Chario, Academy, Sonnet
Copyright 2010 © Troels Gravesen
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Do not expect a Stereophile type of review of these charming Chario Academy Sonnet loudspeakers. I cannot write page after page of how a loudspeaker sounds. It takes special skills to extend listening impressions page after page. Sometimes I enjoy reading reviews and sometimes I'm utterly bored by a writer repeating himself time after time on recordings I don't even know. What I usually try to extract from speaker reviews is any tiny reservation, any subtle selection of words or phrases that may imply that the reviewer is not entirely satisfied with the product. Obviously a review has to be positive, otherwise no adds from the manufacturer next month. I have to give in that Stereophile had two negative reviews early this year - and my God, the manufacturers got mad! How Vince Bruzzese of Totem Acoustic could make a total ass of himself in his response was truly embarrassing for Totem. Read Stereophile Jan-10.
Anyway, I had a mail from nnnn, asking me to make a new crossover for his newly acquired Chario Sonnets, and having only recently heard these speakers at the Copenhagen dealer - and being pleased with what I heard - I was somewhat surprised and responded that these Chario guys were probably not any guys - and I felt pretty sure they'd given the crossover some deep thought before launch. Hmm..... Two months went by and nnnn had found himself very pleased with the speakers, but offered me to borrow the speakers and check out the crossover for possible up-grades. Not a new crossover, but better components, because what we find in the Sonnet is a bunch of tiny cored coils and loads of electrolytic caps! The quality of crossover components is in severe contrast to the meticulously crafted cabinet, binding post and everything else you can observe from this speaker. Good crossover components are expensive and seriously add to production cost and even in excessively expensive speakers we may find so-and-so components. It doesn't help being uncompromised if it puts you out of business. As always, we're into diminishing return of our investment when going to the extreme and for most people it may not count at all. Most speakers are bought based on looks, rather on sound quality.
The Sonnet cabinet is a masterpiece of CNC manufacture. Solid walnut sides and top. Front and rear panels from sculptured MDF a diy'er can only dream about ever making. Binding posts specially made for Chario (expensive) and both drivers are bolted to the cabinet by state of the art T-nuts. Even the screws holding the drivers are specially made to fit the chassis and finished by what looks like the same nextel coating applied to rear and front panel. Total yummy to the eye and for the hands holding them.
Both drivers are custom made and ooze quality. Bass driver features machined magnet parts and a proprietary Rohacell cone, molded in one piece with none of the problems often seen from poorly made dust caps. Chario has chosen not to do anything about the all too common 1 kHz rubber surround resonance problem, but it's not severe and finding the 'right' rubber surround may cause other problems.
Chario is a true believer in large domes and I like it. Read TQWT article. Here we find a 32 mm dome with silver coating and before I had the opportunity to dismantle the Sonnet, I had a suspicion this dome was a variant of the venerable Audax TW034, but this is not the case. Once more a proprietary driver*. Cloning this speaker is not possible, thus I have no reservation in revealing the crossover in detail. And by the way; I've read (or rather seen as I don't read Italian) several Italian speaker reviews with thorough description of crossovers incl. schematics. Apparently comme il faut beyond the Alps.
*: I actually think the Sonnet tweeter is a derivative of Ciare MT320 with another face plate and rear chamber. The larger domes in some of Chario's portfolio for sure look like Ciare PT383 so I guess Chario is a frequent customer at Ciare company.
The crossover is not the least interesting part of this speaker. Basically a 2nd order filter at 1180 Hz. End of story? Not quite. You need to read the manual for this speaker to get the story behind the chosen point of crossover because it's a long one. Here some quotes:
'As a corollary to this rigorous scientific status, we at Chario Loudspeakers assert once again that it is always possible to work miracles in doing our job, but it is never possible working miraculous designs beyond physical laws boundaries. Sonnet proudly stands at the borderline of audio knowledge waiting for audiophiles to listen to their authoritative voice, because …we think differently!'
Hmm...Who wrote this pretentious academic monbojumbo? I find a contradiction between what's written in these manuals and the honest product performance claims. Because for once we get performance data and measurements that appear to truly reveal what their speakers do. Sonnet: Claimed 90 dB sensitivity is exactly what I measure. Impedance plots, frequency plots, etc., all in accordance with my findings. Excellent!!
BTW: If we go to the Copenhagen dealer on Chario speakers we find 93 dB sensitivity and F3 = 50 Hz. Chario website (and manual) states 90 dB/2.8V and F3 = 55 Hz. I guess this is what we can expect from an Audio Note dealer...... http://www.audioconsult.dk/.
'Frequencies below about 700 Hz are processed by determining the arrival time to each earpinnae and this is referred to as IT ). Frequencies above about 1,400 Hz are processed by determining the energy flow delivered to each era-pinnae and this is referred to as IAD (inter-aural amplitude difference). We soon recognize Duplex Theory not to be exhaustive because it fails to correctly explain the localization process within the missing 700-1,400 Hz range. At these frequencies head & torso are enough obstructive to modify the incoming wavefront (diffraction) so that the crossover from ITD to IAD is not linear and localization cues are not flawless.'
