John
We looked like giants. My reasons for visiting John DeVore’s room are two-fold: 1) because the fella makes high-end loudspeakers that sound as superb as they look and 2) for an eye-level conversation. Brooklyn-based DeVore is tall. Really tall. Just like yours truly.
At the rear of the room on static display sit the Orangutan loudspeakers – wider than they are deep and specifically designed for SET amplifiers with higher impedance and higher sensitivity.
The central focus of the room goes to the new Gibbon X. In a more slender, tall cabinet sits a 0.75” tweeter that’s suspended in its own internal enclosure for a response that reportedly goes skywards to 40kHz. The 6.5” midrange driver is housed at the top of a transmission line airway whilst a pair of side-firing 8.5” drivers take on the low frequencies. Sensitivity is rated at 92db and pricing comes in at US$15500.
A third reason to visit DeVore is his accommodation of musical requests and – in my case – attendees who bring their own vinyl. First onto the Well Tempered Labs turntable was the Richard Thompson record that so impressed Harry Weisfeld the week prior. After letting it run for pretty much an entire side our host could also be found taking down its title.
Then came a more leftfield selection from this reviewer’s record box: the angular, grinding “Sky Saw” that opens Brian Eno’s Another Green World. I don’t often comment on the sound of individual components at shows but the Gibbon X really nail the drama of the Eno cut. They sound very present whilst retaining killer imaging and exceptional midrange articulation. No doubt the diagonal firing configuration helped dodge the peaks and troughs that can plague the more traditional down-the-room speaker firing.
Also contributing to top notch sound here were a Leben phono stage and Ayre Acoustics amplifier.
A thoroughly enjoyable thirty minutes and one of the show highlights for me.
Further information: DeVore Fidelity
