Opinion 1

Until recently the title Danish brand was a kind of desire object, we would like to make closer contact with, but due to the fact, that in Poland there was no distributor, chances to get out of this impasse were not very high. But fortunately for a vast number of music lovers, this brand is such an interesting item, that since a dozen months, we do have an energetic distributor. And I did not use the description “energetic” by chance, as his works does not end with just lending gear for testing and listening sessions, but together with the Polish turntable manufacturer Benny Audio, he arranged a meeting in Sopot, with lots of music and Marcin Oleś as the host. But what brand am I talking about? Well, about the Danish loudspeaker specialist, Peak Consult. And the Chełmża based distributor Quality Audio, not without some logistic issues, provided us with the smallest floor stander from the company portfolio, the Sonora.

Looking at the photos, you can clearly see that it is a floor stander. But when you have a closer look, it turns out, that this is more a two-way monitor than a typical floor stander. Albeit with a passive membrane instead of a bass-reflex port, to manage appropriate reach and quality of the bass and packed in a larger cabinet. Why so? Well, a heavier box allows for better management of vibration, something that is the main goal of the manufacturers. This is combatted using thick layers of HDF glued together. Of course, this HDF does not diminish the beauty of the speakers, because, as it is tradition for this brand, the top and side panels are covered with real wood, in this case walnut, and the front baffle and back panel are covered with real leather. To make the external design even more appealing, in the middle of the of the side panels, there is a strip of shiny acrylic, which contrasts nicely with the walnut and leather panels. Another important element of the construction of the cabinet, is that the walls are not parallel to each other, the angles between them are not right. Similar to its bigger brethren, the Sonora has the front baffle section with the mounted drivers quite a way up. On the top end of the back panel we have the mentioned passive membrane, while below, just above the floor, proprietary wire terminals, separate for the bass and treble sections. As you could expect, the loudspeakers are supported on transverse feet with adjustable barrels, bolted from below, a solution typical for Peak Consult. Finalizing the description with some technicalities let me just mention, that according to the manufacturer we have here a two-way speaker, with a sensitivity of 90dB / 8Ohm, with a height of about 113cm and weighing 48kg a piece. The speakers are supplied to the clients in solid, dedicated transportation boxes.

