How does it sound?

It sounds great, as all DIY system builders know. Their latest speakers sound the best in the world. :)

I have a pair of Wharfedale floorstanders, which were my main speakers till now. I also have a pair of simple full-range standmounts with Jordan JX92S drivers. I'll try comparing the Asawari's sound with these, and with my (unreliable) memories of other speakers I've heard.

Tonal characteristics: The Asawari does not have the smooth, valve-like sound of some speakers I've heard. I recently heard some Gamut speakers, which retail for $13,000 a pair, and which use the Scanspeak slit-paper-cone midbass units which retail for more than USD 200 each. Those have that ultra-smooth valve-like sound. I guess this difference is due partly to the cone material: Kevlar will not sound like paper cones. It could also be partly due to the distortion reduction measures in the Revelator drivers which Scanspeak is famous for.

Otherwise, the Asawari has a very balanced tonal nature; you can listen for hours on end. If your amp is particularly bright, then the Asawari may sound too bright for extended listening. With my five-year-old Cambridge Audio amp, it sound quite right. My friend (the new owner of the Asawari) has just purchased a Cambridge Audio 640 v2 integrated amp, and dumped it at my place. That seems to create a bit brighter sound on the brightest of albums. Voices sound very real and clean on both amps.

The Jordans have a tonal balance for voices which is in a league by itself. I guess I'll need to be a much more skilled crossover designer, and use better drivers, to get that level of subtle, smooth and real tonal balance from my speakers. However, once one steps out of the zone of voices into the zone of orchestral music, the Jordans have neither the bass nor the clean highs of the Asawari.

One of the major contributors to the Asawari's lovely tonal balance is undoubtedly the BSC built into the crossover. Thanks, Roman. That 1.5mH inductor on the low-pass filter does most of the trick, I believe.

Detailing: The Asawari is much more detailed than the Wharfedales. The enclosures of the Wharfedales almost sing at high volume levels, and the Asawari has really dead enclosures. This is probably one of the main reasons why the Wharfedales with their Kevlar cone drivers can't approach the detail of the Asawari. While on the subject of detailed sound, there are two kinds of detail. One kind is "cold, detailed and analytical". This is the kind of detailed sound you get from a speaker which is too bright, or has heavy tweeter distortion, or has metal cones which exhibit audible cone breakup resonances. This is what I got in spades from the Asawari before I tweaked its tweeter level. There is another kind of detailed sound, which does not have this cold and analytical nature. With this kind, you can hear fine backgound nuances in the midst of loud passages, without losing the smoothness or warmth of the sound. The Asawari has some amount of this second kind of detailed sound.

The Jordans have this kind of effortless, smooth detailing, to a degree higher than the Asawari. I guess the JX92S drivers have taken this aspect of performance to a level where you can only reach with very special drivers. I am not sure the Asawari can ever be tweaked to reach that level, even with a different tweeter. I don't know, but it is possible that Seas Excel or Scanspeak Revelator midbass units may be able to reach those levels.

Soundstage and imaging: The Asawari's imaging is frighteningly good. I didn't know what imaging was when I used to listen to the Wharfedales -- Angshu had explained that any speaker with resonating enclosures really muddies the imaging. With the Asawari, since the midbass and tweeters are very coherent in phase and the enclosure is quite dead, I have begun to understand what good imaging is. The soundstage extends beyond the width of the space between the speakers, i.e. to the left of the left speaker and the right of the right speaker. And there's also a clear depth in the soundstage: some sounds are clearly forward and others are placed behind. I said "frighteningly good" earlier because once or twice, when I was listening to the Asawari late at night, half asleep, I was startled by what I thought was the voice of some announcer four feet from my face. This was due to some bit of announcement in a live CD with a very forward position in the soundstage. Till you experience it, you don't realise how real this can be.

The Jordan FR boxes image extremely well too, as expected. I had made them from 25mm MDF, and this thickness plus the sheer small size made the enclosures very dead. That, plus an absence of crossovers, resulted in some amazingly sharp imaging. I would say the Asawaris are almost as good in the imaging department.

I've observed something interesting about imaging. All else remaining the same, louder tweeters create a more sharply etched soundstage, with sharper instrument positions. The Asawari used to create sharper imaging before I cut down its tweeter level.

Transients: These are very good with the Asawari. Things like the plucking of a stringed instrument, or a hit on a cymbal, turn out quite well. The Asawaris are effortlessly better than the Wharfedales, once again probably due to the deader enclosures.

Bass: I had heard very good bass slam from another speaker a friend had built using Vifa P17 midbass drivers. I had never expected the Asawari to reach those levels. After all, how much raw bass punch can you get with these polymer frame drivers with modest-sized magnets? Moreover, I had selected a low frequency alignment which was a bit controversial, something like an overdamped sealed-box alignment. So, finally, I was surprised at the bass extension. This was excellent, and you could hear it clearly on double-bass on jazz albums and in the "Hotel California" track in "Hell Freezes Over". However, the middle-bass region, where rock drums operate, sounded weaker than what I'd like, and this was most visible in "Money for nothing and chicks for free" from "Brothers in Arms".

I was pleasantly surprised, however, when I switched from my five-year-old Cambridge Audio amp to the new Cambridge Audio 640 v2. The bass became louder, tighter, and more punchy. With this amp, I think most users will find even Dire Straits very enjoyable. Quite interesting, how the amp was a limiting factor in this case.

Listening setup: The Asawari is best listened to sitting down, with the ear at the tweeter height. The full beauty of the speakers is audible only this way. I guess this is partly simply a fallout of the MTM configuration, which has relatively narrower vertical dispersion. I don't think this is a problem; I just thought I'd mention it. And of course, the speakers sound best when their front baffles are at least a metre away from rear or side walls. This is common to most speakers, I guess.

I toe in the speakers quite a bit, so that their axes cross a foot or two in front of my face. I sit at the apex of an equilateral triangle, with the speakers forming the other two corners.

I don't yet know when my friends will take the Asawaris away. Till then, my Wharfedales stand forlorn in one corner while I have fun with the Asawaris. My gamble of building a good pair of speakers purely with Indian parts seems to have yielded results better than my expectations. Angshu had always said this would be the case -- he used to keep on saying, "Just go ahead and build something, you'll see it'll easily beat your Wharfedales." If he hadn't believed in me so staunchly, I'd probably never have gotten started on this path at all. And if he, Roman and others hadn't been so consistently helpful, I'd never have reached the end.