Arke Audios TG Ekta MKII Review.
Feb 19, 2023 23:18:27 GMT
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Post by Bigman80 on Feb 19, 2023 23:18:27 GMT
“Troels Gravesen” is a name you have probably heard mentioned on your audio journey before now, but if like me you were a little late to the party, don’t worry…i’m going to introduce you.
The Ekta MKII are a fairly compact floorstanding speaker, with pretty workable dimensions for any room. For things like dimensions, you can read the info from the man himself here:
www.troelsgravesen.dk/EKTA-mkII.htm
My own Ekta are hand built by Jason at Arke Audio, and differ somewhat from the standard build shown in the Troels pages. The cabinets are a more aesthetically pleasurable shape, the finish is a beautiful high gloss black against a backdrop of solid Bamboo, which has been hand sculpted to provide a rather pleasing curved side. In the flesh these speakers would not look out of place in a showroom containing the most eye watering of speakers.
On the inside of these speakers lies a few more little differences too, albeit differences that add up to quite a big difference. The XO (crossover) caps are Alumen-Z on the tweeter, a mix of Alumen-Z and Jansen Superior-Z on the midrange, and an Electrolytic on the LF. There are plans in place to revamp this XO with another pair of Film and Foil caps on the mid and some PP (polypropylene) on the LF. Unfortunately, I haven't had time to make this happen yet, but may make an addendum to this review once done.
So, what has got me so amped up about these speakers that made me hand over a large wad of cash and sell my Q Acoustic Concept 500 inside an hour of hearing them at home?
Well, the only way to really describe it is like this: Have you ever known someone all of your life, thought you knew them well, and then found out that actually you didn’t know them at all? I had a situation like that, and this is very much like that.
Yup, what I thought I knew about speakers, and how good they can be up to a certain price point, turned out to be one of my biggest mistakes in HiFi.
I could sit here and write about how certain tracks sound, or how much (subjectively) i like certain aspects of XYZ, and I probably will, but the issue with reviews like that is the systems vary enormously. My own system for instance is only really comparable to maybe four others in the world right now due to the origins of the equipment.
So keep that in mind as you read on.
I loved the £4.5k (RRP) Q Acoustics. They were comfortably my favourite speakers. Certainly the favourites that I had owned. They ticked a lot of boxes. Great reviews, great to look at, reasonably affordable in the used market, good measurements…all pretty much spot on. I’d owned them for a couple of years, and I had used them to listen for enjoyment, for comparisons, for critical listening tests of the gear we make, and I never felt like they missed a marker.
They had great tonality, great LF heft, detailed, good resolution…never a complaint from me.
I’d compared them to Heco Celan GT 702, Spendor, Sinus Faber, Yamaha NS1000, KEF LS50’s, Naim Ovator 400’s, Quad ELS57’s, hORN mummies, hORN 15’s, plus many, many more. Nothing dethroned them. The Heco being the exception. They were as good, and probably a little better, but they wouldn’t work in my room, so there was no point even considering them.
The Q’s were great. Then the Ekta arrived.
I had previously visited Jason, and plugged my system into these speakers at his house, so I knew they were good, but it wasn’t until they were in my room and compared to the Q’s that I realised just how good they were, and in truth, how wrong I had been about what the words "good speakers" actually means.
Plugging the Ekta in and playing music through them was a moment of HiFI awakening, an epiphanic moment. The kind that I do not think will ever be repeated for me. Nothing this drastic anyway.
We played GoGo Penguin, which we had just heard through the Q's, and my head nearly fell off.
The difference in performance was almost unbelievable. The clarity, the transparency, the resolution, the LF!….it just rocketed to a level that I have not experienced in my system….it was so good that the Q acoustics now sounded rotten. Bloated, flabby, soft, unresolved, unrefined, stodgy. They were on eBay and sold within an hour….they couldn't go back in.
I could not believe the difference. The Ekta made a mockery of everything I had said about the Q's. The "big-up" that I'd given them. The Ekta made me look foolish.
