August 2023

Volti Audio Razz LE Loudspeaker Review
Sometimes good things come in large packages.
Review By Ron Nagle

  A buzzing bell sound sends me to my front door. Outside two large boxes hide a sweaty, smallish UPS delivery man. I can see a faint smile cross his face as he tells me, "My father wanted me to be a doctor."

Now I have two mini monoliths inside my front door. The boxes each weigh about 97 pounds and stand five feet tall. I can see my significant other giving me the look that means, I've been bad. I'm thinking, don't get your knickers in a twist, I can handle this. I downloaded the unpacking instructions. And using the instructions as a guide I peeled away the three cardboard boxes that held the speakers. This unpacking thing is a job for two people and four hands.

Genealogy
Volti Audio is a brilliant creation by loudspeaker engineer Greg Roberts. He seems to be the CEO, CFO, Chief Designer, the guy who sweeps the floor and sends out for pizza. Greg Roberts started Volti Audio back in 2009, building upgrade parts for Klipsch Khorn speakers. This is still a part of his business today. "Fixing" my own Khorns led me into this business, and the parts that I developed for my Khorns led me into my first complete speaker design, the Vittora.”" Their Razz is the least expensive in a line consisting of four Volti Audio speakers, with the Razz Limited Edition speaker as an alternate version of the basic Razz loudspeaker.

Subject
The Razz LE is priced at $7,500, are manufactured in Baxter, Tennessee, and they can be ordered direct from Volti Audio's website. The LE version adds dyed Birch veneer to the front and rear panels along with improved cabinet footers. They are also available in exotic wood veneers at additional cost. The LE is their Razz model with a different aesthetic. The most significant LE innovation is the external user variable crossover. This is in contrast to the Razz which does not have an external crossover. Incidentally, LE speakers are not supplied with a grill cloth.

The Razz LE is rather large for my 12' by 20' listening room. They are 41" high, the front face is 15" wide and they measure 12" from the front to the back panel. Each speaker weighs 90 pounds. The Crimson Red speakers I am auditioning are a small sampling of the custom finishes you may select from Volti Audio. The Baltic birch enclosures may be dyed in a choice of colors, Crimson Red, Deep Blue, Sage Green, or Gray Oak. All finishes are sealed with a clear coating. All four available speaker models are hand built and may be custom ordered with a total of eight different exotic wood veneers and with four different types of grill cloths.

You can save some money by ordering the Decorator Razz speakers direct from the Volti Audio factory unfinished in plain Baltic birch. News flash; just announced, Volti has a new cabinet finish called Lightning. the lightning pattern is burned into the wood using high-voltage electricity. It can be applied to any Volti speaker at an additional cost.

Before I go any further, I would like to tell you how impressed I am with the hand-built Volti construction. Volti has constructed the speaker cabinet with expensive one-inch thick Baltic Birch plywood. It's very gratifying to see somebody go beyond cheaper MDF (Medium Density Fiberboard) construction. The Razz LE is a three-driver slot ported design that presents a nominal 6 Ohm load to the amplifier. The bass port is located on the bottom of the front face. The blend of bass and tweeter drivers with that Razz midrange horn must be a difficult trick to pull off.

The tweeter is a neodymium horn coupled with a large midrange horn. The midrange is a 2" throat compression driver with a composite diaphragm in a shallow wide-dispersion design. The bass driver is a conventional 12" high-power and high-sensitivity woofer that is coupled within a bass reflex enclosure. I saved the best for last. At the back of the speaker, there is a recess in the cabinet containing four "LYNK" branded crossover resisters. Two of them are for the tweeter and just under that, two additional resistors for the midrange. They are clearly marked TR1, TR2, and MR1, MR2. There are additional resistors provided so you may modify and adjust the crossovers to match your room and the type of music you listen to.

The instructions describe how to install the resistors to reduce the output of the tweeter TR1, TR 2. Conversely, you can increase the midrange output by changing MR2 and substituting a 6.2 Ohms resistor. This would increase the midrange output by 0.5dB. I did not change them. There is no adjustment provided for the bass. The Razz crossovers use quality Solen inductors and Jantzen capacitors. A complete list of features and specifications will be added at the end of this story.