Starting to write about the smallest loudspeaker in the Peak Consult portfolio, let me tell you that, “All is quiet on the Western front”. Sonically, the tested Sonora are moving on the same path as the its larger brethren, the sound esthetics is very similar. It is still based on full timbral emotions, vividness and essence of the reproduced music. But in contrast to its predecessors, it has a tad different approach to the energy package in it. And of course it is not about lacking it, but about a different projection of its lower registers, which are tuned differently here. This comes from the exchanging the bass-reflex port to the passive radiator, which adds some nobleness to it. On one hand it allows the base to become a bit lighter, avoiding the effect of a “pump”, which is tiring on the long run, but on the other hand, it should allow to have it reach lower. And what is the effect? For me it is formidable, as music, with a seemingly lower weight, did have appropriate pulse, but did not try to reach the size as reproduced from bigger speakers. Do you think it is a bad thing? Absolutely not, this approach eliminates the effect of a steroid pumped boxer, trying to knock us out, leaving us with an agile lady inviting us to spend a few moments with our beloved music. Personally, I prefer the second, unconstrained world, this is the reason, that I have such big speakers myself. But if I would not have such possibilities, I would have searched for something like the tested speakers. Not very big speakers, with a sound that also does not reach record size, but with complete freedom of reverberation; with a full palette of information required to listen without straining your hearing. I know, that this may not be very fashionable, because we love, when the sound coming from the speakers kicks us, but for me, that would be a fight, and not a way to spend my evening. So when you love the second option, and your listening room is somewhat constrained, the choice is simple – Peak Consult Sonora. And I will try to show you the reasoning behind this based on a few disc examples.
Let us first take a listen to our Polish singer, supported by a world-class guitar player, Anna Maria Jopek and Pat Metheny, on the album “Upojenie”. This is a recording that is known to probably all music lovers in Poland, and many outside of it, and in most part a very moody one. And well recorded too, not needing the lower registers to be upped, and as such, showing all the assets of the tested speakers. The music was reproduced very airy – of course, when it had to hit it did, but the airiness and the brilliant decay of individual, well exposed sounds, produced not only by the delicate voice of the singer, but also by the virtuoso guitar, pushed the emotional content of the reproduced material to a rarely achievable level of reaching my senses. And it was not just about skillfully avoiding the “wow” effect in reproducing the expressiveness of the recording, but also about interestingly putting it in the ether and making it vivid, and with this intensifying the amount of evoked emotions.
Another disc, that shows well the assets of the loudspeakers, was the album “I have the Room above Her” from the Paul Motian jazz trio, with Bill Frisell and Joe Lovano. This is another very picturesque recording, where the saxophone of J. Lovano is very important. It is not too light, but also far from being obese, and due to splendid vividness, full of “wooden” artifacts and is a great counterpoint to the rest of the band, in a very readable arranged, wide and deep virtual stage. And this is only one of the many important aspects of the material, as also the resonant guitar from Frisell and the rhythm support from the contrabass of Motian, showing the full size of its body, as well as the work of the fingers on the strings, were also vital to the overall story. All in all it was another well reproduced test disc.
Finally something that also worked well, although for lovers of this genre, it probably could have sounded stronger. I am talking about the newest rock album from AC/DC “Power Up”. Again, everything was OK, but such kind of bands like an abundance of mass and energy in the lower octaves. Without that, the gravity point of this music can travel upwards and become a tad clamorous. This the more, as the gentlemen do not shy away from guitar show-offs, which often turn out to be little engaging, if not backed with sufficient mass. So how did this disc finally fare? Surprisingly ambiguous. Due to the loudspeakers avoiding overexcitement, things went off without any clamor; the timbre was well seated. But in terms of creating appropriate amounts of energy, things turned out to be a bit too light. There will be plenty of people supporting this approach, but let us not kid ourselves, the guys from AC/DC do like strong sound. So was it a setback? No, not completely. And there are many reasons for that. First of all, are the mentioned assets of those loudspeakers, but in this case the choice of appropriate speakers for your repertoire is key. Nobody sane will buy speakers designed to shape each and every music note to listen to rock and similar genres. And even if you would do that, please bear in mind that the test was conducted in a room too large for them, and yet, they still managed to impress. So what would happen when you would place them in a more appropriate space? I think I can guess, but you can try it for yourself and, probably, will be positively surprised.

Trying to summarize all pros and cons of this test, I can easily say that the Peak Consult Sonora speakers were victorious. This is in fact just a bookshelf speaker, albeit with an enlarged cabinet, so you cannot judge it in an inappropriately large room. Of course, with its assets, it will much easier shine in a quieter repertoire, directed more on the emotional aspect of music, but even “wired” gentlemen showed some nice symptoms of drive, so if you are not looking for the most offensive and ruthless part of music, the tested speakers have a chance to find their place in most potential systems. There is one thing though, you need to give them a chance.

Jacek Pazio

Opinion 2

After the showing of the El Diablo in our four … or rather eight angles, and hearing what the majestic Dragon were capable of during the Munich High End, reaching for the very compact, if not small (at least compared with its brethren) speakers, like the tested Sonora, seems to be asking for trouble, or an emanation of audiophile masochism. Because how so? Moving from the bigger, more expensive and of course better to smaller, cheaper and les… Hold your horses. What would you say, if instead of thinking and conducting purely academic discussions, based on data enclosed in the specification and pictures, have a listen to them, just out of pure decency, before giving our final verdict? If you agree with our proposal, let me invite you to the meeting with the nice floor standers Peak Consult Sonora, supplied to us by the Chełmża based distributor Quality Audio.

