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Samadhi Ichiban Review
Posted with permission from the October 1998 Issue of Positive Feedback Magazine. Check PF out at: www.positive-feedback.com
STU'S PLACE: Oh no! — he's BACK, and he's got Samadhi Acoustics Ichibans (and a bad rash too) Did you miss me…Did you even know I was gone? Does anyone really care? Well regardless of how YOU might feel about it, I've had a very enjoyable hiatus from high-end audio. I haven't reviewed, analyzed or nit-picked anything audio in over four months. I had to do it. I was feeling rather burnt out — critical listening just isn't fun. So during my vacation from audio punditry, I enjoyed setting up a killer home theater setup and just listening to music for the pure joy of it. Now, with my batteries fully re-charged, I'm ready to ease back into it. The operative word here is "ease." I'm just not ready for another Opus Magnus, or a massive undertaking like my "Tube Fest" series. Not that anyone really wants to spend that much time reading about audio hardware (sigh). I think I'll just look at some individual components and judge them on their own merits — no more compare and contrast shootouts. My other self-imposed rule for returning to these pages is that I won't write about anything that doesn't light my fire in some respect. Life is just too short to bang out prose on some "ho-humm" average gear—"of all the amplifiers I have heard, this is certainly one of them." I have quite a long list of equipment that has passed through my listening room with nary a word mentioned. Not that they weren't decent sounding, quality gear — most were — they just didn't wow me with any aspect of their performance. Obviously then, if I'm writing about the Samadhi Acoustics Ichiban loudspeaker, they must have done something very well in my system, or — Dick Olsher paid me off big time! (Just kidding Dick!) No drum roll needed — these speakers threw a soundstage like a mother! Waaay better than I would have expected from a speaker in this price range. It just so happens that a virtually real, three dimensional soundstage is my number one hot button. Yeah, I like balanced competent performance in all areas — frequency response, tonal balance, resolution, dynamics — but the one thing that gives me goosebumps and keeps me up late at night around the campfire glow of the tubes is that spooky, "you are there, they are here, we are them" soundstaging mojo. I've previously described what kind of soundstaging this is. It's the "naturalist school," as set forth in my VR-8/ Melos review in Positive Feedback, Vol. 7, no. 2. My definition of soundstaging encompasses "imaging" as well. It's the entire tapestry not just the individual "image" patterns. It's a believable rendering of the entire acoustic space of the recording venue, without the hyped, artificial sharp edged cut-outs that I attribute to the "surreal school" of hi-fi imaging. The Ichibans do natural soundstaging about as well as I've ever heard in my listening room. If you don't know what I've heard, you probably don't realize what a compliment this is. Here we have a $2000 loudspeaker that floats a stage comparable to the $18,000 Von Schweikert Research VR-8s (which along with the $12,500 VR-6s, are the current champions in this regard). That, my friends, is pretty damn impressive! My current soundstaging reference is a disc on the Pro Organo label featuring Kallen Esperian, called American Treasure. This disc has it all for us soundstaging dweebs: front center soloist, choral sections spread out across the back of the stage, orchestral accompaniment popping up all over the place and pipe organ providing a weighty foundation. This was the first disc I listened to on the Ichibans, and I knew from the first few minutes that these were worthy loudspeakers. The stage filled up the front of my room, extending well beyond the back corners. Images within the stage had the natural effect of rounded floating cylinders of sound. They were solid, well focused with the breathing/pulsating quality that approaches the real thing. I felt at home and comfortable with these speakers right off. I'll get into the "why" of this soundstaging performance shortly, but first a bit of the "how." The Ichiban, as well as the other speakers produced by Samadhi, are designed by Dick Olsher, formerly of Stereophile, and now of Fi fame. Dick is joined by engineer Ron Cox to complete the Samadhi team. The Ichibans are petite, elegant floor standers, measuring 9" Wx9" Dx35" H, with an upward firing 6.5" aluminum coned woofer and a front firing 1" soft domed, dual magnet, silver voice coiled tweeter. Frequency response is rated at 40Hz - 20 kHz, +/- 3dB, with an 8 ohm nominal impedance and 86 dB (1w/1m) sensitivity rating. I've had a look inside them, so I can assure you that the crossovers are point-to-point soldered, using first rate components. The crossover itself is not quite a simple first-order design. The crossover has been used to tailor not just the frequency transition, but