#estelon

Hoàng Cương

Yesterday I had exclusive opportunity to listen superiour Estelon speakers, designed by Alfred Vassilkov and built in Tallinn, Estonia. As Estelon is heading to Europe's largest specialist trade fair for high-end entertainment High End Munich, they had 2 models for listening: Estelon XB and most affordable 16 000 € Estelon XC (all photos are Estelon XC model). We took relaxed 1 hour to go through Alfred Vassilkov's favourite tracks, most of my personal taste. First thing you notice, that sound field and imaging is absolutely translucent. There is a concert hall, church, jazz club or studio, but not speakers -- when you close your eyes. Second observation is, that you start to feel the emotion behind the music -- all the meaning of ones piece is "tele-ported" to listening room with no loss of feeling. Third observation was that I started to notice imperfections and naturalness of instruments. Natural-natural-natural are 3 words how to characterize Alfred Vassilkov's masterpiece. Estelon speakers have exquisite component selection, but what makes it really special is cabinet material. It's made in a special casting process, the use of a proprietary marble based composite and the extensive use of sub-structural stiffening spars breaks up resonance nodes and creates an internal acoustic chamber of non-parallel sidewalls that is all but immune to unwanted standing waves that can cause a colored sound. To develop the cabinet material, having all needed physical characteristics, took years. The result is, that the cabinet is heavy, bigger XA model weights over 80 Kg, and has virtually "dead material" properties. Stay tuned, after the High End Munich, I'll be back at Estelon and shooting their 80 000 € diamond-tweeter flagship model.