Vienna Acoustics Mozart Floor standingf speakers

Vienna Acoustics Mozart loudspeakers in handsome Cherry and as new:

A wonderful speaker and value at this price point.

Specifications :

Description: Two-way dynamic loudspeaker. Drive-units: 1.1" silk-dome tweeter, two 5.5" mid/woofers. Measured crossover frequency: 2.8kHz. Crossover slopes: 9-12dB/octave, Bessel. Frequency range: 35Hz-22kHz. Sensitivity: 90dB/W/m. Nominal impedance: 6 ohms. Recommended amplifier power: 30-200W.

Dimensions: 37" H by 6.7" W by 11.6" D. Weight: 44 lbs.

Serial numbers of samples reviewed: 4792/4326.

Price: $2500/pair (1997). Warranty: 5 years, parts and labor. Approximate number of dealers: 25.

ereophile's Robert Deutsh wrote:

https://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/197vienna/index.html

Vienna is a beautiful city known for many things, but the design and manufacturing of audio equipment is not one of them. Waltzes and strudel, yes; loudspeakers, no. One exception is Vienna Acoustics, a company that has introduced a line of loudspeakers named after composers: Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, and Haydn. At the 1996 Las Vegas WCES, Sumiko, US distributor of Vienna Acoustics products (footnote 1), demonstrated the second-from-the-top Mozart, and Stereophile reviewers as diverse in their approaches as Jonathan Scull, Tom Norton, and Sam Tellig (as well as yours truly) were unanimous in our admiration of the sound.

An impression of sound quality made in a show environment does not always provide an accurate assessment of a product's ultimate worth. If a system featuring a certain component disappoints under such conditions, this is not necessarily an indictment of the specific component: poor sound could be due to another component in the system, unfavorable interactions among components, insufficient break-in/warmup, or the ubiquitous "room problems." On the other hand, if the system as a whole sounds good, this would suggest that each of the components is performing to at least an acceptable standard. However, it's still possible for unusually good show sound to be due to a particularly synergistic combination of components and/or a room/speaker interface that just happens to minimize a speaker's problem areas. Furthermore, show attendees have only a limited amount of time to listen to any one system, and problems not apparent on initial exposure may become more obvious and bothersome in prolonged listening.

To evaluate a product fairly and accurately, there's no substitute for long-term listening in a familiar environment, with high-quality associated components and familiar source materials. In the case of speakers from Vienna Acoustics, it behooves the reviewer to prepare for listening sessions by consuming generous portions of strudel.

Yes, it's a dirty job, but somebody has to do it.

Design

Sleek, slim, and finished to a furniture standard, the Mozart is said to "gracefully blend into the finest decor." Since I'm not sure if the decor in my home qualifies as "the finest," I couldn't verify this claim, but the Mozart is undoubtedly a very handsome loudspeaker, and its relatively small size means that it's likely to fit into listening/living/family rooms without unduly disturbing the decor, finest or otherwise.

The Mozart's baffle is narrow but fairly deep; that 11.6" depth, combined with its 37" height, gives it a substantial volume useful in extending bass response. The two-way design pairs a ScanSpeak 1.1" silk-dome tweeter with two 5.5" woofer/midrange units made to Vienna Acoustics' specifications. The cone of the woofer/midrange is made of "XPP," a new silicone/polypropylene composite material said to possess an exceptional combination of stiffness and self-damping. The crossover has a 9dB slope for the first octave (both high- and low-pass), and 12dB after that. Designer Peter Gansterer says that crossovers measuring almost the same sometimes sound very different, and that much of the development time was spent listening to various crossover configurations.

The construction features expensive hand-picked capacitors, 2% tolerance metal-film resistors, and 0.7% tolerance air-core inductors. Special attention has been paid to the input terminal block to reduce the number of internal connections. There are two sets of speaker terminals, with a removable link that allows for bi-wiring. The woofer/midrange drivers have separate and dissimilar internal enclosures, each with its own rear port, and a chamber in the base of the cabinet can be filled with sand (I did so). The cabinet itself is built with materials of varying densities and thicknesses, and bracing is used to stiffen the enclosure. Four spikes are provided to allow for firm mechanical grounding.

