Spatial Audio HOLOGRAM M2 Demo - Turbo - Axpona Best Sound Winner

SPATIAL HOLOGRAM M2 Open-baffle speaker - Steven Stone’s pick for best affordable sound at Chicago Axpona. 
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The Hologram M2 is an achievement in sound reproduction. It created a 3D, completely natural presentation with an utterly realistic soundstage reproduction and massive dynamics. All in a small, modern design. The aluminum composite, open-baffle design frees you from boxy, compressed sound at last.    ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Unveiled at Axpona Chicago 2014, thousands of audiophiles experienced the new Hologram design for the first time. The Spatial room was constantly packed with showgoers eager to hear what all the fuss was about. ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Steven Stone of the Absolute Sound Magazine remarked:  The Best Sound (For the Money) – It was a dead heat between the Emerald Physics CS3 mark II ($3500US/pr) and the Spatial Hologram M2 rooms. Clayton Shaw designed both speakers which conquered their hotel room sonic shortcomings with aplomb. •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Part Time Audiophile’s Scot Hull was at Axpona:

As to the sound … well. This is one of those moments when you’re forced to scratch your head and wonder aloud, with a giant WTF bubble over your head, as to why all those other rooms were having such trouble. Here, the presentation felt accurate, linear, and remarkably open. No bloom or boom. Sitting in the sweet spot, I heard nothing out of place or out of character. I’m certain I’d opt for the Turbo, myself, and I’m quite sure there’s even more room for a Twin Turbo version, with even more mo’ betta parts. But here’s the kicker — that price is not irrelevant. $2k? Seriously? It’s like wandering into a Bang and Olufsen showroom and being told that they just decided to take a zero off the end of the price because Reasons. Your only valid response is to say, “Rock On.” And if that was a little opaque, let me make this clear — this was a very convincing demo. Yowza. Me likey.

M2 CUSTOMER COMMENT:

I can't stop listening to this system. I didn't comment on the looks of the speakers in my last post. They are gorgeous. Modern looking, expertly finished, and unimposing. If Clayton were to distribute these via retail chains, I suspect every other speaker manufacturer would sh*t their pants. Their WAF factor is off the charts. When you factor that with the fact that they punch WAY above their price point the rest of the industry has much to be nervous about. While everyone else is regurgitating the same design from the beginning of speaker development, Clayton has revolutionized speaker design. After listening to my M2's for a few hours I concur that box speakers are now obsolete. Do NOT audition these speakers if you have no intention of buying them. They will make it nearly impossible to go back to your conventional speakers. The open baffle lends to a diffuse sound with plenty of air between instruments and textured vocals, yet the imaging is still pin point. You get that live sound, but are still able to identify clearly where the singer is placed along with the band. This is not a subtle effect that will be lost on anyone. Listening to "Billy Jean" by Michael Jackson earlier I had to pick my jaw up off the floor. His voice sounded pure, textured, and authentic. The sound stage was wide though the image height is limited to the height of the speakers. "Jam" also from MJ is incredible via these speakers as is "Black and White." I highly recommend listening to these three tracks through the Spatials. "Jam" is just fun through my M2's. "Black and White" opens with a son listening to music late at night and the father yelling at him to turn it down. A few seconds in the father bangs on the son's door and a few seconds later bangs on his door again. Both times the door banging is utterly realistic and fun. Keep in mind that I am powering these speakers thru a $600 tube integrated that generates a mere 10 watts per channel. I have not turned up the volume past 1/4 so far and it is plenty loud with reserve current available. Total system cost came to roughly $5k. Plenty of money, but I have auditioned systems that used speaker cables costing more. I can't think of a system I have had more fun listening to than this one currently and it is only a few hours old. The best is still to come. There is no thinking with these speakers, it is all about enjoying. You completely forget that you are listening to a "system" and just listen to music. In the end, isn't what this hobby is supposed to be about? To be able to get there at the price offered makes these speakers hands down the best value on the audio market right now IMO.

FROM A POSTING ON WWW.AUDIOSHARK.ORG 

I own a pair of Spatial Audio Holograms... the M2s. Those are the ones that Steven Stone of TAS awarded ''best sound (for the money) '' at the Axpona Hi Fi show in Chicago. Given my experience with these speakers I can see why he did. 

