My thoughts on ESP loudspeakers

I'm lucky. Because of the work I do I get offered free stereo gear all the time from kindly manufacturers who want me to endorse their products. I'm always willing to try something out but usually it goes right back. I'm pretty picky. I rediscovered ESP speakers in a different way. Back in the ancient '90's a friend who was the insurance rep for DCC Compact Classics had me over to his house to check out his new stereo which consisted of a Sony CD player, a VAC Renaissance 30/30 power amp and a pair of medium sized speakers by the name of ESP. I remember thinking at the time that the amp/speaker duo made a very pleasing sound, quite unlike the "in your face" razzle dazzle of most upscale audio gear being produced around that time. I filed that factoid in my brain. A few years ago I was giving a lecture at the Rocky Mtn. Audio Show in Denver and I wanted to check my music disc to see if it would play correctly. Noticing that there was an ESP room at the show I remembered the nice sound at Mark's house and just walked in the room and asked to use the system for a few minutes. Well, the ESP Bodhrans were in there and the Concert Fidelity electronics and I remember sitting there and thinking that this was a sound that I could listen to for hours at a time without getting my ears burned off. Now I have almost the exact system in my house courtesy of ESP and Concert Fidelity. Like I said, I'm lucky.

I want give you a few thoughts on ESP Speakers.

I wrote earlier about how the combination of my ESP Bodhran SE speakers and Concert Fidelity electronics have given me uncommon musical pleasure along with the subtle kind of harmonic, timbral and dynamic nuance I need to hear in my mastering work. (See article here....):

http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=83356

To get both of these at the same time is much rarer than most people think, so I’d to talk a little about it here, focusing on the ESP speakers. But first, I need to define “musicality,” a word which is so often misused but which definitely defines ESP.

Words are tossed around in audio circles all the time without rigorous definitions. To a lot of over-analytic audiophiles, “musicality” can be a bad word, implying smoothing-over details in order to make a component easy to listen to. To others, “musicality” is totally subjective--whatever they like is termed “musical,” no matter how “hi-fi” it sounds. When I say a component is musical, I mean it manages to sound organically whole and seamless and has the ability to move air and convey emotion WITHOUT sacrificing the nuances of detail, harmonics, timing, and microdynamics; all essential for "lifelike reproduction of sound" (to use a J. Gordon Holt phrase). Friends, getting all of this right AT ONE TIME is a rare feat—many “hi-fi” components err on the side of an overly analytic presentation which dissects the music and loses that needed wholeness. Still other components err on the side of lush and smooth, lacking the nuance necessary to be ultimately satisfying—but it’s a feat the ESP’s perform, and especially in combination with world-class electronics like the Concert Fidelity stuff.

I have heard Sean McCaughan’s (the designer of ESP) creations and met him on numerous occasions, both at the CES, Stereophile Show and at my house and he is a great guy who knows what he likes in the way of reproduced sound. I can definitely say that he is a different kind of speaker designer. I would almost describe him more as a design artist than as a technologist. Although he’s obviously knowledgeable and experienced in speaker design (dating back almost 30 years to when he designed on the Beveridge electrostatic team), he is a modest man who would much rather talk about MUSIC than about technology. He goes to a lot of concerts, and his focus is on building products that are timeless and intensely musical, rather than on writing white papers hyping the latest technology. I think his results really speak for themselves: A very palpable, spacious, dimensional, seamless, NATURAL sound, but with unlimited macrodynamics so the speakers can get up and rock if they have to (if you have the juice).

His speakers incorporate some design features which are very different from today’s trends in speakers and they may be hard for some audiophiles to understand at first, since so many people are attracted to speakers that jump out and grab you immediately with tipped-up highs or bone-crunching bass, even if that’s not what real music sounds like. Sean always like to say that ESP’s are not technically “audiophile” speakers—they’re not pyrotechnic enough for many listeners and it’s true that ESP’s may not stand out at shows because there are just too many bright “hi-fi” systems all around to condition showgoers’ ears in the wrong way. Oftentimes, the people you’ll see hanging around the ESP room at shows are musicians and other true music lovers who know what music is supposed to sound like, not audio nerds or gearheads who are looking to hear this or that sonic artifact in a short sound-byte. Not that his speakers are an acquired taste, let me just say that you have to listen for more than a few minutes to let your ears get reaccustomed to a natural sound palate. I always hang out in the ESP room at a stereo show when I want to decompress from the wacky and go back to the lifelike. After 10 minutes with the ESP's, I'm calm again.

Let me list several of the unusual things Sean does to achieve the sound he wants. Oh, by the way, these speakers really could be called labors of love by Sean, if they weren’t so time-consuming and backbreaking to build! A pair of Bodhran SE’s takes two weeks from start to finish, and a pair of Concert Grand SI’s takes longer! This is a true pain in the *** and only someone totally committed to getting an exact sound could do it.

First, Sean angles the front baffles in by forty-five degrees, causing the on-axis sound from the two speakers to cross several feet in front of the listener. This leads to a very wide listening position, the first criterion for a speaker designed for natural music reproduction. No head-in-a-vise stuff here, but amazingly, the imaging is still solid and very dimensional.