Setup

I first set up the Mozarts more or less in the position I've found to work well with other speakers: along the 16' wall, with unequal distances to the back and side walls, the speakers subtending a wide angle (about 75 degrees) to the listening position. For the first two or three weeks I listened only casually, making no attempt to fine-tune the speaker position—John Hunter, Sumiko's Director of Sales/Marketing, had told me that he wanted to visit and tweak the setup. John is known in the industry as a setup man extraordinaire (he presented a trade workshop on this topic at HI-FI '96 in New York), so I welcomed the opportunity to see an expert at work. Before he came, the sound was pleasant and laid-back, but had a midbass emphasis with a certain lack of focus and a rather "phasey" quality.

John's pronouncement on first listening to the system: "Not bad, but we're not there yet." He started adjusting RoomTunes and Tube Traps, and moving the speakers by small increments, listening to the effect of each change, while I practiced the poker face that all Stereophile reviewers are advised to put on in this sort of situation. After a couple of hours he pronounced that the setup was to his satisfaction. The speakers were a little closer together than where I'd placed them; the angle from the listening position was about 60 degrees. They were tilted backward (as much as the adjustment range of the spikes would allow) and toed-in to about halfway between the straight-ahead and the facing-the-listener positions. He also pulled the Tube Traps slightly out from the corners, and placed RoomTunes in strategic positions next to some of the record-storage cabinets to damp reflections. The result was much-improved focus and soundstaging; the phasiness was gone, and the sound seemed to "breathe" more. Most pleased, I had difficulty maintaining my poker face.

Listening more critically after John Hunter left, I felt that there was still a little too much emphasis in the 50Hz region. I knew that the Vienna Acoustics factory provided optional foam plugs for the ports; John had told me that he didn't like the effect of these plugs, so he didn't ship them. I phoned him and asked for the foam plugs to be sent. He agreed to do so, and suggested that I also try placing a RoomTune panel about 12-15" behind each Mozart. Placing the RoomTune panels in this manner (with the nonreflective side facing the speaker) indeed helped smooth the bass response, and resulted in a further improvement of imaging specificity. As for the foam plugs—well, I have to agree with John's reluctance to use these for bass control. Putting one in each of the lower ports certainly resulted in tighter, leaner bass response, but had a detrimental effect on focus and the speakers' "open" quality. I did all the rest of my listening without the foam plugs. I also placed the speaker grilles where they belong: stored safely in the closet (footnote 2).

Sound

Prior to the individual setup of the Mozarts in my listening room, I placed them next to my reference speakers, a pair of Dunlavy SC-IVs (Stereophile's 1994 Component of the Year). Six feet high and weighing about 180 lbs, the SC-IV is a big speaker by most people's standards (although it looks positively diminutive next to the Dunlavy SC-VI that was the magazine's Joint Loudspeaker of 1996). I switched the cables from the SC-IVs to the Mozarts and put on the ever-popular Chesky Jazz and Test CD (JD37).

"Hey, come and listen to this!" My wife, Beverley, in the tradition of long-suffering audiophile spouses everywhere, complied. She listened for about a minute and turned to me. "It's a trick, right? You're playing the big speakers!"

The same sort of impression prevailed during the period of formal auditioning. (For that, I did remove the SC-IVs from the listening room!) I've heard other small speakers that can play loud, but they tend to sound strained, like an old Honda Civic doing 60mph in third gear. The Mozarts just took it all in stride, maintaining clarity and focus at levels that cause most speakers of their size to lose their composure. Everyone who heard the Mozarts in my system remarked on how much clean sound was being produced by these loudspeakers.

I don't mean to imply that the Mozart is the ideal speaker for playing rock at headbanger levels in a large room, or that its dynamic capability is equal to that of a speaker like the Dunlavy SC-IV—5.5" drivers are still 5.5" drivers, and Vienna Acoustics have not managed to repeal the laws of physics. But listen to them in a small or moderately sized room at a sensible level, and I think you'll be astonished at how close they come to the type of presentation that's normally the domain of big (and expensive!) speakers.

Having a "big" sound implies, in addition to sheer dynamic capability, realistic image size (see "Big 'Uns and Little 'Uns" Sidebar). The Mozarts excel here as well. Set up properly, they have the much-valued—and rather rare—ability to disappear as sources of sound, leaving only the music. As I'm writing this review on a computer in a room adjoining the listening room, Sonata, Robert Silverman's Liszt CD (Stereophile STPH008-2; in my opinion, artistically and technically the best that Stereophile has produced), is playing, and my attention keeps being attracted by the sound of what sounds very much like a Steinway concert grand. Somewhat tongue-in-cheek, I've called this type of listening the LIAR (Listening In Another Room) test; the Mozart passed it with flying colors.

