The Story
Death, Taxes, and Good Sound from Well Pleased AV. Three things in life you can be assured of. I say this because in typical fashion Mark Sossa has brought us something new to gawk at and exhibited it with showstopping results. Namely his latest addition of Rethm loudspeakers. Mark was demoing a system of familiar electronics carried over from previous audio shows in 2017, and the new entry level Bhaava loudspeakers from Rethm. At the heart of the Bhaava tower is a retro 7” Boston/Philips Hi-Q driver, a transducer underutilized in its heyday, now finding new life in a horn loaded tower. Each tower is augmented with a 75 watt self-amplified dual 7” isobaric loaded sub that extends bass down into the 28hz region.
The Sound
The first thing of note about this room was the depth of the soundstage. I measured the backwall of this demo room to be 10ft behind the front baffle of these Rethm Bhaava speakers, that said the soundstage was appearing somewhere between 12-14ft behind the speakers depending on the recording. Instruments seemed to be locked in orbit around the back half of the room. An experience of staging that would sadly be unequaled at the show.
John Foreman’s track Mercy’s War had its vision of space and varying locations of recording put on display, calling attention to aesthetic choices in regards to multi-tracking from different mic’ing schemes. Eddie Vedder’s track Long Nights from the Into The Wild soundtrack, had ghostly vocal characteristics that go so well with a system that can convey spatial distances, and bass that floats forward of everything else. Great and mysterious sounds coming from these speakers. Drums and piano from Tierney Sutton’s track Get Happy were as full and brooding as I’ve ever heard.
The System
Rethm Bhaava Loudspeakers ($3,750 pr USD)
Qualiton A50i Integrated Amplifier ($7,500 USD)
Innuos Zenith SE Server ($7,000 USD)
Linnenberg Telemann DAC ($5,400 USD)
Anticables Power, Interconnect, and Speaker Cables
Although we weren’t formally at the Capital Audio Fest we heard the Bhaava’s at this show, as we are North Jersey and New York City’s home for Aqua Hifi and Zenith servers so we had to stop by and say hello to Mark and Charles.
We were so impressed by the musicality of the Bhaava’s we bought the show pair! Our setup is a little different we are using two stealler tube setups the 35 pure Class A Unision Reserch SET S6 which is just wonderful with the Rethems, and we have the Sythesis A100 a KT 66 100 Watt push pull with a built in dac for $7,500.00
Now we have for the first time embraced a wide band driver/sub setup and have added Rethem to our existing lines of state of the art speakers from KEF, PSB, Paradigm, Gradient, Dali and ATC.
If you are every out in the hinterlands of NJ you should come in for a visit we are getting extraordinary results with the Bhaavas.
Thanks for noticing such a unique set of speakers.
Sincerely,
Dave Lalin, Audio Doctor , http://www.audiodoctor.com
Thank you for your coverage and kind comments. We were very pleased with the sound in our room. Rollo Audio is proud and excited to offer these fine components in the NY Tri-State area.
Photos look great, thanks again.
charles rollo