Test speaker system YAMAHA Soavo 1

YAMAHA Soavo 1 speakers have a high sound neutrality and naturalness, very smooth midrange sound. In general, the speakers play true to the YAMAHA “Natural Sound” concept and will please all lovers of natural sound. The disadvantages are that the bass is a little bit lazy. HF dispersion of the head is controlled by a special acoustic lens.

Test: Denis Goncharov, Consumer magazine.Video & Audio

Design

In 2006 the Japanese company YAMAHA returned to the world market of Hi-End class speakers with the old motto “Natural Sound”, embodied in the acoustic systems of Soavo family. The speakers exterior was designed by world-famous designer Toshiyuki Kita, whose works can be found in the best modern art galleries of New York and Paris.

Complex stereo facets of Soavo cabinets are repeated inside the cabinets, suppressing standing waves in them.Series Soavo is different not only innovative design, the speakers uses a number of advanced technologies YAMAHA.

The tweeter with a diameter of 30 mm is equipped with aluminum dome, fused in one with the voice coil DC-Diaphragm technology . The dispersion of the tweeter head sound is controlled by a special acoustic lens and the “squeaker” membrane is protected by a convex metal mesh. For protection from vibrations, the tweeter is mounted in a thick aluminum plate.

Soavo MF/HF drivers are equipped with cast aluminum baskets, lightweight voice coils with edge winding and upgraded inner suspension center washer . The drive units use compact and powerful neodymium magnets and the cones are made using Advanced PMD technology Polymer-injected Mica Diaphragm – a polymer cone of polymethylene and Pentene is further reinforced with mica and talcum powder.

The Soavo crossover is built on wooden boards with specially selected components such as polypropylene capacitors and air-core inductors. Wiring is made with German manufacturer’s ALR/Jordan cable.Soavo cabinets are MDF with up to 37mm thick front wall reinforcement. Inside the cabinets are stiffened with struts and blanking bulkheads.

The Soavo 1 models tested have one vertical full-height cabinet strut and a solid bulkhead separating the midrange driver compartment from the bass driver box. The cabinets are veneered on the outside with different shades of birch veneer: natural, black, dark brown and brown. The insides of the cabinets are also veneered and the FI port is carved from solid alder.

All of the benefits and features described above apply to all Soavo speakers. The Soavo 1 models we’re interested in have a 30mm tweeter, a 130mm A-PMD tweeter and two 160mm A-PMD bass drivers. Point-and-click cabinet design realized with a large wooden port on the front panel. To adjust the bass of the speakers for a particular room peculiarities the filler pipes are supplemented with foam stoppers.

Sound

Their sound is perfectly neutral, there is neither coldness, nor excessive excitement bordering with brightness, in general, the golden mean is found. The dynamic resource of the sound is also good. Slightly more vivid high frequency response: the richness of the jazz overtones, the richness of the string overtones and the high definition of the cymbals and brush strokes are reproduced far more intensively.

A detailed display of all that glossy high-frequency tinsel makes the Soavo 1 sound extraordinarily light and airy. The Japanese cabinets have smooth and articulate mids, and the timbre of the instruments and voices is very clear and natural, allowing them to reproduce the mood of almost any genre of music very accurately. Perhaps the only heavy rock and related styles that make the Soavo 1 sound a little worse. Despite the detail and naturalness, the Jap’s bass is slightly slowed down and has moderate energy.

The Soavo 1 builds the music scene extremely skillfully, and in this they are one of the leaders in their class. And it’s not just the speakers’ wide dispersion pattern: you can move around the room pretty freely, staying in the zone of high-quality stereo effect.

The stereo image created by the Soavo1 is wide in azimuth, echeloned in depth. On stage, individual performers and instruments are precisely localized, even edges and back layers of the virtual space are well defined.With the wonderful spacing and high resolution the speakers reproduced different tricky effects from Roger Waters “Amused To Death” disc: the dog and the radio sounded from somewhere on the side, the concert hall with the audience was carried far ahead, rolling the listener with percussion waves.

Price: 61 200 Dollars.

Measured at

The Soavo 1 achieves a minimum impedance at 160Hz 3.3 Ohms and a maximum MF/HF of 18.7 Ohms at 5.3kHz. The curve is smooth all around, the only issue is the kink around 1.2 kHz it’s from this frequency that the Soavo 1 begins to exhibit flatness .

The speakers’ reflex ports are tuned to 30 Hz. In the woofer/frequency range the AFC is exemplary: in the 68 to 1kHz range the flatness is less than 1.5dB. From 1 to 2,5 kHz the sensitivity modulation gain, then again go to a fairly flat “area”, ending with a local peak around 16 kHz.

The Soavo 1’s +/-3dB span was 44-20kHz. The directivity diagram of the speakers is wide, despite some decline in the HF region, the curve, taken at an angle of 30°, goes close to the axis. So if you slightly turn the speakers away from the listener, you should not expect to change the tonal balance of sound.