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REVIEW: Salk Sound SongTower QWT Speakers

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Model: SongTower QWT
Category: Speakers
Suggested Retail Price: $1495
Description: Two-way, transmission line, MTM tower design
Manufacturer URL: Salk Sound
Model Picture: View

Review by Boybees on March 20, 2008 at 13:41:26
IP Address: 65.37.139.85
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The “review” that follows is an edited version of several posts I made on Jim Salk’s forum. It should be read as a detailed description of why I am fond of my speakers, rather than as an attempt at a neutral evaluation. I should state that I have no affiliation with Jim other than as a satisfied customer

I purchased the Salk SongTower QWTs in cherry veneer, to replace a pair of Von Schweikert VR-2s. I was not dissatisfied with the VR-2s, but a newly acquired cat began using the speaker grilles as a scratching post. I decided the drivers were also in danger and so replacing the speakers became a necessity (as well as a fun adventure :> )). Thus a main requirement for new speakers was that the drivers and grilles be high enough off the ground that the cat could not get to them. This defines a relatively small list, and the SongTowers moved immediately to the top (based solely on internet research, I might add: I did not audition them before purchase. The SongTowers are/were a new design, and to this day I might be the only owner in Southern California.)

I ordered the SongTowers in November 2007 and took delivery about six weeks later. Jim has provided exceptional customer service since my first contact with him. He answered all my questions promptly and provided timely updates during the build process. He explained that the process consists of six steps: veneering, cutting, glue-up, sanding prep, finishing and assembly. Building my speakers from scratch took a bit longer than he’d originally estimated, but it was clear throughout that he would take as much time as was necessary to achieve his own standards for quality.

The speakers came via DHL in three boxes, one for each speaker, and a third box containing plinths, grilles, spikes, plinth-mounting hardware, and an envelope with instructions for installing the plinths, tips on speaker placement, and a CD with demo. There is also a personalized birth certificate for the speakers. The spikes are solidly machined, with gently rounded points as opposed to needle-sharp points that stick in carpeting. This last feature makes it much easier to do the small positioning changes that are necessary to get ideal placement.

The boxes themselves sport no fancy labels, and they look like they were packed not by professional packers, but by the folks who built the speakers. If you have ever sold large speakers on Audiogon and had to ship them across the country, you know what I’m talking about. You over-spend on packing materials, over-tape everywhere, and generally obsess about making sure the speakers are secure enough to survive being dropped from a loading dock. This is the level of care that is put into packing the SongTowers.

As to the appearance of the SongTowers, my wife approved immediately (as did I). The cherry veneer qualifies as eye candy. The grain is beautifully positioned on the broad surfaces of the cabinet, and it is expertly matched around corners and edges. The clear coat is polished to a shiny reflective gloss. The magnetically attached grilles are attractive and easy to remove and replace (and they should be removed for critical listening, Jim notes).

Removing the grilles reveals the three drivers that comprise the SongTowers' MTM design. A single Hiquphon 0WII soft-dome tweeter is straddled by two Seas CA15 5" mid-woofers.

I asked Jim for his advice about speaker wire and he said (in so many words) “good quality copper wire and good quality connectors will give you excellent results.” I asked him if he could make a pair of cables for me that would bring out the best in the SongTowers. Though he’s not in the cable business, he was more than willing to help. The result was a nicely finished 10 ft pair with spades at a reasonable price.

The SongTower cabinets have the warmth and organic appeal of wood furniture made singly by skilled human hands. If you look closely at the cabinets, you see microscopic details that speak to the personal touch of the craftspeople. I’ve owned furniture and speaker cabinets that are obviously made by machines on an assembly line. They have a “soulless” quality to them. In contrast, the SongTower cabinets are hand-made woodworking projects and the spirit of the craftsperson is evident in the details.

Now on to speaker positioning and bass response. My listening room is L-shaped and large (roughly 450 sq. feet) and. That’s a lot of air for two 5 in. mid-woofers to move. I have the SongTowers spaced about 8 feet apart. They are toed-in to face the listening position. The inside back edge of each speaker is about 18 inches from the back wall. The left speaker is about 3 feet from the left side wall, while the right speaker has the large open space of the room on its right side. The room has wall-to-wall carpeting. The left wall is all glass, but is covered completely by window shades during critical listening. There are no acoustical treatments per se, although the large plush L-shaped sectional couch that that the listener sits on certainly affects the sound, so much that I think of it as a “component” in my audio system.

