Home Speaker Asylum

General speaker questions for audio and home theater.

RE: For Bob Neill, re: your new Tocaro 42s

The 42’s have only been here about two weeks and I was planning on waiting a bit longer before reporting out. But okay. Break in on these seems waaaay faster than on the 40’s, so I guess I’m ready for a summary report.

Basic facts: the cabinets are six inches higher and one inch wider than the 40's, making them look less square and more like... Spendor BC1’s! 14” x 23.5 x 10” vs the 40‘s 13” x 17.5” x 10” without their stands. The 42 uses the standard Tocaro 10-inch driver in the 40 and has a 5-inch tweeter made up of three sheets of glued rosewood veneer cross glued into a laminated structure, with laser cuts to allow for the necessary flexibility. (Go to http://www.austinhifi.com/tocaro.html for an image of the tweeter.) There is still no crossover. The 42’s are 99 dB compared with the 40's 97 dB.

Last time out I said that the 40’s to my ears had become less eccentric, more central, more definitive as they broke in and that they were now aspiring to be not so much an alternative speaker as the alternative. With fewer than 30 hours on them, I would say the 42’s already go a lot farther in this regard. They project a larger, fuller, and more spacious image that is notably freer, smoother and more easeful. The low end feels deeper and more authoritative, but also less conspicuous -- just there. The top end is more open and considerably more refined. Overall I hear a subtler sense of touch. Orchestral music has more body, sweep, and bass clarity; on good recordings that aren’t miked too closely, strings now have a sheen. Everything else has a bit more presence, feels a little meatier in some cases, a little more delicate in others. Everything feels a bit more real. Arguably most important from a practical standpoint, right out of the box they give little or no sense of being an unbroken-in speaker! Which is pretty much why I feel okay writing this.

I would say that while the increased scale, range, and refinement I describe are important here, the dramatically greater sense of ease and overall freeing up of the sound (and lightening fast break-in) are the 42’s most important improvements over the 40. I’m somewhat mystified how 45% more cubic volume and a tweeter can accomplish this, but there it is. All of the 40‘s clarity (and then some) is there but it’s less insistent. I expect that as good as the 40’s are, the 42’s will win friends a bit faster -- at a $4500 price premium. 42’s are $14,000, 40’s are $9500. Both prices include proprietary wood stands.

In the interest of Asylum propriety, I’m going to stop here. I hinted earlier that several of us were pressing Funk to become Tocaro dealers. Along with the arrival of the 42‘s, there has come a slight increase of Tocaros now coming into the U.S. such that the possibility of a few Tocaro dealers has now advanced to a probability. What we proposed is that there be four dealers in five locations: Creston's son Creston III has moved to Los Angeles and is already available to demo Tocaros (and Crimson electronics) as "Austin Hifi West" there. Also, we’re suggesting dealers in West Palm Beach, Florida; Stowe Vermont; and Amherst, Massachusetts. All of us are already Crimson dealers, which is the essence of our case. Since I assume this is really going to happen now, from here on out I’ll answer questions with more reserve. I’ll spell everything out further about the 42’s themselves on my web site when I get a better handle on things.

Contact Austin Hifi for information about the other dealers. www.austinhifi.com




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