are moving towards. It is as if the Violas maintain focus and imaging precision over a wide range of ‘sweet spot’. This is why BUD POWELL's piano from the excellent old Jazz Giant album released by Verve in 1950, which dominates these recordings, had stable contours, no change in its timbre or distance from me, even after a considerable head shift.

As a result, recordings listened to with the tested speakers easily re-create a believable space. This is one thing. But two, this space is very accurate, but also natural in its depth. I started with a mono recording, as this is the quickest test for imaging, and I was pleased with what I heard. The recordings from the aforementioned album are quite light, sometimes even bright, and yet Karol Golinski's speakers showed them without sharpening, without shrillness, maintaining the depth of the image.

Which also came out very nicely on KING CRIMSON's In The Court Of The Crimson King (an observation by King Crimson) in Steven Wilson's 2019 remix. His version, made from the original eight-track ‘master’ tapes, emphasizes not only the depth of sound, but also the selectivity of the instruments and vocals. It could now be heard that the speakers maintain excellent stereophony, both in width and depth, and do an excellent job of distinguishing sound sources on stage, even when these are close together.

To reduce the value of this design to spatial presentation, however, would be a gross misunderstanding. The phase stability, the temporal coherence, that , as I understand it, is what makes the imaging so spectacular, also carries over to the timbre. It's not a direct relationship, but if the presentation is internally coherent, with no ‘twitchy’ edges, fuzzy attack, etc., then we get a deep timbral sound, as here.

Robert Fripp's guitars from the recalled album had a great timbre, sweet when needed, sonorous at other times, and the Mellotron, played by Ian McDonald, retained a strong attack, but more importantly there was fill and wide plans thrown in front of me while behind Greg Lake's instruments and vocals. It was extremely satisfying, precise yet deep playing.

Also, playing the last track on the Let it Be album by THE BEALTES, Get Back, I got a dense, powerful, saturated presentation. The Polish speakers, on the one hand, are very precise, as Bud Powell has already shown, but on the other hand they are not dry, nor do they have an overblown hardness of attack. I would even say that in prolonged listening they seem soft in how they deliver the sound of the snare drum, guitars or the big drum of the drums.

Lennon's playful introduction, which begins the piece, showing the musicians relaxed during a kind of jam session, was wonderfully clear but also emotional. You could sense both the desire to ease the tension of the situation and the emotion that made this an attempt to cover it, rather than a truly relaxed moment during the marathon that was recording this album and filming the process.

Skipping ahead to Dig A Pony we hear in turn a concert situation, but from the stage rather than the studio, which again shows that Violas excel at differentiating emotion; this recording comes from a quickly improvised performance by the band on the roof of the EMI Records studio (now Abbey Road). Gil Martin's 2021 remix emphasizes the separation of the instruments and deepens their timbre and adds wonderfully to their three-dimensionality, in what would be similar to the Wilson remix cited earlier. And it is precisely such things, seemingly small but nevertheless of colossal importance from an artistic point of view, that the Audiophase loudspeakers show effortlessly.

And so it is with any material. There is freedom of playing, there is saturation, there is differentiation, there is also very nice bass. The latter doesn't extend super deep, to be clear. I didn’t „feel” it in my bones either. But it is deep, precise, a little soft, and also has a very nice timbre. It gives a great foundation for all instruments and vocals. The sound has a large scale thanks to it, it is also tangible. And all this without bringing it closer to us. These are designs that show events starting from the line connecting the speakers deep into the stage. We have the impression as if we were listening to a saturated tube amplifier.

And yet the treble and upper midrange are accurate and sonorous. They carry a wealth of information, and are not at all exaggerated or jazzy. In which they resemble the sound of my Harbeth M40.1 speakers, although they feature, after all, completely different drivers. In fact, the Audiophase are speakers that do not provoke a search for ‘bottom’ or ‘top’, because they play absolutely coherently. This is probably the most difficult thing - to align all the drivers in such a way that it seems as if one is playing. Karol has succeeded in this feat. I don't know if it's intentional, but the Violas are more classical in their delivery than Audiophase's Classic Series speakers.

Which is all the more commendable is that it has managed to do all this while maintaining wonderful dynamics, both on a macro and micro scale. The instruments are alive, as is the overall delivery. The slam of the kick drum, so important in King Crimson recordings, was massive and dense. CANNONBAL ADDERLEY'S saxophone from the latest release of this disc on the SHM-SACD remastered by Ryan Smith had velvet in its sound, a long reverb behind it but also was attacking, powerful, thrusting, as a good saxophone is.

At the very end, I listened for a while to music with the speakers tilted slightly away from my ears, with the axes crossing about a metre behind my head, as suggested in an email to me by Karol, their designer. The stage then expands and we get the impression of more air in the room. PLÍNIO FERNANDES' guitar from the Cinema album then had a larger body.

But at the same time, gone was that wonderful focus that these speakers offer, while maintaining a soft attack. So I was relieved to return to the initial set-up, that is, with the tweeters directly aimed at my ears. Perhaps in a less damped room the reduction in the amount of treble, which is what you get by toeing in or out the speakers, will be useful. In mine it wasn't.

▌ Summary

I VERY MUCH ENJOYED THE VIOLA speakers. I think Karol has something in hand, both in terms of design, workmanship and sound, that makes his products very friendly to the music lover. That is, they do not tire or attack. Played very loudly they move towards a slight aggressiveness, so I would listen to them maybe not quietly, as they worked well with the high SPL levels I usually listen to music with, but also without overloading them.

These are speakers that encourage listening to music. They have excellent proportions between sub-ranges and are more than adequately spacious. The filled in, rich lower midrange gives the impression of experiencing real vocals and instruments, without adding to much weight to the presentation unnecessarily. The bass is soft and deep, but the bass-reflex does not pump air just for effect. A really excellent, classy product for people who like different types of music, because the tested loudspeakers differentiate recordings perfectly, without punishing them for mistakes. Highly recommended. ●

▌ Technical specifications (according to the manufacturer)

Frequency range: 32 Hz – 25 kHz
Sensitivity: 87 dB
Nominal impedance: 8 Ω (minimum 5,6 Ω)
Dimensions (H x W x D): 1040 x 230 x 343 mm
Weight: 39 kg/pc.

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THIS TEST HAS BEEN DESIGNED ACCORDING TO THE GUIDELINES adopted by the Association of International Audiophile Publications, an international audio press association concerned with ethical and professional standards in our industry, of which HIGH FIDELITY is a founding member. More about the association and its constituent titles → HERE.

→ www.AIAP-online.org