Admission
I warn you, this post will be long :-). These are the 3 columns of this manufacture that I have the opportunity to listen to, and unfortunately there was no time for a review of opium and cannabis.
The flows have reached me brand new. The initial heating lasted a good 2 weeks, so the neighbors who decided to go on vacation in June could only regret it.
And seriously – as befits the new loudspeakers, the bass roll was quite strong and needed a lot of time to settle down.
I must admit that I support the projects of my namesake Karol Goliński a lot. It is one of the few companies in Poland that has been regularly expanding its audience for several years, offering more and more interesting constructions.
Audiphase showed great several times at the Audio Show, although in my opinion it is not a place for this type of products, where most focus on a quick effect and it’s hard to break through such listening sessions with musicality. However, it is evident that they are gaining a wider and wider group of recipients, and their products rarely appear on the secondary market.
Why? The reason is prosaic – in this budget it is difficult to find any competition.
Which is also extremely important to me –It is a manufacture, and thanks to this we omit the general distributor and for the price of PLN 20,000 we finally get a product much more polished, added than in the case of loudspeakers with a general distributor per country– In the case of these brands, the store, general distributor and producer earns … and the end customer pays for it – that is you or me.
The prices in audio are so crazy now that, in my opinion, at the moment the most sensible way to shoot a good price-quality ratio, especially if we are afraid of stimulants.
On the other hand, it’s a bit like buying eggs from chanterelles running on green grass on a small farm vs. Eggs ‘3’ damn know where. It is more willing to pay someone who feeds this chanterelle, watches over and watches every day, and the eggs taste better 🙂
Audiophase Flow – sound
First of all, these are not loudspeakers for a perverted audiophile that divides hair into four.
It’s not that there is no detail in them. It is a lot, but they do not attack it and do not overdo it.
Flow like to play loud. They have something about them that they want to give them energetic material. I listened to these loudspeakers sometimes 5-6 hours a day in a thrust, sometimes very loud – which I rather do not have in the habit and did not have a square head.
When your friends come to the party, you can easily publicize it, even very loud. with 18w audion on the numberLimit to your loveThey shake earwax from the ears, and you can still give a lot louder …
If you wantswellIn the evening, with wine or whiskey, you do not have the impression that you are playing radio for PLN 100 – you can feel the sound, its class and color. You will let go of the ECM – they will show a nice space and separation and a nice color thanks to the paper midrange driver.
Flow focuses on fluidity, musicality and energy. They easily fill the whole room with a juicy sound. If you are looking for loudspeakers strictly for acoustics, jazz – cannabis will be a much better choice.
However, in jazz and acoustics they will find themselves much better than, for example, new Focale, AudioVectory or Audiosolutions.
The star of this column is the bass. I’m not an outstanding basol, but this one made a great impression on me.You can hear it, feel it gives energy and pulse to the music.I had to figure it out in my room because it was too much at first.
The bottom can kick great, but he is 20 years younger than the one I know, for example,s100 spendors. It is also faster than opium.
Sometimes the flows seem to play a bit casually, in the sense that they are relaxed. They do not flex their muscles when there is no such need, they do not attack with hyperdetal, do not make the stage twice bigger than the room … They just fill the room with music.
… they go along with the repertoire.
Of the loudspeakers I had, probably only B&W DM6 and Snelle E3 had so much music and ease in the game. With the proviso that the penguin bass was incomparably worse than the one we get from Flow. Snell has a more interesting diameter, a similar universality in terms of music … But the bass is also much worse – looser, slower and not even close to what flow. And he is also about 30 years old on the back of his neck 🙂
The mountain is one of the less aggressive ones – I could easily put on brighter lamps and nothing was in the way. I could throw away the mitigating cables, which perfectly matched, for example,spectralsAnd go in total neutral and even silver.
The diameter is very good, wide front wall, so the sound is well embedded, but not in the audio style Physic or JM Lab Mini Utopia – here it is dense, the holography is good, you can also hear that it is not playing the key here role.
The vocals are very good – neither overheated nor brightened. They do not play on their knees like a classic vintage, but there is also no artificial distance between the artist and the performer.
The acoustics sound very good, but again it is not the contour level as, for example,Cabasse Sampan, Tannoy LGM, Audiophase Cannabis or Klipsch Forte.
It’s a different pole. closerSpendor S100, but again there was more distance, focus on the midrange and a bit slow bass, which was really hard to grasp.
So who are the flow addressed to?
I would describe Flow with loudspeakers from the breakthrough of two worlds: audiophile-melomaniac. On the one hand, they are very plastic and perfectly reflect the nature of the source, cables, amplifier … but on the other hand, it is difficult to force them not to listen to them, which is common in the case of filial speakers – especially those that reign on the market today.
I went to the Audiophase Flow almost every repertoire that came to my mind. Techno, jazz, trance, house, sung poetry, rock, blues.
Was Isos4 from Tiesto, Monteverdi, Brahem, Vito Bambino, Harbeck, Morgan James, Voovoo, Skalpel, Dyjak, Fink, Dire Straits, Einaudi, some ECM, some act… and in All in all it worked very well. Each genre could be listened to with great pleasure.
