Modern Audio in Helsinki
The store window lists four areas of focus: hifi, hometheatre, multiroom, lifestyle. As to lifestyle, the commodious interior is designed with style. Grey, white, black, lime-green. Nothing stuffy, nor too stylish: a cosy space where one feels home. Well done.
As to the rest, Modern Audio is modern because ”it won’t do turntables or tube amps”, explains Timo Piironen, the founder of Modern Audio. He and his business partner do have some background in hifi and loving recorded music but have stayed away from esoteric brands and queer subcultures. So modern for MA means newly invented systems and advanced technologies that enable turning the whole home as one integrated audio system.
And as Timo kindly informed me, such systems can nowadays be intelligent enough to self-educate themselves on the basis of what they learn about the habits of the house users. Everything - temperature, lightning, audio etc. - is ready and personally adjusted when a tired man schleps home from his office.
Of the four areas then, multiroom and custom installations is likely to steel the main role. To the effect, Modern Audio works together with a group of intallers who on the side act as dealers for the MA imported gear such as Niles multiroom amplifiers, TruAudio speakers as well as ReQuest and DF Sonix music servers.
For friends of home theatre MA offers for example Atlantic Technology’s loudspeaker systems and multichannel processors and power amps by Parasound.
Two channel enthusiasts are not fotgotten either. Parasound electronics in the forefront and loudspeakers by the Belgium Floating Systems and the Finnish Seiren Speaker – to begin with. Timo adviced me that Modern Audio is going to expand their business and widen their selection in the near future. One underlying philosophy is to import brands that are not yet present on the Finnish market, or are not known in Finland to the extent they should. DF Sonix music server, for example.
Time to move downstairs. That’s where the main listening area is hidden. The space is acoustically treated but not yet in a systematic way which is why listening to music gave somewhat non-uniform results. Timo knows this and has plans to make the necessary changes as time allows. After all, the shop’s been open only for two months.
I set to audition a Belgium speciality, 10000 euro Floating Synthese 2. It’s a three-way, transmission line loaded, aesthetically very special looking loudspeaker. This is not a retro design, the speaker was created 20-30 years ago. The amplification was handed over to Parasound pre- & power combo.
The form’s been dictated by certain principles such as the one of acoustical disconnection. The main designer Ivan Schellekens wants to completely disconnect the tweeter, the midrange unit and the woofer mechanically in order to avoid cabinet vibrations causing intermodulation distortion. For example, the pivoting middle-columm in Synthese 2 is freely suspended in a way that is acoustically separated from the subwoofer.
The speaker allows certain adjustments. The tone may be controlled by swapping between small electronic boards that are inserted in the cross-over at the bottom of the speaker. The mid/treble column spins around its axel and can be used for sharpening the sound image.
The sound had a quality that I’ve never quite heard before. It was in an intriguing way analogic as compared to digital by which I mean that the speaker sounded ”concrete” in a way good turntables sound vis a vis CD players.
I got the feeling that the speaker isn’t particularly shy in bass but due to unevenness of the bass performance, mainly due to the room, I refrain commenting more on the speaker’s bass response (a full review is envisaged). It did have an interesting tone quality though.
The midrange and the treble were quite OK, smooth and clear with no obvious ear-piercing anomalies. I quite liked the midrange of the Synthese 2, and look forward to expose it to more demanding test tracks.
The sound was huge, dynamically effortless and the soundstage very nice, very conrete, not typical hifi, not speaker-like. All in all, based on this quick listening, Synthese 2 may not be a speaker for everybody but its sound certainly possesse some virtues, of which I’ll learn more soon.
Towards the end of my visit, I briefly checked, other things being equal, the Floating Cameleon Princess speaker, just to become convinced that the sound had a family resemblance.