LITSR (Listening In The Same Room), the soundstage was deep and wide, extending, with the right recording, well past the walls of the listening room. Within the soundstage, images were nicely focused, almost—but not quite—with the precision of the Dunlavy SC-IVs. Image size was realistic—no toy violins or baby guitars here, nor were they bloated beyond what you'd hear live. With the speakers tilted back slightly, image height was about 6-8" above the top of the speakers (not, as might be expected, level with the tweeters). This, too, contributed to a "big speaker" sound, although my preference would be for an image that's a little higher still. (Sumiko is planning to introduce a metal base/plinth with a greater range of tilt adjustment; this could influence image height.)

Dynamics and soundstaging are important, but it's all for nought unless the speaker is able to reproduce vocal and instrumental timbres in a manner that resembles what you'd hear live. To do this, the speaker must have an even tonal balance, maintain the harmonic structure of instruments and voices, and accurately reproduce musical transients. It's a tall order, even assuming that everything in the recording and reproduction process prior to the speaker's contribution has been perfect. (And if you buy that assumption, perhaps I can interest you in some excellent swampland.)

To judge timbral accuracy, I think the most demanding test is reproduction of the human voice. Because we hear voices live all the time—far more than we hear musical instruments—we have much greater experience to draw on. Also, the human auditory system is particularly sensitive to frequencies in the human vocal range. Add the fact that many loudspeakers have the problematic electrical crossover in the same range, and it becomes obvious that reproducing voices in a manner that sounds natural rather than "canned" is no easy matter.

The brochure from Vienna Acoustics includes an endorsement from Thomas Hampson, undoubtedly one of the top baritones on the international circuit. As it happens, Hampson was in Toronto this year, doing a concert with tenor Jerry Hadley in the acoustically superb George Weston Recital Hall. I attended that concert, which featured much of the material on the CD of duets by Hampson and Hadley (Famous Opera Duets, Teldec 73283-2). Listening to the CD through the Mozarts, I was stuck by how much the sound resembled what I'd heard in the concert hall. No, it wasn't exactly what I'd heard live—but it wasn't far-off, either. The unique timbre of each voice was communicated by the speakers (especially when driven by the Balanced Audio Technology VK-60 amplifiers), and I didn't have to engage in too much willing suspension of disbelief to convince myself that I was listening to Tom & Jerry live.

The Mozarts also did a very good job with the female voice, capturing not only the basic character of Sylvia McNair's creamy soprano, but also the way she uses different technical approaches as she sings Purcell, Puccini, and Harold Arlen (Sylvia McNair: A Portrait, Philips 454 047-2). Sibilants—a major stumbling block for speakers—were presented in a smooth, unexaggerated manner, perhaps with a bit of softening—which, given the overly close-up miking of most commercial recordings, is a good thing. Accurate vocal reproduction requires that the speaker be free of midrange coloration, and while the Mozart is not entirely free of box resonances, the speaker's way with voices suggests that these resonances are benign and low in amplitude. (footnote 3).

If a speaker does well in reproducing the human voice, this tells us a great deal about its ability to reproduce a wide variety of instrumental timbres—but it's not enough. Singing consists mostly of continuous tones, so it gives us little indication of the speaker's ability to deal with transients. One of my standard tests for the reproduction of transients is All Star Percussion Ensemble (Golden String GS CD 005), an exceptionally good-sounding recording from 1981 that has more percussion instruments than you could shake a drumstick at. The Mozart did very well on this test: The attack and decay of each instrumental transient was clearly delineated, with a good sense of ambience and "air" around each instrument.

On other recordings, I was impressed with the sound of guitars reproduced through the Mozarts—the warmth and body of the instrument, as well as the transients captured in a way that kept reminding me of the real thing. It was also easy to follow the subtle ebb and flow of music (what some call "microdynamics").

In terms of overall character, the Mozart is fundamentally neutral, its sound being determined mostly by the associated equipment and the recording itself. To the extent that it deviates from 100% Pure Certified Neutrality, the deviation is in the direction of sweet/warm/laid-back/forgiving rather than hard/lean/forward/hyper-detailed. This is not to say that the Mozart obscured or glossed-over differences among recordings and associated equipment. Improvements brought about by equipment changes/modifications (like bypassing the HDCD-mandated gain-reduction in the Sonic Frontiers SFD-2 Mk.II digital processor) were immediately apparent when listening through the Mozarts. The speaker interfaced well with a variety of amplifiers, and was particularly kind to amplifiers whose own sounds tend toward solid-state hardness. This means that, unlike some otherwise fine speakers in the Mozart's price range, its qualities can be enjoyed with electronics that won't require you to take out a second mortgage. The speaker seemed easy to drive, but it's not a particularly good candidate for pairing with low-power single-ended-triodes; the sound with the Cary CAD-300SEI was a little too sweet, the bass too mushy.