But mine are different than the ones Mr. Stone gave the award to. Mine are the the M2 Turbos which are said to be significantly better than the non turbo version. I cannot confirm or deny this. I can only report on the ones I have and those are the M2 Turbos. 

I live in an area where I can play my system all night long as loudly as I wish, I was able to break them in doing just that... 24/7 and very loud until I hit the 500 hour mark. I have had them for well over a month now so since they have broken in, I have had ample time to be able to listen, assess... and be awed. 

Here are my impressions: 
As I am writing this I am listening to some renditions of the Bach Brandenburg Concertos and the first word that comes to mind is ''realism.'' These are easily the most true to life speakers I have ever heard. Spot on timbres, extremely wide deep holographic sound stage, very high resolution, incredible dynamics... these are the hallmark characteristics that I hear in the M2 Turbos that make this realism possible. 

Not only am I a musician, but I live in a small Tuscan hill town. Music is very important here and concerts are given all the time. These concerts for the most part take place in small venues where amplification is unnecessary. 
Therefore I get to hear live acoustic music on a regular basis in a wide variety of settings... in our local and very acoustically accurate theater; in small chambers; in yet smaller rooms (a good friend who lives down the street from me is a concert pianist. Before a concert he invites a few of us in to listen for a private concert in his very small practice room), in churches, in piazzas out in the open, etc. So I have a pretty good sense of what most instruments should sound like. The criterion by which I judge any component is its ability to reproduce the sound of real instruments. And I am not exaggerating when I say that I am blown away with the timbral accuracy of these speakers. 
All instruments are reproduced very accurately. Pianos are out of sight good. Drum and cymbal reproduction... which is one of the holy grails that I have been chasing... is so true to life that when I play certain drum tracks that I have (The Big Solo and Kaos from Steven Rochlin's THTST Album) I, and others, feel as though Rochlin and his drums are actually in the room with us. Cymbals are metallic and bursting with sheen... no white noise here whatsoever!

A lot of speakers I have heard get accurate timbres in the midrange. But where the M2s really shine is in the accuracy of their bass. My understanding is that this should not be the case because open baffle bass is hard to control. This is why in his previous designs (Emerald Physics) Clayton Shaw used bi-amping and DSP to control bass interaction with the listening environment. But with the Holograms, he has somehow solved the bass/room issue so you get the advantages of extremely fast open baffle bass which makes for taut, timbrally accurate, tuneful bass without the need for any correction. And the M2s bass is the most accurate and most musical that I have ever heard. 

Prior to the M2s I was running Gallo Reference 3.5s as my main speakers. If you know anything about them, you know that they are known for their very good midrange, high resolution and a great 300 degree dispersion tweeter which allows them to completely disappear in a wide, deep, holographic sound stage (I loved that holographic sound stage disappearing act). But the one area which I felt could be improved was the bass. It was relatively accurate and powerful, so I wasn't really dissatisfied. But I had the feeling that even more accurate bass was possible. I wanted to hear ''real'' cellos and bass fiddles. I wanted to hear the hollowness of the instruments bodies and the deep growl of the bass fiddles when they are bowed. I wanted to hear more of the harmonic overhang of low drums... bass drums and kettle drums, etc. 

I did not think that for the money I could do any better than 3.5s and I was worried about having to give up that incredible 3d sonic field, so I was convinced that I would never change. I had had the chance once to briefly hear a pair of Emerald Physics speakers doing deep bass fiddle rifts and, wow, did it sound accurate. At the time I thought, ''If only the Gallos sounded like that they would be perfect.'' And that is when I seriously started thinking about open baffle because I couldn't get that bass sound out of my mind. 

Then Clayton came out with the Holograms which are ''plug and play'' (needing no bi-amping nor DSP) and are priced so affordably and I just had to give them a try. 

But while i was hoping for more accurate bass (and I was not disappointed) what I wasn't prepared for was their being so superior to the Gallo 3.5s in every other performance parameter bar none... including the Gallos' forte, sound stage and holographic imaging. There was no loss at all... just gain. 

Unbelievably, the sound stage they throw is much wider and deeper than that of the 3.5s. The images are more holographic and are better sorted out in the sound stage. And due to the greater holography, the M2s disappear every bit as completely as did the Gallos. 