Another thing Sean does to achieve extra spaciousness is use aperiodically damped venting to release out-of-phase sound from the woofers and midrange out of the sides of the speakers. There is also a side-firing tweeter which is down in level and out of phase. This design feature makes the speakers almost like dipoles. They throw an unusually wide and deep soundstage, but without sacrificing the important solidity of the central image. In fact, their image solidity and dimensionality is rather unique and actually much better than what you get from most audiophile speakers. Sean says he is asked all time at shows if his speakers are electrostatics! Cracks him up.

A third thing he does is use SEALED-BOX DESIGNS. The aperiodically damped venting is not the same as ports, and you will not hear any “boom” from Sean’s speakers. If the speakers are properly set up (and preferably spiked into concrete like mine are) you will hear very extended bass, but it is not the kind of port-induced artificial boom or slam that so many speakers resort to in order to get bass out of small cabinets. Yes, ESP’s are somewhat large for their frequency response. Sean designs speakers the old-fashioned way, with no gimmicks, but with the creative design touches mentioned above.

The irony in all this is that ESP DO deliver all the craved-for audiophile goods like detail resolution and imaging and soundstaging—again, they’re absolute kings in terms of imaging and soundstaging—but in such a natural way that they don’t jump out and hit you over the bean. Anyone who thinks “musical” means sacrificing detail should hear what I’ve heard when I’ve switched electronics or cables or even vacuum tubes. In fact, I hear these changes even MORE on the ESP’s than on most speakers, and it’s really quite amazing to me how they can be so musically enjoyable and yet so resolving at the same time. That is true design art, and in my opinion, unique.

The other night, Sean, Mike Verretto (US distributor) and I had a truly magical experience listening to some Frankie Sinatra on my ESP/Concert Fidelity system (a rare system in that I can use it for both mastering and listening). There was an extremely realistic and palpable presence to the sound, especially in the midrange, which put Frank scarily close to being in the room, even on this 1953 monaural recording. I even heard a french horn part that I hadn’t heard before on other systems. With my current ESP/CF system, I’m getting a lot more of that magic these days, and I’m too jaded to say that lightly. What is so addictive about the midrange is that it is very rich and tonally natural but also highly resolving, as long as the electronics are up to the job. On too many speakers, that palpability in the midrange seems to get lost in the quest to make the lows and highs stand out so that the speakers are more “impressive” and easier to sell. But even with their magical midrange, the ESP’s don’t sound bloated or chesty, which would happen if a less talented or sensitive designer tried to emphasize the midrange.

One quirky thing about these speakers is that they do take some skill in setup. Because of their additional side-firing output, they are VERY sensitive to room placement but they do respond to minute care in placement as all great speakers should. Of course, friends and neighbors, I’m lucky to have had Sean himself visit my place to set them up properly, and when that setup is done right, the speakers completely disappear, which you would not expect from their large size. This allows them to sound equally as convincing on intimate jazz or chamber music as on Bad Company, Van Morrison or a giant orchestra playing something by Leroy Anderson (check out the great SACD on Mercury Living Presense).

Like all good things in life, these speakers are not inexpensive ($16K for the Bodhran SE’s, which I have now, and $40K for their bigger brothers, the Concert Grand SI’s), but they are hand-built artisan products in which the designer himself is actively involved at every stage of design and production. They are speakers to last your lifetime (my insurance buddy still has his and he LOVES to change gear every few years) and worth the money. Heck, if you bought a Honda Civic you would spend 20 grand and have nothing in 6 years. Your ESP's on the other hand will still be going strong in 20.

OK, blathering over, time to summarize:

Speaker choice is highly personal, since speakers always have more “character” than electronics. But if you are looking for the same things I am: an organic, seamless, spacious, dynamic presentation, with lots of natural detail rather than the hyped-up “audiophile” kind; and especially, if you’re really interested in music rather than just sounds, go hear these beautiful babies!

http://esploudspeakersna.com/welcome/index.html

Here is a shot of ESP designer Sean McCaughan’ and I at CES with the larger ESP speakers. Note the pretty burled maple wood. I have the maple Bodhrans in my living room; very good WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor).

 

I knew I shouldn't have read this post. Next time please put how much they cost in the first sentence and save me the trouble of getting my heart torn out. Thanks for taking the time, though.

 

Geoff,

You're right, the big ESP Concert Grand SI's do use isobaric loading for the bass units, AND push-pull configurations for the midrange units, but the Bodhran SE's that I use do not. The Bodhran's cabinets are apparently too small to fit the compound units into, and the CGSI's complex configurations are too expensive to duplicate in a less-pricey speaker, both in terms of the numbers of top-of-the-line drivers used and in terms of the manufacturing time and effort.

 

Elliot Midwood's ACOUSTIC IMAGE store did that room. The ESP's with Wavestream 6550 amps. Can't remember the rest, sorry.

 

No idea. I just stopped in that room to take the picture. Sorry.

 

Thanks, Mike.