Some details about that system: the source is a Red Wine Audio modified Squeezebox 3 with a battery power supply. It feeds a Plinius 8100 integrated amplifier though VH Audio Pulsar interconnects. The Plinius generates 100 watts/channel into 8 ohms (140 watts/channel into 4 ohms), and is connected directly to the wall using a VH Audio Flavor Flavor 2 power cord. The Plinius drives the SongTowers through custom copper speaker cables made by Jim Salk.

Low bass reproduction to me is about two instruments: electric bass guitar and kick drum. These don’t plumb the ultimate depths of a speaker’s bottom end in the way that, say, pipe organ does. But I don’t have a strong passion for pipe organ music. What I do have a passion for is trip-hop, dub, and other downtempo beats that feature visceral bass and drum sounds.

I primarily use two tracks to evaluate bass performance. The first is “Certainly (Flipped It),” a chilled-down remix of “Certainly” from the album “Baduizm” by Erykah Badu. The second track is “Karmacoma (Bumper Ball Dub)” a remix of “Karmacoma” from Massive Attack’s second album, “Protection”. The Mad Professor does the remixing.

In my room, a good low end appears to emanate from the floor. It’s as if the speakers are pouring a thick liquid of bass onto the floor and it rolls and bounces like the surface of a water bed. When the bass is right, it connects with the body in a down-going motion. The bass guitar is thick and round and voluminous, the notes appear to take up a lot of airspace; yet they remain distinct and well-defined. The kick drum is all tight impact, like a punch in the gut (but much less painful ;)).

So what is the “bottom” line on the SongTowers? How well do they live up to the ideals defined in the previous paragraph? Pretty darn well: they exceed expectations for what two 5” drivers can deliver in terms of bass response. They do that “pouring bass into the floor” thing very nicely, to my ears. The bass seems tonally accurate, I detect no significant peaks or valleys in frequency response in my room. On my two test tracks, I hear the impact, slam and power that I want to hear.

My main standard of comparison at the moment is my previous speakers: Von Schweikert VR-2s. These floorstanders feature larger drivers and a larger cabinet than the SongTowers, and they use a transmission-line bass loading (as do the SongTowers). If memory serves, the SongTowers do not deliver quite the bass impact of the VR-2s, but they come very close. So close, in fact, that I don’t find myself missing the small additional “oomph” of the VR-2s. Especially because the SongTowers better the VR-2s in other respects (see below).

The moral of this story is that with smart design, many things are possible. Jim and Dennis Murphy (his partner in crossover design) selected excellent SEAS mid-woofers for the SongTowers. They designed a cabinet and a crossover for these drivers that would maximize their ability to deliver deep and accurate bass reproduction. With my room, my system, and my music, the goals have found a happy realization.

In their internet postings, Jim and Dennis make clear that perfecting the SongTower midrange was a central design goal. Did they get it right? To find out, I queued up my favorite recordings of acoustic guitar and female voice, two “instruments” that are emblematic of the midrange. Both recordings, as it turns out, can project quasi-holographic stereo images, but they require a system with transparent midrange to complete that illusion.

For acoustic guitar, my reference is “Krushevo”, a collection of Macedonian folk songs performed by guitarists Vlatko Stefanovki and Miroslav Tadic. The setting for their performance, an oddly-shaped cathedral-like monument in the former Yugoslavia, finds its way into the sound of the recording. Of the 10 songs, “More Cico Rece Da Me Zeni” best captures the interplay of the two guitars in this space. The SongTowers allow the guitars to bloom and render the interior of the building. The players exchange solos and melodies, and the tone resounds. My engagement deepens, and I wonder who crafted these guitars and what woods were used? How large is the interior of the monument, and where in it did the players sit? If there are clues in the recording, the SongTowers reveal them.

As I listen, I become aware of a shortcoming of my previous loudspeakers, the otherwise capable Von Schweikert VR-2s. On familiar records (and these comparisons are only from memory and thus subject to the usual biases) the STs seem more transparent in the midrange than the VR-2s. The VR-2s portrayed music with a pleasant warmth, but in the shadow of the SongTowers that warmth now seems a veil and a coloration.

Because of their transparency the SongTowers are a godsend for great recordings, but they are less forgiving to poor ones. The VR-2s were kinder to some of my compressed, poorly transferred rock CDs. Perhaps more listenable on these recordings, but ultimately less satisfying.