Oh, yes, the bass. If one aspect of the Mozart's performance is a bit problematic, it's got to be the bass. The good news is that Mozart has real bass, not just the bumped-up midbass that small speakers typically deliver. The speaker certainly didn't have the kind of midbass heaviness that adds a too-chesty quality to male voices. Bass-drum and organ-pedal notes were reproduced in a way that made visitors to my listening room look for a subwoofer. The Mozart had no problem pumping out the 40Hz warble tone on the first Stereophile Test CD, and even the 31.5Hz warble tone had a fair amount of the fundamental present. (This was not, of course, at trouser-flapping levels.)

The problem was at around 50Hz, where, according to my RadioShack spl meter, there was a 9dB peak in response referenced to 63Hz (footnote 4). I know that my room has a problem in this region; except for the Audio Physic Tempo, every speaker I've reviewed has evinced a 50Hz peak. But in all other cases the rise has been less marked, usually 4 or 5dB. (The Tempo had a 4dB dip at 50Hz.) Fifty Hz is low enough that an emphasis here is not noticeable on most music, and in some instances (eg, the synthesizer note at the beginning of track 7 on Planet Drum, Rykodisc RCD-10206) the effect is quite impressive. However, with recordings featuring string bass or bass guitar, I found that some notes were unduly emphasized, "jumping out" of the musical phrase. Once again, this was at least partly a function of the speaker's particular interaction with my room. (JA's measurements should throw some light on the extent to which the 50Hz emphasis is a characteristic of the speaker itself.) As with any speaker, only a home audition can determine how the Mozart will interact with the acoustics of your room.

Concluding thoughts

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was undoubtedly a musical genius of the highest order. For a loudspeaker manufacturer to name a product after him takes some nerve, especially as you can be pretty sure that the composer was not consulted on the matter. Yet, if Mozart had heard the loudspeaker from Vienna Acoustics that bears his name (footnote 5), I suspect he would have been pleased. If the term "musical" is appropriate to describe the sound of an audio component—and some feel that it should be applied only to musical creation and performance rather than reproduction—then it's a word I would use to describe the performance of the Vienna Acoustics Mozart. That is, to whatever degree the sound of the speaker deviates from absolute fidelity to the source, the results are consonant with what one would hear in a live musical event.

While, ultimately, I didn't feel that the Mozart's performance reached the level of detail, transparency, and top-to-bottom accuracy of the more-than-twice-the price Dunlavy SC-IV, neither was it embarrassed by the comparison. The Mozart's dimensions and appearance allow it to fit unobtrusively into almost any room (a statement that could not be made about the SC-IV), and while it benefits from high-quality associated equipment, the choice of amplifier is not unduly critical.

People often ask me to recommend a loudspeaker. I'm usually reluctant to do so, especially if I'm not familiar with their tastes—I know of no loudspeaker that's right for everyone. But if you were to tell me that you like the sound of big speakers but not their size/price, that you've found small speakers to be deficient in the bass, and that, above all, you want a speaker that sounds musical...well, get thee to a Vienna Acoustics dealer!

 

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Footnote 3 I placed one of the Microscan anti-resonance devices on top of each speaker, which produced a significant improvement in imaging specificity and a reduction in box coloration. Microscan is longer in business, but new versions of these devices are available from Tekna Sonic. Attaching these would spoil the Mozart's blends-into-the-finest-decor appearance, but it might be just what's needed to extract the last bit of performance.

Footnote 4: As mentioned under "Setup," plugging one of the ports with the optional foam plug tamed the bass peak, but had undesirable effects on other aspects of the Mozart's performance.

Footnote 5: Audio Artistry also has a speaker called the Mozart; I don't believe the composer was consulted about the use of his name for that one either.

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Footnote 1: I found out later that Sumiko's role extends beyond that of distributor; they've made a major contribution to the development of design priorities for the Vienna Acoustics line.

Footnote 2: The only speaker I have experience with that doesn't sound better with the grille off is the Dunlavy SC-I: its grille has thick felt strips that are an integral part of the design.

 

 

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