Now as I mentioned in the very beginning, we are taking a look at the smallest constructions from the Danish company, let me explain, that while the Sonora maybe are not the biggest around, especially when you see the almost two meter high Berlinas in the background, but taking into account the Polish apartment sizes, where three rooms and 40 m² reappeared, only such sized speakers will be able to fit. Of course the posed thesis is probably too much of a simplification and hyperbola, because it is hard to imagine, that its potential buyer would own such a micro-apartment. But adhering to the facts and looking at them, we must confess, that they not only look very attractive, but from the start, from unboxing, they inspire confidence. It would be hard not to, as with the quite compact size, 113cm height, 28cm width and 38.5cm depth, their weight is almost 50kg a piece. And in addition, the Danish decided not to use a standard, shoebox shape, but used a shape requiring much more attention, where the top part of the front baffle, which houses the two drivers, is slanted quite a way back and chiseled to minimalize the unwanted diffraction of sound ways. And while we mentioned drivers – in the Sonora there are proprietary speakers, a 26mm velvet dome tweeter, with drive made from six, precisely positioned, neodymium magnets and equipped with a dedicated chamber, used to eliminate parasitic reflections and resonances and a 18cm mid-woofer, with a dust cap carrying the company logo. The latter is not supported by a standard bass-reflex port (as it was in the Princessa, the, let us say, predecessors), but by a passive membrane with 23cm diameter, placed on the back. Similar attention was devoted to the cabinets, made from multilayered sandwiches of HDF and special anti-vibration glue, over 30mm thick. On the outside, those are layered with 14mm American walnut staves with acrylic inserts and black leather is mounted on the front baffle and the back panel, so there is quality all around the speaker. The wire terminals are close to the bottom, and the stabilizer feet, and accept all kinds of connectors, including bare wires. The company does not provide any shunt wires, so either you need to have your own, or rely on the distributor for providing suitable ones, and this is what we did.
To prevent any kind of anomalies coming from vibration and microphony, the cross-overs are acoustically separated from the drivers, so there is no worry, that they can be affected in any way, even in case of very high volume levels.

In terms of sound, I dare to claim that in the Sonora, the influence of the person co-responsible for the current Peak offerings, Wilfried Ehrenholz – previous cofounder and owner of … Dynaudio, can be heard the most. The sound is incredibly coherent, organic and slightly darkened, while at the same time nicely and nonchalantly resolved. Am I too generic? Well, everything boils down to the quote from Frank Zappa “writing about music is like dancing about architecture”, so it will down to blind fate, if that what I am writing, will be the same thing the readers are thinking. Although those of you, who follow our writing and compare it to their own impressions, will have it easier.
The tested speakers did not have an easy time, as instead of a nice and easy listening, I reached out to something operating somewhere between minimal and contemporary classical music, “Steel Hammer” by Julia Wolfe, who together with Bang on a Can All-Stars and Trio Medieval went on to deconstruct a classical, folk song about John Henry. For the unaware – it is a story of a hammer man, who decided to confront a mechanical hammer, which endangered his job. And although this is not a nice and easy material, as only with full engagement of the listener you can find only traces of melodics, or any signs allowing to lock the individual compositions into frames of coherence. There is a lot going on there, and things are not only moving along in multiple threads, but each one of those is making sure not be parallel to another. Also the used instruments allow for a lot, so it is quite easy to have an impression of cacophonic chaos. Yet the Sonora presented this, evidently hard to chew whole, in a surprisingly elegant and balanced way. They systemized and sorted the seemingly foreign noises, clicks, crunches and vocalizes in coherent and logical cause and effect streaks, which you will not be able to hum while shaving, but listening to them started to have some signs of refined pleasure (but far away from the so called guilty pleasure), something to which you need to grow up, but not being a masochism anymore. Please do not worry, the Peak did not add any honey to the sound, trying to impose their way of sounding, because at this level, this would be a shot into their own goal. The Danish speakers were just able to get the context, underline the connections between the individual phrases and keeping their native facture and consistency show them in this smoothened version. Interestingly, the mentioned darkening was mostly happening to the background, and not to the upper registers, so the audiophile plankton and reverberation aura was not filtered away. Due to that not only smaller forms, as the one mentioned above, but also big symphonics, like “Rhapsodies” under Stokowski, was able to sound with the scale, dynamics and openness adequate to the size of the orchestra. This because the Sonora do not have any tendency to glue things together or condensate the source material to the size imposed by the spacing of the speakers themselves or the room they were placed in. This allowed maybe not to remove, but to minimize the effect of scaling. And to be clear – I used the statement above not to depreciate the tested speakers, but based on previous listening sessions of the El Diablo, or our Gauder, it was clear, that big/bigger can do more, so while paper can bear everything, pure decency, not mentioning the known points of reference, requires adhering to the facts, which cannot be disputed. So we get a very suggestive, but adequate to the size of the speakers themselves, dynamic jumps, the ability to reproduce the mighty tutti, as well as picoline part on the verge of hearing, but the narration is done from a wider perspective and a certain distance, due to what we perceive the reproduced music as a whole first, and then, with the increase of engagement, we can dig deeper in the tissue and action of the recording, one step after another. And with that, I would describe the sharpness of drawing the virtual sources as rather natural, and not overly analytical, or going for laser precision at all costs. Against appearances, the mentioned characteristic does not mean that the sound is blurred, or that imaging is fuzzy, because it goes completely in the opposite direction – underlining the realism of presentation. When you go to a concert, even when you have places in the first rows or golden circle, you are not able to determine with 100% accuracy the fabric of the jackets of the musicians sitting in the orchestra, or count the pearls in the necklace of the diva. We can note the fact of their presence, color and cut, all the other nuances remain in the realm of guesses, or later verification on the screen of a monitor the size of a panorama window in a fancy hotel. Absolutely no upping of contrast or taking your attention from the most important thing – music.