Sonnet Egpu Driver
What appears to be the long and the short of it, is this: The ear detects sound in two ways as described above. I've checked Wikipedia and this seems sound knowledge. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interaural_time_difference. So, between ~700 and ~1400 Hz our brain has trouble finding out what the heck is going on, so by placing the point of crossover between these two frequences, we fool the ear/brain and we can't find out whether the sound comes from one driver or the other. Result: Perfect driver integration! Does this make sense to you? If not, please post me your interpretation. By the way: In the laboratory where I work, we have three incubators side by side. Whenever an alarm (~1 kHz sine wave) goes on, it's impossible to hear from which incubator the damn sound comes, so maybe we have trouble localising sounds from this frequency range). Just a thought.
What is a bit disturbing is that the Sonnet drivers integrate very well. And not only well, but excellent. Came to think of my SP44 speaker with the Accuton dome dome crossed at 900 Hz...
Overall phase integration between the Sonnet drivers is not perfect and with the speaker tilt, the bass driver is serious behind the tweeter making this an anything but time or phase coherent speaker. Check step response below.
Sonnet Drivers
Chario Sonnet also features proprietary WMTTM technology. So, what is WMT? Basically it means woofer-mid-tweeter with the woofer on top. Like Dynaudio used to do - and sometimes still do, so this can't be all that proprietary. You get the lower mid - in particular - off the floor and reduce floor bounce. Not a bad idea at all.
The choice of crossover components is disturbing too. A strange blend of film and electrolytic caps. For the bass driver's shunt cap two different film caps to make 50 uF. Why not a single e.g. 47 uF Solen cap. For the bass LCR circuit (to flatten upper bass impedance peak) four different electrolytics bypassed by a 1.2 uF film cap to make 322.2 uF. Why not a single 320 uF electrolytic? No problem in finding that. For the tweeter a 2.2 uF film cap and next 21.3 uF from two different film caps. Why not a single 22 uF polyprop? No problem in finding that either. I don't get it. In particular the bunch of strange electrolytics for the bass LCR. The use of a PC board is another no-no for bewildered audiophiles. The possibility of targeting a particular sound from the blend of these particular caps simply doesn't make sense. I'm sure this is not the case. The simple reason may be to minimise the general wide spread of electrolytic capacitor values. Usually electrolytic caps are +/- 5-10%, but for this LCR circuit precision is not overly critical, so this really doesn't make sense either.
I guess the Chario crew doesn't give a damn about my preference for high-cost super caps and the like. Audiophile woodoo and snake oil! These Sonnets' owner will replace all caps with super caps and polyprops and time will tell whether this is worthwhile.
With regard to the coils used, my only objection is the bass driver's 1.75 mH series coil made from very thin wire wound around a long ferrit core. This will be replaced by a huge air-cored coil from 1.6 mm wire.
All resistors appear to be wire-wound low inductance types. No tweaking here. The cabinets' solid wood panels are rather resonant and will de damped by 4 mm bitumen pads. Finally the internal wires will be replaced by gold-plated silver wires as nnnn has a preference for this. That's all.
There are many ways to make good speakers and Chario Sonnet is certainly one of the better. Bass appear deeper than cabinet size and measurements suggest. It may not be the most punchy and precise, but it has good volume and overall something most people could live with. Next you have a 'Half-exponential Hourglass Type' vent according to manual! How about that?
Midrange is nothing short of excellent with great level of transparency and lack of colouration. As mentioned earlier, mid-tweeter integration is perfect and the large dome has no trouble providing airiness to the presentation, most likely thanks to a serious elevated response from 6 kHz to beyond my hearing. The dip between 2-5 kHz probably adds to the fact that this speaker is quite tolerant on program material.
These Chario guys have their own ideas and thanks for that! It's been a pleasure investigating their product and hear what they have made of a classic six-plus-five-quarter-inch stand-mount speaker. I'm looking forward to hearing the two speakers with an up-graded crossover - and playing equally loud! Read below.
Further information on interaural time difference can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interaural_time_difference
More info by google 'duplex theory'
Sonnet P2 Reader Driver
By the way: After having finished the page here, I found a review in Stereophile of the Chario Academy Sovran speaker. This 3-way has the same upper drivers - and most likely crossover similar to this Sonnet speaker. I was pleased to see my measurements confirmed by John Atkinson, i.e. the lack of response the the 2.5-5 kHz region, the seriously elevated response above 7-8 kHz and not least reading Michael Fremer's sonic impressions, which were well in accordance with my own:
The Sovran impressed me most with its rock-solid rhythmic coherence and its clean, nimble attack, followed by its smooth tonal balance. Add to that its solid imaging and impressive soundstaging—depending on the speaker positions, you have a choice of a deep, narrow soundstage or one that's a lot wider and a bit shallower, but with consistent reproduction of timbres either way. Add to that the meticulously finished cabinets of solid hardwood, exceptional resolution of high-frequency detail with only a slight tilt toward brightness, and you have a speaker that, while not inexpensive, offers exceptional performance with fit'n'finish to match. But equally impressive was what I didn't hear from the Sovran: bloat, false warmth, etch, grain, or—especially—congestion.
- even without the subwoofer.