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Can't connect to database, trying again.... Fascinated by Tocaros in Austin - Bob Neill - Speaker Asylum

Home Speaker Asylum

General speaker questions for audio and home theater.

Fascinated by Tocaros in Austin




I flew to Austin, Texas last week (in and out before the SXSW music festival) to spend a few days listening to my Crimson electronics and cable in a new setting. (Austin Hifi is the U.S. importer/distributor of Crimson.) If that were the story, I’d discretely keep my Crimson dealer’s mouth shut, but it’s not. What I met in Austin were Tocaro loudspeakers built in Germany, by Alwin Gort and Miguel Herrero. Here’s a link to a photo and short blurb: http://austinhifi.com/tocaro.html.

Creston Funk of Austin Hifi fell in love with the Tocaros a few years ago and has become their principal advocate in the U.S. I went to Austin with no expectations for or about the Tocaros, had only heard of them from Funk and from the brouhaha surrounding their appearance at RMAF a few years ago, where they not surprisingly (I see now) discombobulated traditional listeners. They are said to win no friends, just lovers and detractors. Funk is a lover. They are the only speaker he sells with any passion, though he has some others around to provide contrast. His partner, Mark Heaston, spent a year as a detractor before becoming a lover. Heaston’s wife, a musician, wouldn’t have them in the house, now won’t have them out. Funk’s son, Creston III, swears by his at home, so I count him a lover, though he is less effusive than his father. Everybody is less effusive than his father. Creston III, gives the probably accurate impression that he’s in this for the music, having once been a musician himself. That’s where his passion shows. It showed in the bluesy and funky music he contributed to our listening sessions. Do the Tocaros affect what music he listens to? Has the music he listens to picked the Tocaros?

I am reporting about my experience of them mainly because I’ve heard little or nothing about them elsewhere since the RMAF fuss and would like to share my first impressions and evoke some commentary from anyone else who has heard them -- ideally for longer than the customary 3-minute drop-in at shows. What I heard over two days plus on a variety of music, as their new “D” drivers broke in in our presence (and are presumably breaking in still), were the most direct, obvious, fastest, transparent, unrefined (as in brown rather than white sugar), and possibly most exciting speakers I’ve ever heard. I say possibly because I’m a fairly traditional listener who is still processing the experience. What the Tocaros appeared to be saying is that bandwidth is not terribly important, though dynamics are. And absolute clarity is. And beauty is not unless it is the specific, raw beauty of unprocessed information coming from an instrument or voice. I heard them saying that the sounds we’re used to hearing in our homes, from the warmest systems to the most analytic, are all too colored and/or slow to do justice to what instruments and voices really sound like. They are calling us wusses for preferring comfort, ease, charm, refinement; or at the other end of the spectrum, for being excessively left brained and preferring artificially lean and hyped transparency. To the real thing. They are rude and arrogantly revolutionary. On Iris Dement, Ligeti’s string quartets, Joan Tower, Gabriella Lena Frank, Lera Auerbach, Chopin, Ibragimova’s Beethoven violin sonatas, Wilson Pickett, and Bob Dylan, these Tocaro model 40’s were among the very best speakers I’ve heard. They are alleged to produce a square wave, something most of us have never heard, from a speaker. I have no doubt they do. They were wonderfully nasty on Pickett, gorgeous but unadorned on Ibragimova. On Bruckner, these single-driver standmounts were over their head. Yes, single driver, standmounts. Multi-driver models 42 and 45 are en route if flat out Bruckner is your thing, though Funk says they do better on Bruckner in something smaller than his very large (and high) listening room. The larger models are said to go lower and also generate a larger, more realistic presentation on orchestral music in particular. There is reportedly a slight trade-off in focus in exchange for the increased sense of scale and sheer physical impact.

Tocaro 40’s sound like none of my favorite speakers and, given the rate of production (11 pairs of drivers per six weeks), I’m unlikely to own a pair for a long time, if ever; or, to set minds at ease here, become a dealer for them. There would be no need for me to become a dealer, one appears to be sufficient. They strike me as the kind of speaker one might buy for himself as he retired from the business rather than try to persuade others to love. But, as you can see, I am fascinated by them. I am an exception to the point I was making above about Tocaros producing only lovers and detractors. I am fascinated and puzzled.

The thing is, these speakers are messiahs (small m). They insist that we change, learn a whole new way of considering the audio experience. They ask us to dare to listen to their different way of presenting music...and then to go home and see what our familiar systems sound like, now.

So what did I learn when I got home? Did my Audio Note and Reynaud systems sound wrong? Not really, no. They are not as fast, emotionally riveting, nor absolutely present as I remember the Tocaros being. They sound more solicitous, fuller, sometimes more beautiful, definitely more familiar (!) I’m too old to follow messiahs after just two days + experience with The Truth. And to be fair, my all Audio Note and Blue Circle/Crimson/JM Reynaud systems make very strong cases for the relevance of a less uncompromisingly objective version of musical reality in the living room. They are a bit more ingratiating, not quite so confrontational. Not quite so real. Still, this isn’t something that will be settled here today -- or perhaps anywhere, anytime. The Tocaros force us to ask what it is we want. And then they make a a powerful case for the alternative approach they represent, something no other loudspeaker has been able to do here for a very low time.

If you’re ever in Austin....



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Topic - Fascinated by Tocaros in Austin - Bob Neill 06:21:31 03/14/12 (6)

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