I was crestfallen, but I've been around this hobby for a while, and I've heard a lot of systems in people homes, at demos etc, and I realised…I'm not alone in thinking that speakers like the Qs, the Yams etc are "good speakers"
The truth, as it would seem, is that the majority of audiophiles in our price range have not had exposure to kit like this in their homes. Speakers that do what the Ekta do would be in the Tens of thousands.....so how would we know! I certainly didn't. Why would I demo a £15k pair of speakers when I know I can't afford them or likely ever able to?
We listened and listened, and with every track that played, the decision to buy them just solidified further. There was no way those speakers were leaving the house!
The Ekta have some very good quality drivers in them, and you can tell. The reality of this is that it has taken a lot of time and listening to get it all to sink in. The biggest issue for me has been feeling like I really know what I am listening to again. For decades I have learned to play the Beatles songs note for note on the guitar lines, bass lines, drums…i had them in an almost verbatim level of memory.
Until I didn't.
The Ekta unravelled details on these tracks, particularly the b-side of the 50th Anniversary Abbey Road, to the point where it felt like a new recording, like someone had revived the Beatles and re-recorded the whole album. It sounded familiar, but now it was so fresh and clean.
Insight into the recording is utterly mind warping. The imaging is pin sharp, and the positioning in the soundstage is not just left to right now, it can be anywhere front to back too.
I listened to some crazy Japanese folk music, and they play a small wooden drum that used to pan left to right in stages. One tap was far left, next moved right a little and so on. Now, it's also moving a bit further away as it gets to the centre, then gets closer as it gets nearer the right side. It may sound insignificant, but when you have never heard it before, like EVER, it's a big deal.
I must have listened to 60 hours of music over the first few days, and it all sounded new and improved. I listened to everything and anything I had, and one thing came into my mind again, and again. Why have I wasted my time with anything else?
Playing Beck's track, "Already Dead" was a moment of pure audio magic. It's such a well recorded track anyway, but now….I hate to say it, but I felt like I was so close to it that I was in the mix.
My mind easily recognising the additional effects on the vocals, the effects on the guitars. The same thing happened when my son and I listened to a track on Sgt Pepper, and I excitedly sat up and shouted "I just heard the piano stool creak!!!!"
The floorboards creaking on the final note of "a day in the life" too. Yeah, I've heard that before, but it sounded like it was my floorboard, in my room. Honestly, that amount of transparency is a weird experience.
The big moment came for me when I played Dvorak's 8th symphony. A track I have on vinyl, and on digital. It's never sounded right via file. Seemingly congested and confusingly busy. The vinyl seemed to manage better, but even then it had it's moments.
However, now, this track blew my mind on digital. No, the Ekta didn't replicate all of the grandeur of the big instruments, no I didn't get all of the gravitas of the big strings, no, I didn't get all of the scale….but I got masses of soundstage organisation. I got precision, refinement and elegance. I got to hear far more from this track than ever before, and it was epic!
Honestly, there was stuff in there I had never heard before and likely never would have if the Ekta weren't there.
What the Ekta give you, is everything their size allows.
They are such a refined speaker that the minutiae of information that is lost in lesser speakers, becomes abundant. Its easy to hear, it's presented naturally and organically, like it grew there. Like it was always there.
Effortless transparency and diction. No harshness, super smooth and refined.
Utterly superb speakers.
These speakers are not even near the top of the TG range. I have spent many an hour reading about the designs and scouring the build threads. The truth is that I'm still only scratching the surface of what real speakers can do, and until I get a larger listening room, it's unlikely that I am going to be able to go up the TG range, but believe me when I say this, I would if I could.
The Troels speaker options are plentiful, and I have to say this, they represent stunning performance for the costs of a build or a commission. There is no way I could recommend any commercial speaker after what I have experienced with the Ekta, and if that wasn't enough, it was only confirmed further with what I recently experienced when a pair of TG built Illuminator 7751 replaced some HECOs in Angus' system. If you thought the Ekta were a fluke, I can tell you that the demolition job the 7751 did on the HECOs was almost more incredible than what the Ekta did to my Q's. Given that I rate the HECOs as better speakers than the Qs.
The TG range of speakers needs to be given some serious credit, and some serious consideration from anyone in the market for speakers.
