There are few things in hifi less obvious than a large horn-loaded speaker when it comes to setting expectations.
Inversely, I can’t count the number of times I’ve read about small speakers that supposedly sound Really Big! due to some DSP tricks and inventive port tuning and the smaller the speaker making this kinda claim, the bigger I smile. Don’t get me wrong, as I’ve heard some small speakers sound big—for a small speaker.
The Volti Audio Rival Special Edition (SE) is the top of line model in the Rival lineup. With it, you get a number of upgrades over the Type I and II including matching outboard crossovers, those lovely curved sides (the standard Rivals are squared off), and premium veneers. The review pair are covered in an eye-appealing Olive Ash with a satin lacquer finish, and as Volti’s Greg Roberts shared during uncrating and setup, represent some of mother nature’s finest work. Also included with the SE package are a pack of resistors so you can change the output level for the midrange drivers and tweeters, independently, +/- 1dB to taste.
Those outboard crossovers house 12 gauge air-core inductors on the woofer filters and Litz-wound inductors on the mid and tweeter filters from Solen, Jantzen capacitors and Lynk resistors and wiring from Triode Wire Labs.
Here are some more details from Greg Roberts, Volti Audio’s owner and the designer of every Volti speaker:
Having the crossovers placed outside of the main cabinets is a great way to eliminate the effects of vibration and magnetic fields on the crossover components, and it is a difference that you can clearly hear. My wife and I are the only two people in the world who have heard two pairs of Rival speakers sitting side by side, one pair with internal crossovers and the other pair with external crossovers, switched back and forth with music playing. While not a huge difference, what you do hear is clearly better with the external crossover. Everything is more ‘sorted out’, clearer, and a bit richer in the midrange. If the budget is there, the external crossover option is a good choice.
The Volti Rival are a three-way, hybrid horn/bass-reflex design comprised of a 15″ high-power, high-sensitivity woofer, a 2″ outlet midrange compression driver with a 3-1/2″ phenolic diaphragm augmented by a wooden horn designed and built by Greg Roberts, and a 1″ compression tweeter with an elliptical horn with a known Tractrix flare.
Here’s Greg Roberts again:
One of the often overlooked features of the Rival is the midrange horn/driver. It’s a fairly small midrange horn, at least by my standards, and typically a horn of this size has a 1” throat. The Rival midrange horn has a 2” throat, and this is very significant when comparing it to other horn speaker offerings. The throat size of a midrange horn has a big impact on the quality of sound from the horn.
Old and lesser quality horn speakers have always been plagued with certain characteristic issues in the midrange, like ‘colorations’ or honki-ness, midrange glare, harshness, and midrange that is not well integrated with the bass and treble. Most of these issues start at the throat of the horn. A larger throat will always sound better than a smaller one.
According to the company, the Rival’s offer a frequency response from 32Hz – 20kHz with a flea-power friendly 100dB sensitivity (2.83v/1M). The cabinets are built from 1” thick Baltic Birch plywood, fully braced, and properly damped, and grill cloths are included. The review pair arrived without said cloths which is fine by me as I don’t use ’em when listening.
During the Rival SE’s 2-month+ Barn stay, they lived exclusively on the A-Side, albeit in two places—about 12” off the front wall as well as where most every other speaker sounds its best in Barn (give or take a few inches). Greg Roberts delivered the Rival SE to the Barn and did all of the uncrating and setup work. And when Greg left for his trip back home to Tennessee, the speakers were where you see them above, very near the front wall and this is where greg liked them best, with the red Eames chair moved well forward, maintaining the typical in Barn red Eames chair to speaker distance, about 8 – 9ft. And I promised Greg, before he left, that I would move his speakers to another position only if I liked their sound out from that front wall as much as I liked the near-wall placement.