I’m also noticing that with the STs, the soundstage remains more stable from different listening positions than it did with the VR-2s. The latter imaged nicely from the sweet spot, but the soundstage shrank at other locations in the room. Not so much with the SongTowers: one of the upsides of using smaller mid-woofers is less “beaming” in the upper midrange.

How well do the SongTowers reproduce the female voice? To investigate, I dial up Diana Krall’s superbly recorded “Love Scenes”, focusing on the first track “All Or Nothing At All.”
A speaker given to sibilance will show it on this record. The balance struck in the SongTowers is the ability to capture the subtle rough edges, the “smokiness” of Diana’s voice, without devolving into unnatural sibilance. The dulcet heart of her singing is beautifully rendered, the humanity of her performance unconstrained. Credit the artistry of engineer Al Schmitt (as well as producer Tommy LiPuma) for crafting the aural illusion of a small jazz club with candlelit ambiance. The recording anchors the performers in a three-dimensional sound field. The backbeat hangs on Christian McBride’s bass lines - round notes expand from the wooden hollow of his instrument. Russell Malone’s guitar frames a counterpoint to Diana’s voice, its tone rich with melancholy. The SongTowers enable this recording to soar in the way that its makers intended.

Leave it to the treble percussion instruments (cymbals, high-hats, triangles, bells, etc) to expose the weaknesses of a digital-sourced audio system. CDs have never quite cut it for me. I went through several CD players trying to find one that could do cymbals et al. justice. Not until I moved to computer-based audio (via my battery-powered Red Wine Audio Squeezebox 3 playing files off a hard drive) did I discover reproduction of treble that I could live with over the long term. The SB3 doesn’t quite capture the magic of my old vinyl-based system, but that’s another story. It comes closer than any other digital source I’ve heard.

That said, I presented the Salk SongTowers with a treble challenge: “You’re Vibing Me” from the album “Largo” by pianist Brad Mehldau (with Jorge Rossy on drums and Larry Grenadier on bass). Produced by Jon Brion (one of my favorite “Midas touch” guys in the studio), this track bursts with well-recorded drum kit. The detail and staging of the crash and splash cymbals is so exquisite, one can almost discern their diameter (or at least their relative size).

But it’s the swish of Rossy’s brushed snare that might be the Waterloo of a tweeter (and crossover). If source, amplifications and speakers aren’t singing in key, the brush strokes sound like so much white noise. The SongTowers, I’m happy to report, were up to the challenge. I heard nothing but the delicate play of wire tips across the taught drum skin.

I’ve owned the SongTowers for three months now, and the high-end response of these speakers consistently brings a smile to my face. Never too bright, never harsh, never thin – just organic and natural sounding.

Now that I’ve covered the bass, midrange and treble performance of the STs: how to tie it all together?

With a record familiar to many audiophiles: Ben Harper’s “Gold To Me” from the album “Fight For Your Mind”. There’s an authenticity to this recording that I love. The SongTowers tap into it, and release a wealth of details: a high-hat accent throughout that’s crystal clear and locked into place in the stereo image, triangle strikes are that are tiny pure bells, the raw edges of Ben’s voice, the steely tones of his guitar.

The SongTowers respond with aplomb to amplifier power – they don’t shy away from it, they soak it up and give back the force of the music with all of its dynamics. Not a hint of compression as the volume goes up. Even at higher SPLs, the nuances of Ben’s performance ring true. You hear not only the singing, you hear the emotional subtext.

A thought in closing: it gets better than this? These outstanding loudspeakers are the low-end of Jim’s line? It’s hard to imagine what spending twice as much on Salk speakers would deliver. I’m thinking now that with the SongTowers, I’ve taken my source and amp as far as they will go. To appreciate the virtues of Jim’s bigger and more expensive speakers, I’ll need to move up the ladder with those two components.

So be it. In this game, the next upgrade is usually just over the horizon . . .


Product Weakness: None for their price. In an absolute sense, their bass response doesn't reach as deep as more expensive speakers with larger drivers and cabinets
Product Strengths: Midrange transparency, imaging


Associated Equipment for this Review:

Amplifier: See review
Preamplifier (or None if Integrated): See review
Sources (CDP/Turntable): See review
Speakers: See review
Cables/Interconnects: See review
Music Used (Genre/Selections): See review
Room Comments/Treatments: See review
Time Period/Length of Audition: See review
Other (Power Conditioner etc.): See review
Type of Audition/Review: Product Owner




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Topic - REVIEW: Salk Sound SongTower QWT Speakers - Boybees 13:41:26 03/20/08 ( 9)