The man himself deserves some significant recognition for the designs and the performance he garners from these speakers of his.
Simply put, unless you've dropped £10-15k on floorstanders of this size, buy some or make some TGs asap.
You will not regret it.
The Ekta MKII are a fairly compact floorstanding speaker, with pretty workable dimensions for any room. For things like dimensions, you can read the info from the man himself here:
www.troelsgravesen.dk/EKTA-mkII.htm
My own Ekta are hand built by Jason at Arke Audio, and differ somewhat from the standard build shown in the Troels pages. The cabinets are a more aesthetically pleasurable shape, the finish is a beautiful high gloss black against a backdrop of solid Bamboo, which has been hand sculpted to provide a rather pleasing curved side. In the flesh these speakers would not look out of place in a showroom containing the most eye watering of speakers.
On the inside of these speakers lies a few more little differences too, albeit differences that add up to quite a big difference. The XO (crossover) caps are Alumen-Z on the tweeter, a mix of Alumen-Z and Jansen Superior-Z on the midrange, and an Electrolytic on the LF. There are plans in place to revamp this XO with another pair of Film and Foil caps on the mid and some PP (polypropylene) on the LF. Unfortunately, I haven't had time to make this happen yet, but may make an addendum to this review once done.
So, what has got me so amped up about these speakers that made me hand over a large wad of cash and sell my Q Acoustic Concept 500 inside an hour of hearing them at home?
Well, the only way to really describe it is like this: Have you ever known someone all of your life, thought you knew them well, and then found out that actually you didn’t know them at all? I had a situation like that, and this is very much like that.
Yup, what I thought I knew about speakers, and how good they can be up to a certain price point, turned out to be one of my biggest mistakes in HiFi.
I could sit here and write about how certain tracks sound, or how much (subjectively) i like certain aspects of XYZ, and I probably will, but the issue with reviews like that is the systems vary enormously. My own system for instance is only really comparable to maybe four others in the world right now due to the origins of the equipment.
So keep that in mind as you read on.
I loved the £4.5k (RRP) Q Acoustics. They were comfortably my favourite speakers. Certainly the favourites that I had owned. They ticked a lot of boxes. Great reviews, great to look at, reasonably affordable in the used market, good measurements…all pretty much spot on. I’d owned them for a couple of years, and I had used them to listen for enjoyment, for comparisons, for critical listening tests of the gear we make, and I never felt like they missed a marker.
They had great tonality, great LF heft, detailed, good resolution…never a complaint from me.
I’d compared them to Heco Celan GT 702, Spendor, Sinus Faber, Yamaha NS1000, KEF LS50’s, Naim Ovator 400’s, Quad ELS57’s, hORN mummies, hORN 15’s, plus many, many more. Nothing dethroned them. The Heco being the exception. They were as good, and probably a little better, but they wouldn’t work in my room, so there was no point even considering them.
The Q’s were great. Then the Ekta arrived.
I had previously visited Jason, and plugged my system into these speakers at his house, so I knew they were good, but it wasn’t until they were in my room and compared to the Q’s that I realised just how good they were, and in truth, how wrong I had been about what the words "good speakers" actually means.
Plugging the Ekta in and playing music through them was a moment of HiFI awakening, an epiphanic moment. The kind that I do not think will ever be repeated for me. Nothing this drastic anyway.
We played GoGo Penguin, which we had just heard through the Q's, and my head nearly fell off.
The difference in performance was almost unbelievable. The clarity, the transparency, the resolution, the LF!….it just rocketed to a level that I have not experienced in my system….it was so good that the Q acoustics now sounded rotten. Bloated, flabby, soft, unresolved, unrefined, stodgy. They were on eBay and sold within an hour….they couldn't go back in.
I could not believe the difference. The Ekta made a mockery of everything I had said about the Q's. The "big-up" that I'd given them. The Ekta made me look foolish.
I was crestfallen, but I've been around this hobby for a while, and I've heard a lot of systems in people homes, at demos etc, and I realised…I'm not alone in thinking that speakers like the Qs, the Yams etc are "good speakers"
The truth, as it would seem, is that the majority of audiophiles in our price range have not had exposure to kit like this in their homes. Speakers that do what the Ekta do would be in the Tens of thousands.....so how would we know! I certainly didn't. Why would I demo a £15k pair of speakers when I know I can't afford them or likely ever able to?
