Grand Veena by Reference 3A
Quotes from Reviewers
"...And speaking of feasts, vocals were served up with such a startling vividness on the Grand Veena that it was hard to figure out what, if anything, the speaker was contributing as a sonic signature...."- StereoTimes, January 2009
"...This speaker system is like quicksilver, it both adapts to and reveals the character of whatever you feed it...
...It goes down, with weight, power, and articulation, into the bottom octave; likewise it goes up into frequencies beyond most speakers, and without a characteristic high-frequency rise. From top to bottom, there isn't a sonic "signature" in the way we have come to associate with virtually all speaker designs. No upper-midrange blare or glare, mo midbass "boom", reticence, or observable emphasis. Massed strings can sound both lush and smooth, percussion overtones reach skyward. All this rendered with complete smoothness and without those sometimes little cues that let us know how and where a speaker system is imposing its own veil, "character", or "signature" upon the music itself..." - Robert Harley, The Absolute Sound
"...If audiophiles were seeking a holy grail (and aren't we?), it is an audio system that will reproduce a recording of a musical performance with total and convincing accuracy. The Reference 3A Grand Veenas took my system as close to that level as I have yet heard, making more of a difference than any other change of component I've ever made..." -Albert Bellg, Ultra Audio
Grand Veena Reviews
- StereoTimes Reviews the Grand Veena, January 2009
- Ultra Audio's Review of the Grand Veena, March 2008
- The Absolute Sound reviews the Grand Veena loudspeaker, January 2008
- EnjoyTheMusic.com's review of the Grand Veena, January 2008
Awards
- Reference 3A Grand Veena wins The Absolute Sound's 2007 Editor's Choice Award
What makes the Reference 3A Dulcet so special?
The Reference 3a Full range driver
From the Reference 3A web site
For over 40 years Reference 3A has earned a sterling reputation and many awards for producing "utterly musical" loudspeakers with a very coherent, engaging and lively sound.
The Grand Veena is a tall, slender tower speaker housing five seamlessly integrated drivers. The front baffle is angled back and the drivers are positioned precisely for correct time alignment and phase coherance. The multi-chamber enclosure provides isolation between the drivers in order to avoid interference between them.
Phase Coherance
Achieving a coherent phase response is an utmost priority for Reference 3A and a design criterion with all of their loudspeakers. Carefully matching the drivers with correct parameters, choosing a more direct signal-path design option, along with critical placement of the perfectly matched drivers allows Ref 3A to achieve this goal with their Grand Veena Loudspeaker. The Grand Veenas project a harmonically rich, clear and expansive soundstage and offer fatigueless extended listening sessions.
Our own hand-built 7" (170 mm.) main driver is hyper-exponentially shaped and covers a wide range of the music evenly. Utilising advanced materials and techniques the driver is designed to not require crossovers and it is coupled directly to the amplifier. The potentially harmful effects of crossover components are removed from the path so the musical signal arrives at the driver uninterrupted and intact. Every tiny musical detail is revealed precisely and immediately.
Powerful Bass
Two powerful 8" (21mm.) long excursion bass drivers are provide the extended low frequencies down to the 20 hz range. They are composed of very stiff and light Fibreglass and Kevlar cones with honeycomb construction. This construction eliminates driver break-up modes. A rigid cast driver frame ensures mechanical integrity. A proprietary acoustic device is utilized internally to absorb excess pressure generated by the enclosure's standing waves and to avoid interference with the driver's motion. With only a quasi-second order low-pass filter, low frequencies are tuned to extend flatly down to 36Hz. while significant information is still heard at even very low 20Hz range frequencies.
Articulate Highs
A precise high frequency driver with an optimally shaped silk dome diaphragm and a low resonance frequency of only 590Hz. has been chosen. It blends seamlessly with the direct-coupled main driver. With a low mass voice coil and a copper Faraday-Ring it is very well behaved even at high sound pressure levels. Connected with just a single Mundorf capacitor as the high-pass filter, it projects a smooth, extended and spacious treble.
Murata Super Tweeter
An unusual design feature of the Grand Veena is the very special ultra high frequency exciter by Murata Co. It is a 12mm. diameter ceramic dome super tweeter, which radiates in spherical motion unlike the conventional piston motion of all dome drivers. The very fine ceramic dome actually expands and contracts emitting extreme high frequencies from above 20 kHz to about 100 kHz. within a very wide acoustic space. Although its' presence is not easily detectable via conventional means, it promotes better perception of a spacious soundstage and surprisingly better musical definition at even lower frequencies than its' actual operating range.
Bybee Quantum Purifiers
4 standard Bybee Quantum Purifiers are incorporated into each speaker in such a way that the incoming signal passes through the Purifiers before the drivers. They remove a type of noise that Jack Bybee (the designer)calls 1/f (1 over "f"). The result of the Bybee's noise removal is a more spacious soundstage, more natural musical decays, better harmonic layering, and being able to hear the acoustic space within the performance much better.
Upgrade to Super Effect Bybee Purifiers!
Tweek Geek is also offering an upgrade to the standard Bybee purifiers included on the stock Grand Veenas. Replace some or all of the standard Bybee's with Bybee Super Effect Purifiers. They are the same exact Purifiers used in the award winning Bybee Speaker Bullets. Our Level I upgrade places a Super Effect Purifier on each positive terminal of each set of binding posts (internally of course), and a standard Bybee Purifier internally on each negative binding post. That is a total of 2 Super Effect Bybees and 2 Standard Bybees. The Level II upgrade replaces all four standard Bybee Purifiers with the Bybee Super Effect Purifiers.
The Super Effect Purifiers are an exponential leap in performance over the Standard Bybees. In addition to improved soundstage and air, transient speed, macro and micro dynamics and bass performance. the music simply has a relaxed, organic flow that sounds more like music. A perfect combination with the Reference 3A speakers. In fact, Jack Bybee himself (who could own nearly any speaker he wants) chose a pair of Grand Veenas with Bybee Super Effect Purifiers inside for his personal system.
Other Reference 3A Models
Dulcet | Veena | Episode