Preliminary
From here on I will call the speakers the LE. My first impression was that they were too large for my listening room. Just out of the box without trying to properly set them up, I ran a CD through them just to see if they were damaged in shipping. That initial listen set the stage for my first lesson about things horns do very well. Carl Marchisoto designer of Alon speakers told me, "What you hear is the designer's idea of what music should sound like."

My listening space can pose a difficult problem. Because it has a 50 Hz bass node. Anything operating at that frequency tends to energize the room. Initially, I placed the speakers in the classic equilateral triangle with my listening position at the apex. As you can imagine, in my environment, the 12" woofer needs to be treated with tender loving care. However that seldom posed a problem because I live in an apartment complex and I hardly ever listen at high volume. At this point, I was about to learn something about horn dispersion patterns. The compression driver ie the horn has some defining characteristics I did not fully appreciate. The fact is when properly positioned this midrange driver is fairly directional, and that is a very good thing. The LE does not interact much with my room boundaries.

My usual modus operandi is to move the speakers an inch at a time until they start to speak to me. The best place as it turned out was very close to the suggestions made by Greg Roberts, albeit I used his guidance but on a smaller scale. The distance from the back wall was 5', with the speakers being 5.6' wide (center to center). A bit of toe-in that is aimed just 8" in front of my chest; this is a modified near-field setup.

Solid-State Sound
My first serious listening and note-taking session was powered by my solid-state Sanders MagTech mighty muscle amplifier. My CD was Brothers In Arms by Dire Straits [Polygram Germany]. I can't think of a more complicated studio mix to listen to. This CD is comprised of many instrumental layers. It is chock full of complex harmonies, intricate time signatures, and sophisticated content which forms a sonic tapestry wholly unique to Dire Straits. Surprisingly the bass I heard was not dominating my bass-crazy room. Maybe the sound was slightly warm, but the word, "round" came to mind, it seemed to be a better way to describe the feeling it evoked. Everything appeared to be there, nothing dominated the performance. And the sound stage it rendered was wonderfully deep and wide.

Valves And Verity
Everything I heard so far compels me to believe the Voliti Audio Razz LE loudspeakers and vacuum tubes would make a great marriage. We can replay the same Brothers In Arms CD this time powered by tubes. I installed my reference KT88-powered PrimaLuna Prologue integrated amplifier. I have owned the Prologue for several years and I know its sound intimately. This is an early version and one of the first in the PrimaLuna line. Still with these super-efficient speakers. It will make a rather fair comparison to the Sanders-powered system. The PrimaLuna is powered by four matched KT88 tubes churning out 35 Watts per channel. During the time I had it, I never thought that the sound of my Prologue was in any way lacking with the possible exception of some low bass drive.

But I am not into seismic bass so I never thought that it was important. My Prologue amplifier has a nice tube-y top-to-bottom voice that seems real and natural. How do you describe what you hear as real? The answer is, with great difficulty. There is a myriad of very small things that must be present, and all of it must be contained in a natural balance.

Vinyl And The Hollow State
I purchased from Chad Kassem of Acoustic Sounds a two-record vinyl reissue of the Nils Lofgren album, Acoustic Live [APP 090]. I have the very same recording on a CD / DSD. My vinyl amplifier is an all-tube Tavish Adagio phono stage. I have said this before, the combination of tubes and vinyl is a natural complement to each other. Now I can add a third component, the Razz LE. Listening to the vinyl version is a lesson in digital and vinyl contrasts. My Tavish tube amplifier added another layer of textures. There is a major difference between the vinyl recording and the same performance on DSD. Most importantly this speaker's voice is uniquely defined by timbral textures. Brass sounds like metal, wood sounds like wood and most importantly the human voice is attached to a flesh and blood person.

Additionally, there is just more depth information in the form of micro-dynamic contrasts. Buried in the grooves of this audiophile-quality recording there exists greater layering revealing the location of the elements that make up the performance. The most prominent area on this black vinyl disk is in the lower midrange. You can't call the bass guitar accompaniment deep bass. However, it is the low-frequency instrumental part of this track that serves as the emotional underpinning of the performance.