also the dispersion transition from the omni-directional woofer radiation to the more directional radiation of the front firing tweeter. The speaker is constructed of ¾" MDF, with interior bracing to adequately suppress the vibrations of the longer side panels. The top and front facing baffles housing the drivers as well as the speaker platform are finished in a smooth flat black, with the side walls of the speakers finished in an elegant cherry veneer. These are very smart looking speakers that are small enough to fit well in almost any conventionally sized music or living room. Now for the "why." The awesome soundstaging prowess of the Ichibans is no doubt due to what the designers call "Ceiling Boundary Ambience Enhancement." In their words: "… a CBAE loudspeaker mimics the way a live instrument couples sound energy into the room. Both acoustic and electrical means are used to contour the directional response of the speaker so that it's omnidirectional up to 2 kHz, and progressively more directional up to 20 kHz. In contrast, conventional omnidirectional speakers 'spray' midrange sound in all directions, creating early reflections that confuse image outlines and color instrumental timbres. The woofer is pointed toward the ceiling so that it operates at 90-degrees relative to the listening seat. The idea originated with Korn in the 50s. It was embraced by Stewart Hegeman in the 60s, and even Roy Allison is a recent advocate. First, this configuration gives a uniform directional response in the horizontal field. Second, since harmonic distortion beams along the main woofer axis — much like treble harmonics — there is less distortion reaching the listener. The result is increased purity and smoothness… To achieve the sensation of "being there," a semblance of the original sound field needs to be recreated in the listening room. That means that both the direct and reverberant sound picked up by the microphone need to be reproduced correctly. Since the sound field at the listening seat is typically dominated by the reverberant field, a speaker's directional response must be uniform through the midrange in order not to distort the original sound field balance. Most speakers fail to meet this criterion: they start beaming sound energy in the critical midrange." Hmmm…..this sounds an awful lot like the "inverse microphone replication" espoused by Albert Von Schweikert. No wonder the Ichibans soundstage very similar to the Von Schweikert speakers I am so familiar with. I think this notion of direct and reverberant field reproduction and increasing directivity at higher frequencies is theoretically irrefutable. Heck, it's what instruments do! The Ichibans have implemented this theoretical ideal in a very elegant and simple way. Is it a perfect solution? Well, perhaps not perfect. While the up-firing woofer achieves the needed omnidirectional response at lower midrange and bass frequencies, and listening 90 degrees off-axis may, as the designers indicate, have less harmonic distortion, it also creates a minor problem. The fullness of the midrange is moderately affected by how high your ears are at the listening seat. In my room, the mids are just a tad thin when I'm seated. When I stand, so that I can see more of the up-firing woofer, the mids have more of the meat I'm accustomed to. This also has an effect on how dense some of the center images are. When a chesty alto takes center stage, I don't get quite the heft and solidity that I hear with speakers with front firing midrange drivers. Now, I must confess this minor aberration may have something to do with my room. Unlike conventional listening rooms that have absorptive carpet floors and reflective sheet rock ceilings, my listening room is the opposite. My floor is ceramic tile on concrete with only a small area rug in front of the speakers, while my ceiling is a drop unit fitted with commercial grade sound absorbing panels. I may not be getting all of the ceiling boundary enhancement that the design calls for. More midrange spray off the ceiling may flesh out those mids and give me more of the meaty, chewy quality I crave. I doubt, however, that it would do much for center image density, since the sound power response is delayed by 10 milliseconds or more. So how do they sound, besides the soundstaging..? Well, how about balanced, warm, and forgiving. I say balanced, because there are no major frequency response peaks or dips within its bandwidth. There was only that slight thinning in the mids that I mentioned previously. The sound temperature, akin to color temperature for you photography buffs, was on the warm side of dead neutral — definitely no rising top end here. This is a forgiving sound that should mate well with most moderately powered amplifiers (50-200 watts).1 I had good results with the Melos SE-75s, the Golden Tube SE-100 and the solid state, Warner Imaging, Vacuum Tube Emulator. Some speakers make me want to cover my ears and run from the room when played with a hard edged solid state amp, but not the Ichibans. I would attribute this mainly to the tweeters, which don't call much attention to themselves and have a pleasing, silken quality. 