Volti Audio owners, is the fire still there?
Hello all,
Short version, reaching out to the Volti Audio owners here. Is the fire still there for your Volti speakers? Do you still love them today as much as when they first hit the house? I know Greg loves long wall speaker placement with relatively nearfield listening position. Anyone doing more a short wall setup, especially with the speakers pulled into the room? If the fire isn't still there where did you move to and why?
I am Florida based an plan to visit Volti in February at the Florida Audio Expo but it is always hard to fully assess them fully it that type of an environment for a limited listening time.
Long version, long time listener, first time caller. I've done the searches and read the forum for as much detail about Volti owners experience. I have that itch again to change speakers and I am strongly considering scratching that itch with some Volti's. I have only heard the Vittoras greater than 10 years ago at RMAF, so prior to Rivals and certainly the Razz. Since that time I have used 2 different "high efficiency" speakers. No need to name names (not looking to rehash previous discussions about brand X vs brand Y), but one was a rear horn loaded lowther based speaker and the other a traditionally designed 2 way. They both sound great, with with certain types of music are truely magical however neither one seems to "rock out" or have that "fun" factor that Volti is known for (yes, I want it all).
Front end is based on a TW Acustic TT with 2 arms and multiple cartridges
Border Patrol DAC
Pass XP25 phono stage
Pass XP22 preamp
Don't have much interest in changing those.
Current amp is a Pass XA30.8 which would be subject to change if I pull the trigger on the Volti with obvious choices being something tube based (can't pull off any of the Border Patrol amps right now) or if SS moving to the Pass XA25 which reportedly plays nicely with the Volti.
Appreciate your thoughts and input.
@loki_ut , Who's 'Greg'? Someone you know? (you seem to know a lot about him). |
Greg owns Volti. My wife left the building for a few hours yesterday so I was able to turn it up and still amazed at how good my system sounds. Sure there are a few things here-and-there to work on but those are upstream from the speakers (and possibly more on the room itself) but are minor. I finished with Theivery Corporation's "Symphonik" and it was LOL good. Fairly new review of the Rivals from a few weeks ago: I like to hear of others placement with these speakers:
I do wonder how much difference those outside crossovers make (to my ears). |
You beat me to it. Greg Roberts not only own Volti, he is Volti, owner, designer, and manufacturer. I have spoken to him once in person at RMAF and exchanged brief emails about the upcoming Florida show. Once I knew we would both be there I saved us both the extra time of typing back and forth, much easier in person.
I did see the Twittering Machines review. I tend to set my room up very similar to Michael, speakers a good 1/3 into the room and coach is about 1/5 off the rear wall proper. Its a dedicated listening space so I have the luxury to do so. Speakers sound fine closer to the back wall but it seems when I pull them out I get a tremendously deep soundstage.
Great to see you are having such success with a broad group of amplification. I would love to the keep the front end, which to me is pretty neutral, the same and play around with amps to experience the different flavors of audio. Certainly seems like the Voltis will play that game. I am somewhat torn about keeping the XA30.8, works great but probably overkill even for the Razz. In my head if the Volti come to the house I would sell the XA30.8 and grab a XA25 and then with leftover change look at grabbing a tube amp for something different than the Pass. The XA25 in principle is pretty close to the Border Patrol PP amps Greg likes, 2 large high power transistors in the output stage in a pure Class A push pull arrangement. Many have described it as such also, most SET tube like sounding of all teh Pass amps. Interesting that you mentioned the SLI-80 because one thought was to chase down an old Cary Rocket 88 which best I can tell in the amplifier circuit in the SLI-80 minus the preamp stage. My Pass preamp kicks out plenty of voltage to drive the original Rocket 88 to clipping and would let my play around with the 6922 they replaced in the R version.
I did briefly talk to Greg about the new speaker, for those that don't get the newsletter, it sounds like he took the upper horn and 15" driver from the Rival with a new midrange horn in a smaller cabinet than the Rival. Price pretty much splits the Rival and Razz, $11.5K. Selfishly I was kind of hoping he would keep the 12" Razz driver and squeeze the Rival mid and upper horn into a slightly small cabinet at price around $10K (evil thoughts were going through my head of trying to escape Tampa with the show samples). However at that price point I would probably try the Razz first and if I fall in deep make the jump to the Rivals.
I suspect the external crossovers are the icing on the cake once you have everything else in your system ironed out. Probably not the biggest bang for the buck but if everything else is sorted and sweet ending.
Pretty cool to hear them rock out to Thievery Corp, right up my alley. And unless I am reading into everyones comments, given the wide range of music people seem to be listening to on the Volti they must be able to walk that fine line of providing all the details buried in the music but at the same time being tolerant of less than "audiophile" grade recordings. |