The strengths offered by the near-wall placement included a more intimate sound, which Greg noted, mainly due to the fact that there was less Barn involved. This also meant this position offered a less spatial presentation, a flatter and smaller sound image, something I frankly never cottoned to. So I went about finding a happier place for me and the Rival SE and ended up with them a few inches from where every other speaker works best in Barn, with the front of the speaker about 8.5’ from the front wall and just over 4’ from the side walls. This final position, which is about 2” closer to the front wall than usual with other speakers, allowed the bass response to bloom without bloat without losing any sense of detail and resolution offered by the near-wall placement. And you may have guessed, the Barn’s scale was back in action, making music as big, or intimate, as the recording allowed.
I paired the Rival SE with a number of amplification partners including the wonderful Soulution 330 (review) which was in the system when the Volti arrived, the Audio Fesearch I/50 (review), Thöress EHT Integrated Amplifier (more info), Triode Evolution 300 (more info), and the Viva Solista integrated (more info). From 12 to 120 Watts. While each of these fine amplifiers worked well with the Rival SE, although I think the Soulution 330 is overkill in this context, I did have a favorite. Front end duties came courtesy of the review sample Auralic ARIES G2.2 streamer (more info) feeding the review Merason DAC 1 MK II (more info) and the Barn resident totaldac d1-unity (review). All cabling was from AudioQuest’s ThunderBird line (full system details).
My favorite, by a wide margin, dance partner for the Volti Rival SE was the Viva Solista for the its stunning control of that 15” woofer coupled with a rich and highly refined sound (more on that in the forthcoming Viva review). And I mean highly refined. That said, every amp made the Rival SE sing, albeit in different ways but for me the Viva brought out the very best performance from the Volti Rival SE without question. The following listening notes will focus on the Rival SE’s performance, which was apparent with every amp partner, more and less. One beautiful thing about a speaker with a friendly 100dB sensitivity (2.83v/1M) is they open up a big wide world of possible amp partners.
At a recent and intimate 78 Barn listening party, a friend selected Morphine’s Cure for Pain from 1993, obviously after we’d finished the 78rpm part of the party. This is another one of those records that I should know really well but didn’t until S let “Candy” color the Barn. The core band was a trio made up of the unlikely grouping of Mark Sandman on vocals and 2-string slide bass, Dana Colley on sax, and (mostly) Jerome Deupree on drums with Billy Conway on drums on a few tracks.
Morphine’s sound is thick and rich, as you might expect, and completely full, as you might not expect, with each element sharing an equal important role. And this record, which I listened to all the way through a few times during the Volti’s stay, sounded big, badass, and Barn-filling through the Rival SE whose compelling physicality was on full display with Cure for Pain filling the place to dance-level heights. There’s really no way to fake the physicality of a 15” bass driver or the immediacy and lightning fast licks of a high efficiency, horn-loaded loudspeaker and the Rival SE’s add a level of refinement that may make Klipsch lovers blush.
And I say this for two reasons—I’ve heard people compare Volti to Klipsch, many of whom have never heard one or the other (or either!). And while it’s been a while since I reviewed the Klipsch Cornwall IV (review), I still remember what they did so well (fun!) and what they did not do so well (refinement). To my way of hearing, the main things the Volti Rival SE and Klipsch Cornwall IV have in common exist mostly on paper and in pictures, not in how they actually sound. Which makes sense considering the details of how each are made, what they’re made of, and what they cost. When it comes to hifi, the devil is in the details but more so in the sound.
Julien Baker’s sophom*ore release found her in Ardent Studios in Memphis, backed by more than your typical band with strings and other acoustic things (woodwinds). Baker, at least to my ears, sings from the gut and her voice can convey emotion so raw it hurts to hear. Turn Out the Lights was recorded big, with Baker’s piano resounding into the far recesses of (recorded) space with the strings and things accompaniment laid out around her with enough reverb to satisfy cave dwellers and churchgoers.