The sound stage almost always extends well beyond the walls... laterally and behind the speakers... of my room. And the imaging is really stable. When moving from side to side in my room I find very little change in the soundstage and when I stand up there is no lowering of the image height whatsoever. The Gallos also have pretty good lateral stability, but when I stood up, the trebles would fall off and I would end up looking down at them because the sound was coming from down there. Dynamics are much better. Resolution is much better. Attacks, rise times, decays... all much better. Microdynamics are superb. Tone color is dense and saturated... not thin or washed out. Ambience retieval and the sense of presence is uncanny. I am in the concert hall with full orchestras which are spread out wide before me. I am in small chambers with the baroque chamber orchestras and the quartets and quintets. I am in the club with the jazz ensembles... or they are in the room with me. Classical guitarists are in my living room and sounding very very real. (For ten years I was a classical guitarist and I made my living teaching and playing. It is an instrument I know intimately). Vocal reproduction is soooo much better. Male and female singers are in my room and singing only to me. i can hear the nuances in their musical interpretations. And I can suddenly understand lyrics that with the Gallos I was struggling to understand and not succeeding. Now I can understand almost everything. If I needed any definitive proof that the improvements I hear are real then this would be it because I could not imagine myself into understanding lyrics that I previously could not understand no matter how much I tried.

The Gallos go down to 34 Hz if you are using only the 1st voice coil. I was running them with the Gallo SA sub amp powering the 2nd voice coil which brings their bass response down to 22 Hz... true subwoofer range. The M2s are only rated down to 43Hz but the only advantage that I can perceive the Gallos as having is that of overall power. But I don't care because for me the sheer timbral accuracy and the taut fast musical bass reproduction of the M2s is more important. Please don't misunderstand, the bass of the M2s, while not as powerful as that of the Gallos, is still plenty powerful. On certain tracks (like the above mentioned drum tracks) and in certain passages, I can still feel the kick drums' and the bass fiddles' vibration in my body... just not as strongly as with the 3.5s... but it is definitely there. 

Another thing that is amazing to me is how balanced and even (linear) the sound is throughout the whole frequency range. The Gallos were very well balanced. Three years ago I purchased Spatial HD and Clayton did the room correction for the Gallos. My son, who is also an audiophile, came from the States and stayed with me for a few months and he kept marveling with respect to how balanced and even the sound was. And it was... for the most part. But there were some tracks in which, despite the room correction, the Gallos would sound somewhat bloated...too much boom, if you will... in certain low frequencies. The M2s, so far have not demonstrated any such bloat in any track whatsoever. And this is without any room correction as of yet.

I am going to let Clayton do the room correction, but to tell you the truth I am not sure these need it. While I am hoping they can be further improved... and I will be very happy if it happens... I will also be very surprised if it happens.

The last thing I feel compelled to mention is how room friendly these speakers are. They sound great no matter where I put them in my room. Moving them seems to only affect the sound stage. It does not seem to affect bass performance, resolution, linearity, etc. etc. 

Peter Borelli

Cortona Italy

The Hologram M2 Turbo is a breakthrough design that is completely passive. No DSP or bi-amping is required for its operation. The M2’s extremely high sensitivity allows the use of most any amplifier and allows the recreation of your music’s entire dynamic envelope. Available in White or Black finishes.  •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••   
H O L O G R A M   M 2  Turbo  -  Made in USA

Type:  Compact 2-way, point source, open-baffle, dynamic driver, controlled directivity

Chassis:  5 layer Aluminum Composite / MDF

Driver compliment:  2 x 12 inch mid/woofers, 1 x wide bandwidth compression driver

Crossover:  Passive 800Hz - Hologram Network  

Frequency Response:  44Hz - 20kHz  +/- 3dB

Sensitivity:  95dB 1M @ 2.83V (Version 2) averaged across 200Hz to 5kHz

Impedance:  4Ω nominal, 3Ω minimum

Dimensions:  27T x 16W x 3D inches, 40 lbs.

20 year limited warranty

Available in White or Black Aluminum front panel

 

M2  Turbo   $2500 pr.  (premium network components)

Shipping Paid in the continental USA. 45 day trial, 10% Restocking fee.

See www.spatialaudio.us for more information.