My favorite track from this record is, Some Must Dream. Now as you listen you can hear the subtly present live sounds of the surrounding venue. That space is a complex mix of many small whispers of sound. For me, a large portion of this quality is described by the word "continuousness" which is a term coined by the late Harry Pearson. It is used in part to describe a multi-faceted sound or a presence that exists as you listen to a complex cord a gossamer quality that slowly decays into silence. With an analog recording, those overtones decay into silence naturally, just as it is in life.

Conclusions
Over the years, there have been an uncounted number of speakers. Some of the better ones are accurate and as clear as glass. And they don't sound like the Volti Audio Razz LE loudspeaker. What is it that separates the LE from the ordinary? After a lot of staring at a dark ceiling, the words, timbre, and immediacy come to dominate all other descriptive terms. Apply those qualities to a human voice and you have a flesh and blood reality. Recently I had an audiophile friend come over, he wanted to listen to the LE. We played music for three hours and during that three hours we got deeper into the music than ever before. That session ended listening to Kenny Vance and the Planetones singing Doo Wop [ACE CDCHD 1117].

Everything centers on the sound of a human voice, that is what I know best. We were steeped in it, we lived it, it was real and we both experienced goosebumps. I will truly be sad when I return these speakers.

Remember to: Enjoy the music! And from me, Semper Hi-Fi

Bonus Interview

10 Questions For Greg Roberts Of Volti Audio
During Enjoy the Music.com's very special 25th Anniversary we're asking various high-end audio manufacturers to answer the same ten questions. Their answers may surprise you! This month we're featuring Greg Roberts of Volti Audio. He started back in 2009 building upgrade parts for Klipsch Khorn speakers, which is still a part of his business today. Parts developed for Khorns led Greg into his first complete speaker design, the Vittora.
---> Read Our 10 Questions For Greg Roberts.

Reference System
Sources: SOTA Nova Turn Table, Grado Laboratory Standard Tone Arm, Denon DL-301 II Cartridge.

Arcam CDS 50 SACD player, Music Hall upsampling DAC 25.3 with headphone amplifier, and Yamaha WXC-5 Wi-Fi Blue Tooth Receiver.

Amplification: Sanders Magtech power Amplifier, Prima Luna Prologue 2 Integrated Amplifier. Tavish tube phono amplifier.

Speakers: Aurum Cantus V30M, with Mark Daniels Omni Harmonizer tweeters.

Speaker Cables: Kimber Kable 12TC @ 11ft. And a Kimber Kable 8TC 18" to tweeter speaker.

Interconnect Cables: Monster Reference four pairs, two 0.5-meter, 1-meter and 1.5-meters, Nordost Red Dawn, Music Hall 1-meter Phono cable, Audioquest Cinnamon XLR 1-meter, Chord Silver Siren 1-meter, Homemade Teflon RCA 1-meter, Autobahn 0.5-meter digital, plus Wire World 10 gauge IEC line cord and Kaplan Cables 12 gauge IEC.

Power Conditioning: Islatrol Industrial 20 Amp ac line conditioner.Inline15Amp power strip. Alpha Core Balanced Transformer 20 Amp Power Supply.

Specifications
Type: Floorstanding hornspeaker
Frequency Response: 35Hz to 20kHz
Tweeter: High quality neodymium horn tweeter
Midrange: 2" outlet midrange compression driver with a composite diaphragm
Woofer: 12" high-power and high-sensitivity woofer – bass reflex configuration / ported
Sensitivity: 97dB/W/m
Nominal Impedance: 6 Ohm (connect to 8 Ohm taps)
Crossover: Custom made with high quality components, all hand-wired
Connection: High-end bi-wire inputs
Dimensions: 40" x 15" x 12" (HxWxD)
Weight: 90 lbs. each
Price: $7,500 per pair

Company Information
Volti Audio
6100 Nashville Highway
Baxter, TN 38544

Voice: (207) 314-1937
E-mail: voltiaudio@gmail.com 
Website: VoltiAudio.com