Stone Speakers 487 Venetia - furthermore...

I gladly host my pal Antonio Scanferlato's short review of the Stone Speakers' 487 Venetia after the first exposure to them a few weeks ago... he'll be reviewing the speakers for an italian paper magazine, soon...

...

Second listening sessions, or better: THE listening, at last!

The first time I listened to these "stones" I didn't express my feeling due to several doubts I had about the amps used during the listening session - i.e. a 50W per channel Class D amp - sadly (read - average/badly) driven bt a passive preamp.

A quick note about average passive line-stages - the lesser models are just a box with a potentiometer and some RCAs and selector switches... (NOT/B - note of translator/Blogger - nothing to be compared with TVC-based passive where every transformer secondary gives a gain setting, usually at 1,3:1 ratio. - i.e. my Luxman AT-3000, Fidelity Research AS-1 and Audio Consulting Silver Rock, for example).

The lesser passive - IMO - simply doesn't properly work with a power-amp: lifeless, weak, sterile!

A provoking sentence: if you power amp sounds good with a pot-based passive line stage, it is an integrated amp... so better avoiding the separates! The problems concerning RFI, more soldering, cabling, etc. isn't worth the hassle, period.

The 487 Venetia speakers and their dedicated speaker-stands are residing in my listening room, now... a couple of days ago one of their "parents",  Dipl. Ing. Giacomo Munari, installed them in-room where they stayed for some hours, since I decide to move them around of about one foot for better sound, as per my tastes.

The ancillaries in my audio systems are the following: an home-brewed preamp based on mythical E182CC tube, a modified Bartolomeo Aloia ST-260, a modified Lenco L-75 with a AT 1010 arm and several MM and MC carts and an old CD/DVD Sony DVP-S7700... last but not least: a laptop for Hi-Rez music with Foobar and D/A Aune S6.

I must say my guessing was... is correct: the stone speakers in my listening room (properly stuffed for resonances taming) sound very nicely... I'm getting a positive feeling, much better - must say - than during my previous exposure to the 487 Venetias'...  more listening sessions will follow... for now, what I'm getting is a lot of music, and how I get it, I like it!

Thanks to Antonio.