Recently my friend and TBR contributor Richard Metzger sent me an email. He’d just bought a pair of Spatial Audio open baffle speakers and he was raving about them. He also sent me links to two interviews with their designer, Clayton Shaw, one posted on HIFIZINE and the other on New Record Day’s Youtube channel so I could learn more about Spatial Audio’s products and the open baffle design.
After learning a bit more about open baffle speakers and how they work, I found the case for them compelling. The open baffle speaker design is intended in part to reduce the room interactions that conventional box speakers suffer from, an idea that I found very appealing. Even more appealing, and the main reason I decided to look into Spatial Audio’s speakers in the first place, is the fact that they can employ extremely large drivers while taking up considerably less space in the room than a conventional speaker with the same size drivers.
Spatial Audio’s M3 Sapphires, for instance, have FOUR 15 inch dipole woofers per pair. That’s an AWFUL LOT of bass, certainly more that my Verity Parsifals can deliver. And with the dipole woofers able to deliver that bass without the bass boom that conventional box speakers are prone to, I figured I needed to hear the M3 Sapphires and earnestly try to answer THE most important question about them – DO THEY ACTUALLY SOUND GOOD?
Alas, and as I stated in the title, this is not a review of the M3 Sapphires. I don’t feel I ever REALLY got to hear what these speakers can and cannot do, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. I demoed the speakers twice on two different systems and each time I encountered problems with those systems that left me wondering if I was going to have to actually buy a pair and take advantage of the 60 day home demo option to get a chance for a proper listen and write an informed review.
In lieu of that option, which I do think is a very good one and more than fair for a direct to consumer product, I’ve decided to forgo the review and address a broader and arguably more important topic. Given my experience at each of these demos I’m now forced to ask a very different question – are the majority of audiophiles, especially those audiophiles out there reviewing gear, so far down their own little rabbit holes that they can’t hear what their system sounds like anymore? I know I was, and I’m beyond relieved to be seeing the light of day again.
My first demo was with a gentleman who had set up a showroom in his garage. He had some wonderful equipment and clearly a genuine passion for the hobby. I was pleased to be able to hear the Sapphires driven by the E.A.R. 890 tube amp I’d also been wanting to check out. And it was nice to be able to play some of my own records on the same Merrill Williams 101.3 turntable that I have (actually, I have the 101.2), albeit with a different tonearm and cartridge.
Before we could get to that, however, I was treated to some digital content, starting with a recent Bob Dylan release. It was appallingly reproduced and played at such an outrageous volume that it seemed insane to me that this gentleman was ACTUALLY trying to sell me a pair of speakers. I like to listen to music pretty loud, quite loud in fact, but this was . . . well . . . something else.
After the Dylan song, which I quickly but politely nixed, he played some heavy vinyl jazz reissues. One of these was in mono, and he played it for me with a mono cartridge. I’d never heard a mono record played with a mono cartridge before, and while the sound of this record was not what I’d consider good, it was fun to hear what a mono record played back in mono actually sounds like.
After a couple more heavy vinyl jazz tracks and couple of quick finger swipes across my throat to indicate that I was done with them, I was finally able to hear my 70’s Contemporary reissue of Benny Carter Jazz Giant. With this record I was starting to find my footing with the demo. The record was sounding pretty good, but still something wasn’t right.
We quickly moved on to a very fine copy of The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s Are You Experienced and the track “Hey Joe.” On my system, the guitar on this track is BIG and forceful and muscular. I could hear SOME of this on the demo system with the M3’s, but not nearly to the same degree.
Why was this? I wondered. Was this an issue with the speakers? Or was it the wires? Or the phono preamp? Maybe the cartridge? Who’s to say really. One thing was for sure – something about this system was not right to my ears. My records were not sounding nearly as good as they do on my own system, and this gentleman’s heavy vinyl sounded even worse, sinking my confidence in his ear for musicality to a rather abysmal level.
I left feeling discouraged. I had driven over an hour to get there and was now heading home without really knowing if I had heard enough to know if the M3 Sapphires were a speaker I should still consider. I could appreciate their ability to convey a sense of space and a wide open soundstage, and they certainly had plenty of bass. But were they musical? Did they flesh out the instruments in a realistic way? Did they have the ability to bring my favorite records to life?
Meanwhile another audiophile in my area had a lightly used pair of Sapphires for sale. He was out of town when I originally inquired about them, but he would be back before too long and he promised to get in touch when he did. This gentleman, based on his remarks during our email conversation, was clearly a serious audiophile, and I was expecting that he’d have a serious system to play the Sapphires with.
When he returned from his trip he contacted me as promised and arranged to set up the demo. I was excited to get another listen to the Spatials and hopeful that it would lead to more certainty about about the speakers. I was also looking forward to connecting with someone in my area that had a similar passion for audio.
This gentleman, I was to discover a few days later, clearly did have a passion for audio, or at the very least for audio gear. His listening room contained no less than 4 different turntables and at least 6 different pairs of speakers. Everywhere I looked I saw tube amps and tubes and various other electronics. He’s been at this audio thing for several decades and had no doubt acquired a great deal of knowledge about the hobby along the way, and a ton of stuff along with it!
