True Sound Works Apogee Diva Ultimate - Any Good?

I am the proud owner of a Duetta Signature for which I rebuilt an external Xover with latest audiophile grade capacitors, resistors and coils. The upgraded Xover made a huge difference in sound quality. I still had the Apogee panel buzz common to all of those speakers who are about 20 years old. I bit the bullet and had these refurbished by Rich Murry.

These speakers are now keepers for life. Bass output is tight, midrange is to die for and imaging is 3D. The only speaker close to it is the ML CLX but lacking the bass content of my Duettas. Rich is a true Apogee artisan and I highly recommend his work. I really think that to beat a refurbished Apogee, you will have to pay at least $25K-$35K for new speakers.

I have owned a pair of Diva Ultimates for about one year. I traveled to Nevada and spent the day with Rich which proved to be a very rewarding experience. We discussed at length his design philosophy. I had previously owned a pair of Duetta Signatures and have heard stock Divas quite some time ago. Prior to hearing the Diva Ultimates i would have chosen the Duettas. Historically there have been many critics who have taken issue with the sonic presentation of the original Divas. Midrange coherence and integration with the film tweeter were problematic as well as bass panel issues. Rich has addressed these areas with great success. Specific redesign and upgrades can be addressed more completely by Rich. Some major changes were the midrange ribbon which is now a pure metal film without the backing, not unlike that found in the Full Range. The crossover had to be completely redesigned, eliminating the transformers. The bass panels now have more powerful and better aligned magnets. The bass impact and definition is quite remarkable, obviating the need for my JL 112 in my case. With all due respect the the Duetta Sig, the Diva Ultimate is indeed a significant sonic improvement. The only reason I would consider the Duetta would be a smaller listening room, where the benefits of the Diva would not be fully realized. A step up from the Diva Ultimate is the Full Range. Of course there is another camp of Apogee adherents who embrace the Scintilla. That is a very polarizing subject. Some elevate it above all others. Many feel the sound is unique and flawed due to phase anomalies in the midrange band that colors the presentation significantly. I have not heard it so i cannot offer a personal opinion one way or another. I have heard the ML CLX and do not feel that it is in same class as the Diva Ultimate. I listen mostly to Classical, chamber and Jazz. I am fortunate to live in an area where i can attend world class performances.

As an aside i have built some custom horns based on a JBL 375 with aftermarket beryllium diaphragms. I actually prefer this system with vintage jazz recordings from the the 60's. The immediacy is reminiscent of my visits to many jazz clubs in New York and San Francisco. My point is that no one speaker system is perfect for all occasions. But the Diva Ultimates comes pretty close.

Pass Labs X350.5 and Modulus 3B pre-amp. ( Evolution Acoustics MMMicroOne and Audio Physic Virgo III )

I have owned both Divas and Full Ranges modified and re-conditioned by TSW. The Divas were originally bi-amped, and then, at Rich's suggestion, I used his passive crossover and single amped them--he was right, they were better that way. I used both tube and solid state amps, and preferred the tubes, and they had no trouble driving the Divas, so rumors about a nasty impedance curve likely are not true.
I now have the Full Ranges. Again, Rich has modified the crossover, so it is passive, and the speakers can be driven by a single amp. I am using them with ARC VT 150SEs, and do not find the combination lacking in any way. Rich is currently modifying the crossover for me (he called me to let me know that he had come up with an improvement) and I assume, as has been the case with all his upgrades, that the performance increase will be noticeable.

Many thanks for the additional responses to my post. Based on the last two responses I am now convinced TSW Diva Ultimate’s are the way I want to go eventually. Besides, they just look beautiful (IMHO) and make a statement about how serious we take our HiFi!

I don't think that your feeling that the Divas could be your dream speakers is misguided at all, Mgattmch.

I recently acquired a pair of original, but late production Divas with the bi-amplification option (including the DAX line-level crossover). Luckily no buzz issues; the foam is good, for now anyway. The DAX (purportedly a Krell design) is filled with mediocre opamps (40 stages!) and was the weak link. I have upgraded it extensively, opamps, caps, etc. Soon to be all tubes. The details are on the Apogee Users site if anyone cares. I would not dismiss bi-amping, although the stock DAX won't cut it and you'll need a lot of technical wherewithal to do something better.

The often-parroted misconception that all Apogees are hard to drive is simply baloney. The Scintilla was the crazy one that dropped to 1-ohm. The Divas are mostly a purely resistive 3- to 4-ohm load (I've plotted the impedance curves of mine), with much more benign phase angles than any cones-in-a-box. They are insensitive however, so you'll need a lot of power, which these speakers can handle with aplomb and grace. I am a tube guy, and I would not have considered Divas if I would have been stuck with Krells or something along those lines. I ended up with two stereo Audio Research D-250 Mk II Servo amps in a vertical bi-amping arrangement (one stereo amp behind each speaker) in a large room. I doubled the supply capacitance to REF 600/750 joule levels. But, you probably can get by just fine on a lot less than a kilowatt.

I hate it when a proud owner crows about his purchase decision as if to reaffirm to himself and to others the enlightened wisdom of his decision. It causes any of us cognitive dissonance to think that we might not have made the best choice in anything in life, and many people will defend their position beyond all reason. But I have to tell you that in my 40 years of being a card-carrying audiophile I have NEVER heard music reproduced as startlingly realistically as I have with the Divas driven by these big tubes. I have listened extensively in the past two years to big Wilsons, MBLs, the Magico Q5, Martin-Logan CLX, Maggie 20.7, Nola, etc, etc. My prior speakers were Quad ESL-63s with my own subwoofers. (NB: I have not heard the latest Sound Labs. I was impressed with them in prior years enough to be curious about them.)

Well, I have to say that the big Divas can do it all: natural detail, extended bandwidth, smoothness, clarity, sound-staging/imaging, lack of coloration, natural tone colors, tremendous dynamics. They have a "jump factor": they can startle and excite me at times in a manner that I've not heard from other speakers. Whoever said the sweet spot is small got that wrong. These speakers sound almost as good anywhere across the sofa and nearby chairs as they do in the "sweet spot" in the center.

But a unique aspect is harder for me to describe: They have this "togetherness" that I find lacking in other speakers I've heard. Everything is of a piece. It's as if all the distractions from the usual little resonances, noises and phase errors have been removed and you are connected closer to the original sound. Distortion is also very low. Everything is clean, but not in an astringent way. In a funny way, they remind me of the intimate connection to music that you get with really good headphones, but without the in-your-head sound-staging aberrations. Several long-time audiophile friends have come away quite impressed. One pal buried his face in his hands and said "simply amazing...". I'm grateful he held back on crying.

Yes, they need lots of care with the associated gear and in setting them up in a room - what else would you expect? They are divas after all. I've got more work to do with my too-reverberant room, but things are working well enough right now to procrastinate.

If and when I need support, I'm sure Rich at True Sound Works will do the work. I am leery of the new modified ribbons as I think that Jason Bloom voiced these speakers expertly. He had quite an ear. But I will listen to them someday and give them a fair shot. Right now I'm plowing through old LPs and having a ball. My electric bill has suffered though...