And while the Volti Rival SE do a wonderful job of delivering the physical and subtle contained in this rawness, they do not offer the full wrap around sound of the Rockport Atria II (review), nor do they match the Rockport’s level of superb refinement. That said, we’re talking about a significant price difference with the Rockport’s $38k/pair asking price compared to the Volti’s $22k (+ crating and shipping). It’s also worth noting that Rockports are sold through dealers while Volti are sold direct, which obviously means they do not need to include the cost of having a dealer network. And while I’m being obvious, this also means the only ways to hear a Volti speaker are at a show, at Volti’s facility in Baxter, TN (appointment required), or at an owner’s place.
To widen the comparison net, the Zu Audio Definition 6 (review) offer an interesting contrast to the Rival SE. Coming in at $25k/pair and also sold direct, the Definition 6 include a powered Eminence LAB-12 subwoofer paired with two proprietary 10” drivers run full range sitting MTM style over and under an Eminence N151M super tweeter. The Zu’s also offer an amp friendly load. Compared to the Zu Definition 6, the Volti Rival SE offer more top-to-bottom physicality, moving more air in Barn while the Zu deliver a more finely sculpted sound especially in and around the midrange coupled with a more 3D sound image. Reaching for an analogy, the Volti are in the heavyweight class while the Zu are more of a light heavyweight for anyone who still watches boxing. That said, they are both very fast on their feet, offering great dynamic slam something I’ve come to expect from large, easy to drive speakers. Of course the Zu’s onboard sub amps offer more levels of bass control to dial in performance in room. Speaking of control, I did not feel the need to try the other resistors included with the Rival SE as the drivers integrated very much to my liking once properly placed in the Barn’s space.
Why not? Speaking of heavyweight champs, I reached > 90dB peak listening levels, easily I might ad, with the Viva Solista’s 22 Watts of single-ended Class A power flowing from four 845s into the Rival SE. This pairing offered Barn-filling super controlled technicolor power that was as much a physical experience as it was aural. Big, bold, powerful and direct, the Rival SE turned listening into live-like levels of excitement while portraying every last bit of detail and fury from “Since Ive Been Loving You”, a headbanger if ever there was one. At higher but still friendly listening levels, the Rival SE really strut their stuff, offering top-to-bottom coherence that is as convincing a recreation of a physical event as I’ve experienced. Bravo (lighter lit)!
A River Ain’t Too Much To Love from 2005 is Bill Callahan’s last outing as Smog and it’s an easy mostly acoustic listen. It also perfectly highlight’s the Rival SE’s ability to dance with a lighter step while offering a wonderful in-room fully fleshed out sound from acoustic guitar, fiddle, hammer dulcimer, piano, and more accompanying Callahan’s wonderful spokensung lyrical style. All to say the Volti Rival SE can do delicate too, especially so when paired with an amp as capable as the Viva Solista at balancing power, control, tone, texture, and refinement. Even at lower listening levels, I was drawn into these odd delicate creatures of songs, delighting in their all too humanness and marveling at the Volti’s ability to expertly dance along with fiddle and acoustic guitar. Nice.
If you’ve ever attended a Capital Audiofest, you probably spent time in the Volti/Border Patrol/Triode Wire Labs room, a space much smaller than the Barn. At CAF, I’ve heard the Rivals (not the SE version) paired with different Border Patrol 300B-based amps that put out about 20 Watts. I mention this for two reasons—anyone who has heard this system in this space knows the Rival work well in a smallish room much closer to the front wall with a fairly nearfield listening position than where they pleased me most in Barn. The other reason is to highlight they also love a good 300B-based amp.
The other thing anyone who has seen a Volti speaker in person knows is they are built to a very high standard. The Rival SE, as I hope you can see, are as lovely to look at as they are to listen to and a few Barn visitors went out of their way to comment on their appearance and solid build.
During their 2-month+ stay, I spent a lot of time just listening to the Volti Rival SE play lots of music I know and love as well as music I’ve come to know better and love more. For pleasure. To my way of hearing, the Rival SE have a number of standout qualities but the most striking is a level of refined physicality that brings music into the home with live-like power and grace.
Volti Audio Rival Special Edition Loudspeakers
Price: $22,000/pair (+ crating and shipping)
Company Website: Volti Audio