As always, there are some compromises.
But the compromise is not the music, and even the audiophile sitting as much in these junks as I found something new in them.
Who are AudioPhase Flow for?
In my opinion, the target for these columns are the following groups:
- An audiophile who is fed up with analytical playing and would like to finally listen to the entire album and focus on music
- Owners of low-power amplifiers, e.g. 300B, 2A3, who play in small rooms – 18-20 sq m
- Owners of large salons, because these speakers will easily fill such rooms with large sound and energy – above 30 sq m, more than 10W will probably work.
- Music lovers who don’t want to play with rolling blocks, but prefer listening to music
- Music lovers who like to give to the oven – these loudspeakers can really fuck up at the bottom, but in a cool, cultural way
- But also music lovers who like to listen to music quietly in the evening
- Fans of loud, strong playing – then, however, it is worth going into a more dynamic amplifier – especially in a larger room.
Flow – my opinion
Flow is a damn interesting product in my opinion. And it is not about the fact that the price-quality ratio is very good in them. After listening to them, I told Karol directly – I think that they are too cheap and can be not taken into account by someone with a thicker wallet, which will go looking for musicality, for example in Harbeth 40, to which you need to add a very expensive transistor.
Flow allows you to create a really cheap (for today) system, because virtually every 5-20K budget will make playing at a very high level with them. Well, I have the impression that they can be fastened with any amplifier from the 90s for PLN 2,000 from the secondary market and it will be great … only otherwise …
First of all, in this budget there are virtually no new speakers for the lamp, which will give such a scale of playing, versatility and musicality at the same time.
Audio Note E / D? The basic model is a toy. Only die hard fans will choose the edges of the band differently.Living Voice? They are great, but they need a lot of space around them, they are very weak playing quietly, and the scale of the sound is completely wrong.Klipsch Forte?
Completely second pole – contour, openness, speed, but at the expense of softness, color and a bit insistent presentation.
Audiophase Flow – for whom not:
- For an audiophile dividing a hair into 4 – because you will easily find ‘better’ loudspeakers in some aspect, and here we get total versatility
- For the owner of a warm, dense system (unless in a large room) – these loudspeakers do not need to be muddy so that they do not tire
- For a fan of a tight holographic presentation with narrow columns in the New Focal style
- For a contour fan
Audiophase Flow – what system:
- I feel like the electronics, but not very thick. You don’t have to spend a fortune, because you don’t need a lot of power, great under the thin-line triode of Single Eneded
- Neutral wiring
- Neutral or even brighter, more detailed source
Flow doesn’t like muddy elements – they immediately expose them and the sound sticks together or loses speed. Neutral track and even a bit analytical should be OK.
One note – in small rooms, be careful with strong and conquering bass. These are not small loudspeakers, the deficiencies of which must be compensated by pumping 200W in them to feel the music in the room.
Summation
What is the most fantastic for me personally in Flow? They play great quietly. Most of the loudspeakers that I appreciated for this aspect sounded, for example, strongly in diameter like Tannoy LGM and were tiring in the long run.
Flow playing quietly is great thanks to the great sound support of the large 10 inch driver. These are probably the first columnsaudiophile, where house / trance and other electronic atmosphere sound serious, club-like, expressive. Of course, you will find a faster and more agile bass from a small pickup, but then it has no chance to play with such a mass and scale.
And usually good playing quietly resulted from a certain contrast of playing and it was loud and chaotic. By playing loudly, they can publicize parties in 50 meters high rooms.
There is nothing to be charmed about – the bass plays the main role here, but this bass is qualitative, it gives the whole room vibrations appropriate for a given repertoire. So the music is alive, we feel it with our whole body, and at the same time the scene is still presented in a relatively ‘polite’ way on the scale of playing.There is no question of chaos even when playing louder.Of course, this is not a hi-end arrangement of turboline systems for perverts of technical parameters.
These are simply loudspeakers that we can enjoy by catching flavors from well-made albums … and melomanias. Give them electronics, rap, jazz, acoustics, vocals … and everything is really at a very high level.
I would definitely enhance the acoustic / jazz repertoire on something from the UK, such as Spendor, Tannoy or Cannabis.But damn, everything is just fine here.
And the choice of electronics is virtually unlimited.
These loudspeakers should be groundbreaking for the brand … and I think they are already starting to be, because they sell the best among all the models so far, even though they are on the market for a very short time.
They are cheap. PLN 20,000 for Manufaktura columns. Yes – you read it right – they are cheap. You can make a system for your music, lead the character with a hint and source, and if necessary, upgrade to the audiophile direction.
You don’t believe? Take a Flow, any packages from the store from the 20-40K budget per pair, listen to the music and … tell me …
If you don’t want to throw blocks and play audiophiles, you want to buy something new – once and good and have something universal … It’s hard for me to come up with something else today.
Other color versions, distributors, technical parameters can be found of course on the manufacturer’s website
https://www.audiophase.pl/kolumny/flow/
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