Sometimes delivering is just not enough, you need a story, and Zellaton surely has one. The company’s origins date back in the thirties, when Dr Emile Podszus introduced a series of technological innovations in driver design that granted him a few patents and several industrial contracts. Today his grandson produces a series of high-end speakers that feature unique drivers based on those studies and during the show we had the Emotion two-way floorstander paired with some fine electronics, Gryphon Audio’s Mikado CD player and Pandora pre-amplifier along with CH Precision C1 DAC and A1 power amplifier. Musical Wires took care of the connections.
This system was fast, very fast in Marcus Miller’s bass guitar playing on the tune “Panther”. Zellaton chooses speed over ultimate bass extension and I must say that transients were as quick as it gets. Staying on jazz music, a glorious sense of space emerged from the system on Bill Evans “Waltz for Debby”, a trait I would attribute to the open back design of the speaker cabinet which allows for back waves to freely irradiate in a quasi-dipole manner. If I had to be picky I would point out some grain on certain passages but in show conditions there is quite a lot happening in the room and unfortunately we heard no voices, which would have cleared things up. Still an impressive performance.
