One Week Reference Fidelity Rhapsody Loudspeaker Review

[User211]

Just thought I'd add I bought the Restek to drive an entirely power hungry design. I haven't tried it with those yet, though, but valves aren't really practical with the design, so one must cope with the relative sterility of solid state designs with them, ho hum.

[User211]

Which is more musical - the speaker or the guitar?

[User211]

The Review Proper

Background

I've known Paul for a few years on and off now. He's an honest, intelligent chap with a big passion for music and gear, and a high degree of pride and personal integrity. The first speaker design I heard of his was the Reference Fidelios, which showed just what can be done with restored Tannoy drive units from many years ago. It is a big, bold loudspeaker, the provence of true Tannoy afficionados. Excellent construction quality and cabinet work, big scale and dynamics, genuine deep bass and really a notch or two above most Tannoys I have ever heard.

Rest assured that while I know Paul, this review is no shill. If they were sub-par speakers, I wouldn't review them. I'd probably just tell him why I didn't like them behnd the scenes and leave it for Paul to decide if I had made any relevant points worthy of attention. It's that simple. But fortunately, they are far from sub-par.

Construction

Enter the new, smaller, cheaper, Rhapsody, at £3K or £3.5K for more exotic casework. But let me just state - when you see and feel these things in the flesh, you know that most mainstream manufacturers simply cannot compete with this design in terms of cabinet work at this price. They are quite simply stunning to behold in the flesh, in my opinion - and this is just the basic ply finish. Fantastic joinery, extremely rigid cabinet. There's no "we used a resonate cabinet for this design deliberately" BS, and you can quite clearly hear than in the sonic results. Even at high SPLs, holding the cabinet with the flat of your palm reveals it is doing very little indeed in terms of producing sound output via resonance. Sure, it is no Wilson in this regard - it is made out of wood, after all. But let me assure you that what you hear won't be obviously coloured by the cabinet.

Hopefully, the pictures and video show just how well this speaker is made and finished. Make sure you watch the video in 720P HD if your internet link will stand it.

[User211]

The Video

I think the video shows the cabinet work quality in real life conditions better than the stills. EDIT: actually it doesn't due to YouTube compression technology. Anyway, here's the video.

[brian2957]

The more I see these speakers the more I like them . Absolutely beautiful

[synsei]

The more I see these speakers the more I like them . Absolutely beautiful

They are utterly gorgeous, I'd love to listen to them but unfortunately that is out of the question...

[User211]

Design

Well, it's pretty obviously a two way, dome tweeter affair. I won't pretend to be able to do better than Paul's own description over at : http://referencefidelitycomponents.c...-loudspeakers/. For verification and validation purposes, Paul's description appears accurate.

Positioning

You want them with the bass ports facing as per the pictures. I tried them facing outwards and the bass appears less cohesive and solid. I had them 19 inches from the front wall and 69 inches apart. I couldn't put them further towards the front wall due to cabling and room treatments, so I am not sure if there would be any gain or loss there. But as ever, final positioning will be to taste and room constraints.

Sonics

Due to having more than a brain cell or two (LOL), the designer is very aware of what it takes to engineer a technically competent loudspeaker. This is evident in the listening.

By taking care with trading off the various compromises involved in any loudspeaker design, Paul has come up with something that balances the numerous parameters well. I'm not pretending I've spent much time looking into loudspeaker design, but it just seems obvious that this is the case.

Why so? Because as others have remarked, this comes across as a speaker with a very flat response, and low levels of colouration. For this reason, it isn't too concerned with the type of music it is trying to reproduce - it does well on pretty much everything I threw at it across genres, with the caveat that what I did push through them was always in my mind a good to excellent recording.

There's a high degree of resolution, very good left/right imaging and front/back stage placement, very good levels of separation between instruments, together with good tight bass control.

Bass extension is good for the size of the box to around 35Hz but it does stop there. Owners of large speakers with extended bass will probably miss something here, but that is just a fundamental constraint of the design, and I'm sure a sub would make amends. For the most part, though, it is more than adequate. It is well capable of comimg out with some really quite surprising slam, and make no mistake, you really know some air is being shifted when replay is at high volumes. Damned impressive for an 8 inch driver. It seems to be a natural function of a large bass port, the long throw driver, and the solid cabinet.

But this isn't a loudspeaker that is all about presenting nothing but transients in a manner that is initially impressive but provides you with listener fatigue after half an hour. It is far more evenly rounded than that. When the recording calls for it, the speaker seems to do it, and you will occasionally find yourself thinking "WOW" when listening to your fave electronica at volume. If you have any, that is.

I found the best lisening occurred at low to medium-high volumes. Low volume resolution is just excellent. Mid volume is a pleasure, but with high volume playback, I found myself applying some digital eq to pull the HF down a bit. Not much - just a bit. I've actually done the same with the house resident Apogee Duettas. I just personally find that a flat response and high SPLs tends to sound a bit too bright. Maybe that's a function of the human ear, maybe it isn't. I just know what I like to hear.

[User211]

More gratuitous pics

[User211]

[User211]

Conclusion

Paul has just been round to pick them up, so I have them no more. I had an enjoyable week with them. I've deliberately avoided talking about how they performed with various tracks, preferring to describe what I see as the basic merits of the speaker.

Sure I can fault the design, but then you can fault every loudspeaker out there. I've been a planar speaker user for many, many years, and I am not liable to change any time soon.

All I can say is if you're in the market for a pair of conventional speakers at this price, go and have a listen or ask Paul for a demo. Hopefully this review will act as a trigger for some to do exactly that. I wish Paul every success with the Rhapsody.