1Ye Old Editor notes that he got a chance to hear the Ichibans at VSAC '98 powered by the estimable de Paravicini V20 at a nominal 24 triode Watts per channel. I can assure you that the Ichibans sounded splendid! Scrumptious. This is a little combo that I hope to get to River City for a more extended listen some time… I have not been a soft dome tweeter fan, because I believe the oil can pistonic distortion of the domes at some frequencies leads to an edginess and loss of resolution. This was one of my nit-picks with the Merlin VSM loudspeaker I reviewed many moons ago (there were wire and crossover changes made afterwards). Metal and ceramic domes when properly implemented in a low Q network don't have this problem and contrary to some opinions, don't sound harsh or ring. This is the first soft domed tweeter/ network that I've really liked. It did not grate, no matter what I threw at it, and the resolution was quite adequate. My acid test for tweeters, like most everyone else, is violins. I use Seraphim's Violin Classics (catalog #7243)which is a 2 CD set featuring the great violin works of Mehdelssohn, Bruch, Tchaikovsky, Kreisler and Saint-Saens, amongst others, played by such greats as Yehudi Menuhin and Michael Rabin. (Incidentally, if Rabin's life hadn't been cut so untimely short, I think he would have surpassed Heifetz in violin notoriety. Why? — it's the skill andemotion, man!) The Ichibans handled the test beautifully. I was able to listen through both discs, without irritation or loss of interest. The Ichibans characteristic warmth and sweetness was there with only a slight loss of top end air. They gave great pluck, good rosin, and fair air. Pleasing, equipment friendly sound is a laudable achievement, but it is also one of the factors that differentiate a great speaker from a state-of -the-art speaker. Part of the "friendliness" is a lack of the last measure of transparency and resolving power. Although the Ichibans soundstage is in the same league as the Von Schweikert VR-6s, they are not in the same league in terms of transparency and resolution. Duh!?…. well of course not! Sorry to have to state the obvious, but there may be somebody out there reading this dribble who needs to know why a very good loudspeaker like the Ichiban costs a mere $1,990 a pair, and a state-of–the–art speaker costs $12,500.
There's another reason for the large price differential, and it's probably the biggest reason: low bass response. It is exceedingly difficult to get loudspeakers to produce accurate bass in the 20, or even 30 Hz range. The cost of the drivers and the cabinetry required to reduce resonance is very prohibitive. The Samadhi team has made some calculated compromises to deliver respectable 40 Hz bass in a small footprint affordable loudspeaker. On most jazz and acoustic music the bass power of the Ichibans is quite up to the task — surprisingly good, actually. It's only on familiar pieces which plumb the depths that I was aware that something was missing. The guttural resonances of Glen Moore's 1715 Klotz Bass Fiddle on King & Moore,2 just didn't vibrate my bowels they way I knew they should. And those mind-boggling bass foundation notes on any one of Andreas Vollenweider's records (you know, the ones that made you go back and read the liner notes, because you didn't believe a harp could go that low) were way down in level. 2 … a favorite recording of your Editor, by the way; highly recommended! There is a simple solution to this problem — buy a good, adjustable subwoofer, like Carver's cube.3 Yes, you can probably have your cake this way, and eat it too. Although I have never heard a sub/ satellite system that integrates as well as a carefully designed all-in-one speaker, you can get darn close for a lot less money. I have suggested to the Samadhi boys that they make such a subwoofer available to Ichiban owners who want to make an affordable step up. 3About which, see Dr. Gizmo's comments online at www.positive-feedback.com/triode/triodehome.html. So OK, we're not talking about world class resolution or bass response here, BUT (another one of my big buts) we are talking about world class soundstaging and very respectable performance in all other respects. One of my long time listening panel members, Carl Dake, summed it up nicely when he told me: "Damn Stu, I could listen to these all night….they don't do anything wrong….whew!…great stage." Here's a loudspeaker that I can heartily recommend to my less pecunious friends, one that will show them what some of that high-end audio magic is about. And in my opinion, nothing captures that magic better than a three-dimensional soundstage. High fives to Dick and Ron! Your ears are OK in my book — and so is your respect for a hard earned dollar! Samadhi Acoustics Ichibans MSRP $1990.00 per pair Samadhi Acoustics, Ltd.
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