Much like the previous demo, this gentleman wanted to play me some specific tracks as a way of highlighting the strengths of the Spatial M3 Sapphires. He handed me the volume control and played the first, a sparse “jazz” track with acoustic bass and saxophone. I don’t recall the artist, but this was the sort of typical “audiophile” fodder that’s not too demanding on a system and allows the listener to tune in closely to the specific instruments on the recording. It’s also the sort of track that any good system should be able to play back beautifully without breaking a sweat.
Only. . . it couldn’t! GULP! I turned it up a bit, inching a little closer to a live listening volume, only to quickly dial it back down. The horn was so smeary and poorly resolved it was hurting my ears, making it hard to focus on the bass, which I believe was the point. My host asked me if I typically listened to music at “that volume,” and I thought he meant that I hadn’t been playing it very loud. Then I realized that he meant exactly the opposite. The relatively modest volume I’d turned it up to was MUCH louder than the one he usually listens at.
This is a big problem! What can we learn about a speaker or really ANY piece of equipment at a modest volume other than what that speaker can manage at that volume. We certainly don’t learn anything about how well that speaker reproduces music. Not a god damn thing! Pardon my french.
Next he put on a James Taylor track and that sounded just as bad. I lobbied as hard as I felt I could without sounding pushy to hear a record on one of his many turntables, but he clearly wasn’t inclined to get one hooked up for me. So I told him that I could save him a ton of time and we could end the demo right then and there. It lasted all of 5 minutes.
This gentleman, and he is a perfect one, was clearly “into” audio. He knew a lot about the gear, way more than I probably every will. I told him I had a pair of Verity Parsifals and he knew more about them than I did.
But as knowledgeable, passionate and dedicated as these two gentleman are, neither has an ear for recorded music. Not a bit I’m afraid. In fact I’ve discovered this is all too common in the world of audio. It seems to me that for a group of folks who’s passion is centered around the best possible reproduction of music, not all that many audiophiles actually have a good ear for it. And without THAT ear, I’m afraid, you are nowhere in this hobby. As Spatial Audio speaker designer Clayton Shaw put it himself in the interview I mentioned earlier, you cannot “spend your way” out of this problem.
Ron at New Record Day, Clayton’s interviewer, gives a very thorough and detailed review of the Spatial Sapphires with enough techie details and data to satisfy even the most obsessive audio enthusiast. He also likes the speakers. In fact, he seems to love them. So if you’re looking for a REAL review of these the Spatial Audio M3 Sapphires, check out Ron’s review at New Record Day.
While you’re at it you may also want to watch another of Ron’s videos where he demoes the Sapphires with a variety of tracks. When I first watched this video I thought to myself – well, I’m hearing this on my computer speakers so what does that really tell me? Nevertheless, based on my now terribly flawed and limited experience hearing the Sapphires “in the flesh.” I have to say they never impressed me any more than they did listening them on Ron’s video. Take a look and a listen see and hear for yourself.
In conclusion I’d like to propose that audiophiles, particularly the ones reviewing gear, stop listening for the details and the “WOW” factor and start noticing whether or not what they’re listening to actually sounds like real music. Nothing I heard on Ron’s demo video sounds like real music to me, or even musical for that matter. Clearly the Spatial Audio M3 Sapphires check a lot of boxes in the details and dynamic range department, but in the case of audio, the devil is not always in the details. In then end good sound is all about how well the artist’s work is conveyed and how close a system can bring us to the performance.
The sound of the Spatial Audio Sapphires never came close to that experience for me. Every time I heard them, and I would include Ron’s video in this, they sounded thin and oddly flat to me. They can deliver lots of bass and produce a big deep soundstage, that’s for sure, but it’s how they present what’s IN the soundstage that never worked for me. But as I said, this is not a review. This is one guy’s opinion who just happens to know good sound.
If you’re considering buying a pair of Spatial Audio M3 Sapphire speakers, I would strongly suggest you take advantage of the 60 day trial, because I certainly wouldn’t take my word on whether they’re any good or not, and you definitely can’t rely on anyone else to evaluate them for you, ESPECIALLY the well intentioned folks who want you to buy them.
And well intentioned, I firmly believe, they are! LET ME MAKE THIS CRYSTAL CLEAR! I am in no way suggesting that Clayton Shaw or really any audio component designer out there, or any of the retailers handling their equipment, is trying to hoodwink unsuspecting audiophiles in to buying gear that they know isn’t any good. I have full confidence that they believe in the products they are building and selling.
But genuine belief and the very best of intentions a great sounding audio system does not make. As audiophiles we need to develop our ear for music while blocking out all of the chatter and the hype and dedicate ourselves to trusting our own experience over the advice of others. Saying reviews are not to be trusted may sound cynical, but it is the God’s honest truth. Not because the fine people doing these reviews cannot be trusted, but because they cannot, I’m afraid, be relied upon to know good sound.