An email from Arnold Heres was the basis for this article. If he could hand over a pair of Driade Model 2S floorstanders, so I could try them at home. Oh… And he also wanted to bring a Kora TB140 integrated amplifier and some cables to make it extra interesting.
Hadn’t we tested the Model 2S before and what should I do with an integrated hybrid tube-transistor amplifier was the first thing that went through my mind. But Arnold reassured me immediately. It doesn’t have to be a standard review but more of a story about how we listen to music. What are we looking for in this hobby? What do we really care about? Are we listening with the head or with the heart? These are just a few questions that came up as I began this story.
Arnold knew all too well the set I had and he wanted to give me a chance to listen in a different way. I couldn’t pass up that opportunity.
Music was my first love
Music is my life. I get up with it and go to sleep with it. Music helps me get through the day and through life tout court. Ever since I was little, I have been enamored with anything to do with music. I used to ride my BMX around the neighborhood every day when I was a little boy with a Walkman in my pocket. I meticulously recorded the music on those cassettes every Saturday so I would have fresh tape the week after.
In those days, we are talking 1980s, there was no sound limiter on the earbuds so my hearing was quite ravaged. That’s why I rarely turn the volume knob higher than 80 db now. Be careful with your hearing and always wear earplugs at live concerts. Except for acoustical or non-amplified concerts of course.
After the walkman came the discman but it proved to be less handy and especially much more sensitive to shocks. But you could play your favorite albums on it. Or put songs on repeat. I loved that. My headphones were my best friend in the nineties. You could shut yourself off from the angry world and from your boring parents because, you have to admit, everyone’s parents are boring at that age. Right?
In my room I also had a Stereo, as it was called then, and I remember those things went pretty loud. Our neighbor was a pigeon fancier and I found nothing better to do than to put my speakers on the sill of my window and play Slayer through them as loud as I could. The poor guy didn’t win many awards during that period.Â
My first serious piece of hifi was a JVC receiver that looked unattainable for me. I put my face against the window of the local audio store many, many times. I had to save up for it for a long time but one day it finally arrived. When I came home with it I was as happy as a child. By now I was twenty I think and that purchase, that experience is unmatched to this day. I still have it next to the television. This Japanese tuner/amplifier still plays beautifully in my eyes/ears and is indestructible. The volume knob, treble, bass knobs and power button. Everything is right on that thing.
High Fidelity
When my CD player broke I searched online for a replacement and at some point I came across the Denon brand. They had a relatively affordable CD player and so I did some research and ended up at Alpha Audio and the rest is history. I discovered that there were not five but hundreds of hi-fi brands and before I knew it I belonged to the dubious company of audiophiles.
I asked Jaap for months about affordable amplifiers and speakers and he probably got so fed up that he offered me a job as a reviewer. Meanwhile I have been writing for Alpha for over four years and it has become my second home. But we are here to listen to music. Let me recap what set I’ve been listening to over the past few months:
- Driade Model 2S
- Kora TB140
- Sonnet Hermes
- Sonnet Morpheus
- Driade Flow Reference 808 rca interlink
- Driade Flow Reference 808 prototype speaker cable
I am an emotional rather than rational person. A dreamer even who is always looking for beauty in life. And as everyone knows, you find it in imperfection. Perfection is boring and so is perfect hi-fi. But in order to test properly, I did build a neutral and rather analytical system over the past few years:
- Revel Performa M126BE
- Bryston 4B³ Cubed
- Benchmark HPA4
- Sonnet Hermes
- Sonnet Morpheus
- Driade Flow Reference 808 rca interlink
- Driade Flow 405 speaker cable
Tangents
In fact, each component has to get out of the way as much as possible, and so we can say that my set is aiming for the ratio. So it took some serious getting used to the Driade with the Kora producing a very different sound. I always found something to whine about but gradually I began to get the hang of it. Then again, the Driade Model 2S is not a typical speaker. Like the Revel, it is a transparent pass-through speaker but it sounds completely different. With the Model 2S you hear less of the cabinet and music comes off easier but you have to set them up right. In my room, the Model 2S just lacked a fraction of sub bass to be completely ideal but that was not due to the speakers but the room itself.
That observation made me realize that my room is in part a limiting factor. And so I’ve since addressed my acoustics a bit and invested in a large carpet, acoustic panels and acoustic paintings, among other things, to make the room a little less lively and minimize reflections.
The Driade speakers paired with the Kora TB140 are a wonderful match. Not only do we get all the audiophile elements such as soundstage, imaging, insight and flow but there is more. The best components let you completely immerse yourself in the music. You no longer wonder if the saxophonist is positioned correctly on the virtual stage. You just listen. And if you’re lucky and everything is on track, you’re also occasionally actually touched.
My system with the Revels and the Bryston do a lot right – very right – but several visitors have mentioned that, although the set sounds great, it also feels a bit distant. Peter Neirinck of Audioperfect recently put it this way. Everything is perfectly balanced, nothing disturbs and the bass end is excellently defined but I miss involvement. I’m still grateful to Peter for his honest analysis and while I don’t fully endorse it, I get what he means.
The Driade with Kora just touches me more. My laptop goes to the side much faster. Another asset of this system is that you are always wondering what else you would like to listen to. Every genre sounds so refined that you hear little or no artifacts. A good system gets the best out of every recording. Whether it’s a record, CD or stream. Yes, the Bryston provides more subbass and has full control of the speaker but the Kora compensates through greater insight and a kind of je ne sais quoi that is hard to explain. The Kora is uncolored, fast and tremendously dynamic and just lets more information through than the Bryston and that is truly a revelation.
Fazit
Wasn’t it Plato who said there are multiple versions of the truth. Or at least something to that effect. Then again, you don’t put together a balanced system in one, two, three. It takes time, knowledge and, unfortunately, money. A good system has to do a lot. It has to bring the truth but at the same time make us dream away so that we forget this, sometimes grim, world for a moment.
For some it is an endless quest and others just give up and sell the whole thing. If we may give some advice. Keep it simple. Focus on the essentials. Speakers and amplifiers and you will come a long way. Have fun listening and thanks Arnold!