We listened and listened, and with every track that played, the decision to buy them just solidified further. There was no way those speakers were leaving the house!
The Ekta have some very good quality drivers in them, and you can tell. The reality of this is that it has taken a lot of time and listening to get it all to sink in. The biggest issue for me has been feeling like I really know what I am listening to again. For decades I have learned to play the Beatles songs note for note on the guitar lines, bass lines, drums…i had them in an almost verbatim level of memory.
Until I didn't.
The Ekta unravelled details on these tracks, particularly the b-side of the 50th Anniversary Abbey Road, to the point where it felt like a new recording, like someone had revived the Beatles and re-recorded the whole album. It sounded familiar, but now it was so fresh and clean.
Insight into the recording is utterly mind warping. The imaging is pin sharp, and the positioning in the soundstage is not just left to right now, it can be anywhere front to back too.
I listened to some crazy Japanese folk music, and they play a small wooden drum that used to pan left to right in stages. One tap was far left, next moved right a little and so on. Now, it's also moving a bit further away as it gets to the centre, then gets closer as it gets nearer the right side. It may sound insignificant, but when you have never heard it before, like EVER, it's a big deal.
I must have listened to 60 hours of music over the first few days, and it all sounded new and improved. I listened to everything and anything I had, and one thing came into my mind again, and again. Why have I wasted my time with anything else?
Playing Beck's track, "Already Dead" was a moment of pure audio magic. It's such a well recorded track anyway, but now….I hate to say it, but I felt like I was so close to it that I was in the mix.
My mind easily recognising the additional effects on the vocals, the effects on the guitars. The same thing happened when my son and I listened to a track on Sgt Pepper, and I excitedly sat up and shouted "I just heard the piano stool creak!!!!"
The floorboards creaking on the final note of "a day in the life" too. Yeah, I've heard that before, but it sounded like it was my floorboard, in my room. Honestly, that amount of transparency is a weird experience.
The big moment came for me when I played Dvorak's 8th symphony. A track I have on vinyl, and on digital. It's never sounded right via file. Seemingly congested and confusingly busy. The vinyl seemed to manage better, but even then it had it's moments.
However, now, this track blew my mind on digital. No, the Ekta didn't replicate all of the grandeur of the big instruments, no I didn't get all of the gravitas of the big strings, no, I didn't get all of the scale….but I got masses of soundstage organisation. I got precision, refinement and elegance. I got to hear far more from this track than ever before, and it was epic!
Honestly, there was stuff in there I had never heard before and likely never would have if the Ekta weren't there.
What the Ekta give you, is everything their size allows.
They are such a refined speaker that the minutiae of information that is lost in lesser speakers, becomes abundant. Its easy to hear, it's presented naturally and organically, like it grew there. Like it was always there.
Effortless transparency and diction. No harshness, super smooth and refined.
Utterly superb speakers.
These speakers are not even near the top of the TG range. I have spent many an hour reading about the designs and scouring the build threads. The truth is that I'm still only scratching the surface of what real speakers can do, and until I get a larger listening room, it's unlikely that I am going to be able to go up the TG range, but believe me when I say this, I would if I could.
The Troels speaker options are plentiful, and I have to say this, they represent stunning performance for the costs of a build or a commission. There is no way I could recommend any commercial speaker after what I have experienced with the Ekta, and if that wasn't enough, it was only confirmed further with what I recently experienced when a pair of TG built Illuminator 7751 replaced some HECOs in Angus' system. If you thought the Ekta were a fluke, I can tell you that the demolition job the 7751 did on the HECOs was almost more incredible than what the Ekta did to my Q's. Given that I rate the HECOs as better speakers than the Qs.
The TG range of speakers needs to be given some serious credit, and some serious consideration from anyone in the market for speakers.
The man himself deserves some significant recognition for the designs and the performance he garners from these speakers of his.
Simply put, unless you've dropped £10-15k on floorstanders of this size, buy some or make some TGs asap.
You will not regret it.