Floating Synthese 2 - full review
Have this loudspeaker ever appeared in a movie? If not, it should have. It would have been a perfect background object in some avant-garde movie from the second half of the 20th century. The speaker has, in its appearance, at the same time science fiction kind of futurism and innocent 1960s decadence and optimism.
Synthese was designed in the 70s, and published in the early 80s. According to a source, in 1981, It's still in production but whether it’s been manufactured without breaks all these three decades, I have no idea. Its provenance is in Belgium. The name of the company is Floating Systems, and the principal designer Ivan Schellekens.
Floating Systems has currently two versions of the Synthese speaker: the four-way Synthese 1 and the 10000 euro review object Synthese 2. The latter is a three-way transmissionliner. An effective TL requires a big - long - cabinet; hence the C-profile of the main body of the Synthese 2. According to the specs, the TL is 137 cm, and the transmission frequencies 250 – 3200 Hz. The 21 cm woofer is mounted in the upper end of the main body.
The trademark of the Synthese speakers, the pivotal column or pillar between the C's ends, houses a textile dome and the midrange driver. Why this construction? Two reasons: the designer firmly believes that acoustically disconnecting the tweeter and the midrange unit from the woofer enclosure is beneficial to the sound. That's why the middle-columm is freely suspended and separated acoustically from the subwoofer section. To the same effect , the column is filled with a high-density material.
Floating Systems is of course not the first or only speaker manufacturer who swears by the principle of mechanically disconnecting the tweeter, and less often the midrange driver, from the woofer in order to avoid cabinet vibrations causing 'intermodulation' distortion. In fact, it may be harder to mention speakers in which the matter has not been addressed, at least on a paper, than those in which it has. But does disconnection really make a difference? For some it does, for others less. Seen from the tweeter's perspective one might argue that the vibrating cone of the nearby woofer poses a much greater threat to the tweeter's operation than the resonating speaker cabinet.
The second argument for the freely rotating middle tweeter/midrange pillar is that it allows the listener to finetune imaging characteristics and optimize the soundstage. The manufacturer recommends directing the tweeter/midrange driver so that the beams cross in front of the listener. Angling of the middle column in such a way can add livelihood to some 'dry' recordings. It may also enlarge the hot spot, the area of the best sound. Most importantly, however, the fact that the column can be steplessly rotated means that their position can be precisely locked where it brings about the best end result in terms of the soundstage and imaging. This requires that the response is horizontally fairly even and smooth across the frequencies (ie. not too directive).
Rotating the column also changes the tone of the sound by increasing or decreasing the amount HF in the sound as a whole. The principal way in which the tone can be adjusted in the Synthese 2 is by inserting a small electronic card - four different actually - in the crossover board at the bottom end of the speaker. The EQ cards affect the midrange and the treble, not the bass.
The bi-wire speaker terminals are also behind the bottom grill, directly assembled on the internal printed circuit, into which the cables can be routed through a shallow opening behind the speaker.
Sound
The sound via Hegel's top electronics and in a SMT Level 3 treated listening room, had a quality that I’ve never quite come across before. Hard to describe what the quality was though. I could call it "foreign to mainstream hi-fi" but it also could be described as “analogue”. By that I mean that the speaker sounded "concrete" in a way turntables do viz a viz CD players. This characteristic, not as dramatic as it may sound, was related to some kind of innocent openness of the sound, which made the speaker fairly pleasant to listen to. The sensitivity is around 90 dB but the speaker sounds as if it were more sensitive.
When I first heard these speaker in another locality the bass was uneven almost to the point that made evaluation impossible. That was mainly due to the room since this time in a well treated room the bass performance was much more correct. It wasn't perfect this time either (ie. it was clearly colored with some music samples), and the woofer placement on the top end of the cabinet may be blamed. The fact that the woofer is almost in the mid-way between the floor and the ceiling means that the speaker probably participates in exciting the vertical room mode somewhere between 100-200 Hz. The crossover frequency is 250 Hz.
The other thing is that the bass really goes down; the manufacturer declares the –3dB point as 26 Hz, and 2,5dB point 30 Hz. On the basis of subjective listening results, the figures are not much exaggerated. The listening room, even though equipped with bass traps still has some problems at the lowest frequencies with speakers that descend down enough, and in general full range speakers such as this Synthese 2 can have problems in the bass in this room that other speakers do not suffer from. Despite the varied performance, the bass of the Synthese 2, when not too excessive, had an interesting realistic tone. But it required careful positioning of the speaker in the room despite the fact that the manufacturer claims otherwise. The manufacturer recommends keeping the speaker far from the walls.
The midrange and the treble sounded fine, fairly smooth and clear with no obvious ear-piercing anomalies. No doubt I have heard more sophisticated treble performance in other highend speakers but that didn't bother me at all during the critical listening sessions. The HF and the midrange reproduction in terms of instrumental timbres etc. were mostly correct indicating that the phase between the tweeter and the midrange driver is fixed right.
One of the niceties of the sound, in addition to its 'analogue' nature, was its huge size and the concrete, tangible soundstage - not typical hi-fi, not speaker-like. That combined with dynamically quite effortless performance gave the sound an appealing flavor. And rotating the centre column really worked. Finding the exact angles of the columns can indeed lock the sound sources within the soundstage tightly.
Worth 10 000 euros? There are elements in the sound that speak for an affirmative answer. There are areas in which better performance can be achieved with a more modest investment. As always. But that's only the sound. Synthese 2 has a great although peculiar looks which could be bettered with a tad more luxurious finishing quality.
Floating Synthese 2 may not be a speaker for everybody but for some its sound, adjustability and unusual modern outlook may suit just perfectly.
Some more detailed comments on the sound based on music samples of the INNER-AUDIO Test CD are added here soon: