The Absolute Sound reviews the FIVE17
Thank you, Robert E. Greene and The Abosolute Sound team for spending some time with the FIVE17 system!
A few notable quotes are captured here, for the full review follow the link at the bottom of this post!
"The depth of image can be hypnotic"
"the Five17s sound very musical, smooth, clean, and invisible as sources"
"The bass is surprisingly extended for a speaker of its size"
"The depth of image was very lifelike, and aspects of the music emerged that might have passed unnoticed with other speakers"
"the Telarc recording of the Debussy and Ravel string quartets played by the Cleveland Quartet (an Aubort/Nickrenz recording masterpiece) had a realistic ring to the pizzicato in the second movement of the Ravel, which is seldom heard in music reproduced by speakers, a kind of subtle sonic spectacular in a context—a string quartet recording—where spectacle is not really expected."
"the Centaur CD of the late William Parker singing Copland’s Old American Songs. Word clarity was perfect; the animal sounds of “I bought me a cat” were startlingly vivid."
"The fabulous Rimsky-Korsakov Scheherazade recorded by Aubort/Nickrenz—with the St. Louis Symphony, Semkov conducting, in Powell Hall… with the right user-chosen EQ setting it sounded very convincingly like the sound one hears in Powell (to the extent I can remember—it has been a while) and, in any case, sounded very natural and like an orchestra in concert in a good, or in this case, super-good venue."
( In a conversation with Robert, who is a classically trained orchestral musician, the topic of Powell Hall came up. The founding team of Heavenly Soundworks is originally from the St. Louis area. Robert expressed that, in his opinion, Powell Hall is the best-sounding concert hall in the entire US, which gives a little more context to the above comments on the speakers performance and ability to reproduce quite a spectacular experience.)
"Their sound is unusual… unusually good"
"The Five17s present a distinctive view and a definite philosophy of how a loudspeaker should behave. It is surely worth checking them out—there is not much else around like them"
"The Five17s… present a different view of neutral sound, and one which can be convincing, indeed… What they do, they do very well, and in a remarkably small and elegant package."
Check out the full review by picking up a copy of the October issue or head over to The Absolute Sound by following the below link!
