Audiophiles' System. Review on Sonodyne Speakers

I am an avid listener with interest in rock, pop, Indian classical vocal and instrumental, fusion etc. I have heard several thousand hours of live music(without amplifications) in my childhood and younger days, some of it seated next to the musician(s). So, when I started listening to music on a stereo in my teens, search for rich music became a constant endeavor. In mid 80s, the Panasonic stereo with original cassettes were great. Soon its distortions were clear. Then came larger speakers and amplifiers from Lamington road. Then dissatisfied with these, a knowledgeable friend built a sophisticated and powerful amplifier for me. To get commensurate satisfaction on speakers, I bought speakers and circuits and experimented with various cabinets. Soon, its shortcomings were evident. So I moved onto purchasing something ready-made as soon as I got myself a job. There was a problem: none of the retailed consumer music systems matched my expectations. As a consequence over the years I have ended up owning many music sets. To support my tastes, I have built up a largish music collection of over 1000 albums(about 700 physical CDs and about 300+ albums from emusic.com), and all of it legitimately purchased.

As I moved from thrash metal in younger days, to the subtleties of fusion and Hindustani, sound produced by every note began to matter even more. From late 2009 onwards, I began my hunt for a system to satisfy my expectations. While some Yamaha systems were being retailed at major stores, the problem was that the salesmen did not have much idea of the technicalities, to answer my queries. Nor did the systems retailed match the sounds I was longing to hear.

To decide the music system of your choice, you need to zero in on a track that exposes music systems’ weaknesses. And that track has to be something you’ve heard many times. I decided on ‘Where you think you’re going’ by Dire Straits. It has good clear guitar and vocals, near pauses to expose noises, low notes and drum introduced later in a manner perfect to check sounds. I began playing this track at showrooms one after another. I had Sonodyne somewhere in mind given my past experience with its clarity and indeed the only desi system that stands up to international quality. After many trials, I tried the track at Sonodyne’s showroom. Beforehand, I had been able to speak to the sales team and explained my requirement. When I visited the showroom, I could hear my track on Sonodyne Sonus 2605 V2 tower speakers. The sound was true to vocals and the guitars. It was powered by a Denon amplifier. However, the drums did not sound true. So, a Sonodyne subwoofer called Roarr 210 was added. Now the drums sounded true as well. Then they changed the amplifier to Marantz SR4023. The result was terrific. Guitars were tearing in, vocals sounded natural and the drums kicked on the chest. I wanted to lose no time in getting the system home. The set was out of stock! I was greatly disappointed, but the delay was largely made up by the intense involvement and passion for music of the Sonodyne staff and its head.

Finally, my system arrived. After trying some and buying 4 different cd players, I had already selected my CD player as Sony DVP-NS728H. The Sonodyne towers, bass speakers, Maratanz amplifier and the CD player were all connected by high quality cable that I could procure with some advice from Sonodyne staff.

Initially I was listening to my music rather loud. With earlier sets, I stopped pumping the volume up when distortions became apparent. However with this configuration, I never realised that I had pumped up the volume - you don't find any distortions in the whole range of frequencies even as volume keeps going up. Only later you find out that this system can deliver all sounds to your ears even at very low volumes. This is a quite a feat in a noisy place like Mumbai, where the ambient noise is high and after a busy day in office I have to often find refuge in my Bose Noise Cancellation headphones.

Summer had set in and the whirring sound produced by the fan(living room has no AC yet) meant too much of distortion to listen to a sophisticated system like this. I had to wait to try out my collection. With the first rains, now I switch off the fan and listen to tracks. The results:

1) The Saraswati prayer by Brinda RoyChaudhuri and the track Baro Asha Kare by Sraboni Sen(both pure vocal, no instrument) could illusion just about any listener I played it to, into thinking that it was being sung by a human in the room

2) In the track Love, from Return to the Valley(Pt Hariprasad Chaurasia and Pt Shiv Kr Sharma), I could hear the fingers of the Pakhawaj player gently stroking in anticipation for the first time. I had heard the track many times earlier, but had never realized that well before the Pakhawaj comes into play, the player strokes with his fingertips in rhythm in almost an inaudible manner.

3) The Pink Floyd CDs sounded great, unthinkable to be able to produce that kind of sound at home.

Overall, I am very satisfied with Sonodyne speakers. And I would recommend it to any serious audiophile.

Tips:

1) Use only CDs(not low quality mp3s) for best result. Even the high quality mp3 from emusic.com(320 kbps) sounds close to true when burnt to a disc(MP3 disc) and played through the Sony player. The same song played through the Apple iPod produces poor result. I have learnt that to play it through my iPod I need Creative sound enhancer in between the amp and the iPod, but then I could not find it at any shop.

2) Room’s acoustics and positioning of the speakers are more important than we generally think them to be. One of my older systems, loses all its ranges in my odd-shaped and overloaded study room, but sounds great in another room.