Cessaro goes Field Coil!

[purite audio]

A new Cessaro horn loudspeaker ,using four field coli drivers.
http://www.audioexotics.hk/index.php?option=com_simplestforum&view=postlist&forumId=1&parentId=11073&topic=true&Itemid=53

Keith.

[purite audio]

Thefield coil drivers used in the Cessaro Brahms are made by GIP they are Western Electric 'replicas', used at the customers request.
Keith.

[purite audio]

A short review of the Cessaro Brahms, courtesy of Audio Exotics,
The review of Cessaro Brahm is written by David Roger.

CESSARO BRAHMS REVIEW

It’s been just over two months since Ralph installed the Brahms and now they’ve settled in, I thought it was time to give my impressions.

Coming from the Chopin & Sub, which already sounded very nice in my room, I wasn’t quite prepared for just how big a step up the Brahms would be. And they are an enormous step up!

Ralph designed the Brahms as the Liszt just would not fit in my room. The Liszt was too tall at more than 2 metres, and also too deep. The Brahms is about 1.8m tall, 90cm deep and fit (very) snugly in my 4.5m x 3.5m room. My only real input into the design was that I didn’t want subwoofers - mid 30s Hz bass would be fine. And also that if we could, I’d like to experiment with some field coil drivers. Ralph is very clear that the field coil, in itself, doesn’t make a driver special, and that it’s the overall design of the driver that counts, not whether it has a field coil or not. But it was agreed that if Ralph could find field coil drivers that met or exceeded his expectations then we would use them.

In the end Ralph found some wonderful field-coil drivers, the standout to my ears is the astonishingly beautiful GIP Labs 594A, a replica of the WE 594A from the 1930s. It really is the most amazing thing in Ralph’s just as beautiful big red (60kg!) mid horn.

So the sound…First the immediacy or “jump factor”. Literally I have jumped out of my listening seat at the sound of a trumpet. The sound is incredibly dynamic, but not artificially so. The impression is not just of realism, but literally lifelike. Acoustic guitars and vocals are stunningly real and present. I’ve heard quite a few friends say “it sounds like the musicians are in the room”.

Live recordings are incredibly visceral. The Brahms transports you to the concert hall. It’s not so much the illusion of reality, more like being there – a personal time machine! Jimi Hendrix is one of my musical favourites; 1967 Jimi Plays Monterey, 1969 Woodstock, 1970 Isle of Wight; the Brahms makes it incredibly special to listen to these old concerts.


To me, talking about transients, attack and decay makes music sound mechanical – with the Brahms instruments just play totally naturally, whether guitar, piano, brass, woodwind or synthesizer. Instruments don’t just sound real, they feel real. Tone colours are really vivid.

I really want to emphasize once more the gorgeousness of the sound that the Brahms produces. They are intensely, mouthwateringly satisfying to listen to. Music is incredibly rich, but not dark. It is crystal, mountain spring clear. You can hear everything contained in a recording but not in an analytical way, it’s totally natural.

The Brahms have really given me my musical freedom. I find I worry a lot less about the quality of recordings, or whether I have 44.1 kHz or Hi-Res files. Good recordings will always sound better than poor recordings but pretty much everything sounds fantastic. I find I’m digging deeper into my collection listening to and enjoying music that I previously wasn’t. I’m much more likely to put on an entire album and just sit back and listen rather than jump around playing one track here and one track there as I sometimes used to.

The only limitation I have found is that particularly loud, dense music, such as a large classical crescendo can be a bit too much for my little 1.5watt 45s. Maybe time to try a 300B… or a 211…Then field coil tweeter…Then tri-amping… As awesome as they are currently, the fact that there are still upgrades that can be made, that we can iterate towards an even better sound, really appeals to the compulsive tweaker/upgrader in me.

To summarize, when I first discussed this project with Ralph, the word I used to describe what I wanted from the speakers was EMOTION. I have to say Ralph has delivered in spades! The Brahms are a just a wonderful, wonderful speaker, and I feel privileged to have been a (small) part of bringing them into the world!

Keith.