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Swapping amplifiers was all there was to it. The speakers came, quite literally, alive. The sound stage widened to fill the room, stretching well beyond the outside of the speakers and reaching far behind their lovely faces. Rarely heard detail integrated into the mix without drawing attention to itself or being lost in the shuffle. The Maestoso 2.0s no longer sounded like a collection of drivers but rather a sum of parts greater than the whole. Somehow that old hi fi cliché 'the difference was not subtle’ was accurate.

Now the amplifier that I began to use while a very fine amp is really intended as a home theatre amp and just does not have the grace, subtlety or musicality of my very lightly fettled Leak. It may just be less colored or perhaps even a little grainy, but what it was able to do was wrestle the Maestos to their knees and get the best out of them that the amp could provide. I now had fulsome, albeit slightly dry for my taste bass, mid-range to die for, and perfectly integrated treble and a wife on board. Had I a better, smoother sounding amp, the speakers would have sounded better and less grainy. What the Maestosos were no longer missing were dynamics, bass and grace.

My wife and I sat on the couch and trawled through our music collection via the squeezebox. We listened to just how weirdly recorded the Alison Krauss/Robert Plant album is recorded – what the hell was T-bone thinking with all that bass – and played everything from the proto-metrosexual Simon and Garfunkel, the quite misnamed AC-DC, Re-masters of The Who, and a lot of classical orchestra and opera which I believe, along with the human voice, to be these speakers forte. Even late Maria Callas with her overstretched voice sounded marvelous and Wagner, well, sounded like Wagner. I doubt I shall ever develop a taste for that retrograde Teutonic.

The artist of decadence. That is the word. And here I begin to be serious. I could not think of looking on approvingly while this décadent spoils our health—and music into the bargain. Is Wagner a man at all? Is he not rather a disease? Everything he touches he contaminates. He has made music sick.
--Nietzsche

Flight of the Valkries aside, and Charlie didn’t surf for a reason, whether it was sheer the weight of the cabinets – the heaviest to grace my lounge – but that characteristic boxiness which affects all box speakers was conspicuously absent or much less present than I am accustomed to. I won’t say the Maestosos 2.0 sounded like ESL57s (they had bass, dynamics and could be played loud!) but are certainly the least 'boxy’ box speakers I have heard. But boxes they are, mighty beautiful boxes I ought to add that would not disgrace the Queen’s Private Apartments, though somehow I imagine they’re a Tannoy Westminster sort of family.

A chance encounter by way of the Squeezebox with Andres Segovia revealed just what a fine midrange they possess. From the woodiness of the 1937 Hauser guitar and how Segovia not only played the strings but the whole instrument came through in all its glory. Jacqueline du Pré’s Elgar Cello Concertos recorded when she was only twenty was as sexy, sad and tragic as I ever remember hearing it, with the rasp of the bow a disconcerting compliment to the fulsomeness of the Cello.

I could go on, but in summary, the Maestoso’s are a very balanced speaker with, perhaps, a somewhat dry bass, though the bass on my Tannoys may just be a tad overblown. Never do they sound over-etched, honky, or shrill. They may not rock with JBL horns, but they were never meant to. What they excel at is their midrange without highlighting the mid-range by bringing too much or too little attention to the treble and the bass. Quite simply, they just do things right.

While they are not a rock and roll speaker, I don’t think that was the designer’s purpose. Instead neutrality and a certain way of lessening listener fatigue seem to be the order of the day.

Value?
Value is in the eye of the beholder? I suppose that is so, so far as it goes. But it would be a very strange fellow that valued a beat up Fiat Panda over one of Aston Martin’s latest. But there is also truth to the saying, if you have to ask the price, you can’t afford it. The value, not the price, of these speakers lays somewhere in between. Never have I seen better cabinetry. Never have I dragged heavier speakers into my lounge. And never have I been graced with either a speaker as current hungry as these are or better top down coherence, amazingly bettering my Tannoys in their imaging, something that I had believed Tannoy had a lock-hold on. But are they worth what Acoustic Preference asks for them? To quote my other favorite philosopher, but without the benefit of translation, Wovon man nichtsprechenkann, darüber muss man schweigen.

Specifications
Type: Marge floorstanding fullrange loudaspeaker
Design: Three-way, dual ported bass reflex floor-stander
Tweeter: 28mm Morel soft dome
Midrange: 75mm Morel
Bass Driver: Two 160mm Morel
Crossover: 12 dB/Oct. LKR crossover at 220/2200 Hz.
Mundorf Air Foil Coils, 99.999% pure OFC copper with polypropylene insulation.
Suitable for bi-wiring with gold plated jumpers
Recommended Power: 20 to 250 watts
Nominal Impedance: 8 Ohm
Frequency response: 35 Hz to 22 kHz
Sensitivity: 91dB /W/m
Dimensions: 280 x 296 x 1124 (WxDxH in mm)
Weight: 96 lbs. each
Wiring: Custom braided Silver with Teflon
Binding Posts: Four WBT per speaker
Price: 16,900 Euro (VAT not included)

Company Information
Acoustic Preference
Adamiceva 41
2000 Maribor
Slovenija

Voice: ++386 242 971 46
Fax:++386 242 971 47
E-mail: info@acoustic-preference.com