It cannot be denied, that the Peak Consult Sonora are not among the cheapest, or the most spectacular, either in terms of design or sound. But they are in their special way captivating and refined musicality, perfectly manufactured and have the “something”, that make all kinds of repertoires soothe our nerves and increase attractiveness when listening using them. They also seem to be a very logical alternative to all kinds of high-end monitors and stand mount speakers, allowing to forgo searches for the ideal stand, or gymnastics related to applying heavy loudspeaker cabling. When you add to this pool of assets the replacement of the whirring bass-reflex port with a passive membrane better controlling the lower registers, it becomes clear that having a modestly sized listening room and budget mentioned below, listening to the tested Peak in your own system is a highly advisable and reasonable move. What else do you need to be happy? In theory nothing, but practice, so completely empiric experiences, show that it is worth to have an appropriately powerful and current producing amplifier, able to get all the best out of the Sonora.

Marcin Olszewski

System used in this test:
Source:
– transport: CEC TL 0 3.0
– streamer: Lumin U2 Mini + switch Silent Angel Bonn N8
– DAC: dCS Vivaldi DAC 2.0
– Master clock: Mutec REF 10 SE-120
– reclocker: Mutec MC-3+USB
– Shunyata Research Omega Clock
– Shunyata Sigma V2 NR
– Preamplifier: Gryphon Audio Pandora
– Power amplifier: Gryphon Audio Apex Stereo
– Loudspeakers: Gauder Akustik Berlina RC-11 Black Edition
– Speaker cables: Synergistic Research Galileo SX SC
IC RCA: Hijiri Million „Kiwami”, Vermouth Audio Reference
IC XLR: Tellurium Q Silver Diamond, Hijiri Milion „Kiwami”, Siltech Classic Legend 880i
Digital IC: Hijiri HDG-X Milion
Ethernet cable: NxLT LAN FLAME
Power cables: Hijiri Takumi Maestro, Furutech Project-V1, Furutech NanoFlux NCF, Furutech DPS-4.1 + FI-E50 NCF(R)/ FI-50(R), Hijiri Nagomi, Vermouth Audio Reference Power Cord, Acrolink 8N-PC8100 Performante, Synergistic Research Galileo SX AC
– Table: BASE AUDIO 2
– Accessories: Harmonix TU 505EX MK II, Stillpoints ULTRA SS, Stillpoints ULTRA MINI, antivibration platform by SOLID TECH, Harmonix AC Enacom Improved for 100-240V, Harmonix Room Tuning Mini Disk RFA-80i
– Power distribution board: POWER BASE HIGH END
– Acoustic treatments by Artnovion
Analog stage:
Drive: Clearaudio Concept
Cartridge: Essence MC
Phonostage: Sensor 2 mk II
Eccentricity Detection Stabilizer: DS Audio ES-001

Polish distributor: Quality Audio
Manufacturer: Peak Consult
Price: 130 000 PLN

Specifications
Design: 2-way passive radiator
Crossover Freq.: 2 500 Hz
Frequency range: 28–30 000 Hz
Sensitivity: 90dB @ 1W. / 1 m.
Impedance: 4Ω
Dimensions (H X W X D): 113 x 28 x 38,5 cm
Weight: 48 kg/each