Closer Acoustics OGY stand-mount loudspeaker

Closer Acoustics might not be a name familiar to many readers, but the Polish brand makes a fine range of high-efficency loudspeakers and low-power valve electronics to match their performance. The OGY is the newest and smallest of those speakers and the first stand-mount from the brand.

Closer – and sister brand Stereopolis – is run by Jacek Grodecki, a softly-spoken man with a lot of drive, dedicated to getting that Single-Ended Triode sound to as many listeners as possible. Building a range of highly-rated SET amplifiers helps, but so does making loudspeakers efficient enough to be driven by a low-output 300B-based amplifier.

Squared-off Minion

The simple, friendly box (I can’t help but look at it as some kind of squared-off Minion from the CGI movie franchise) uses a single 10cm LB5 full-range driver made by Katy Fertin EMS Speaker and designed in France by Michel Fertin. EMS (or ‘Electro Magnet Speaker’) also builds larger full-range and even field-coil drivers, but this one doesn’t come with the attendant need for a huge power transformer. Instead, this is an efficient drive unit with a central wooden phase plug at the acoustic centre. Having a single full-range driver has a distinct advantage in the high-efficiency stakes; no crossover network to suck a significant portion of the power output of a SET amp.

Another great advantage of a small full-range driver (or a two-way with its tweeter in the acoustic centre of the driver, in the manner of Fyne, KEF, Tannoy and more), is it acts as a near-perfect point source. This makes for truly jaw-dropping imagery compared to most box loudspeakers.

This high-efficiency and especially the point-source imaging from a small driver comes at a cost; bass. A 10cm driver, no matter how efficient, is never going to plumb the depths of dub reggae and 64’ organ pipes. But, you can throw the drive unit a very large bone in the shape of a transmission line enclosure. Made popular by Bud Fried in the US and John Wright in the UK, the origins of the transmission line loudspesaker date back to the 1930s and pioneering development continues to this day by companies like PMC.

Transmission Vamp

Transmission lines operate by directing the sound produced by the rear of the drive unit through a complicated internal, damped labyrinth, often ending in a damped port. The ‘output’ of this transmission line is in phase with the sound propagating from the front face of the loudspeaker cone, resulting in a bass performance far in excess of what is deemed possible from the drivers themselves. You aren’t changing or even bending the laws of physics; you are just using acoustical physics to your own advantage.

Now we encounter another potential bump in the road; the complexity of that labyrinth requires some relatively complex mathematics (or lots and lots of trial and error) to get right, and makes for an inherently expensive cabinet construction long before the manufacturer starts thinking of veneers and piano gloss finishes. However, Grodecki’s close working relationship with the Fertins means the parameters of the driver were ‘locked in’ early in the design, and the resulting cabinet isn’t quite as labrynthine as some larger transmission lines. Nevertheless, this is an expensive driver in an expensive (waxed birch plywood) cabinet priced on the right side of €2,000. Impressive!

Small room special

Closer Acoustics builds the six-litre OGY specifically for high-efficency needs in a small metropolitan room. This isn’t a loudspeaker for party animals, or for high power lovers wanting a show of force, or for someone wanting to fill medium-sized concert hall with sound. Try any of these with the OGY and you’ll find it comes up very short. But that is like criticising a bicycle for not being a skateboard.

Used in context then, what you get is a very well built, elegant and, thanks to that smiling port, attractive looking stand-mount that has a surprising habit of redefining what you expect from a loudspeaker in a small room.

If anything, Closer Acoustics sells itself short by claiming the OGY is “perfect for all kinds of music where the natural instruments are used – Classical or Jazz – as it is able to convey a true sound.” While this is a fair comment, it doesn’t do the OGY justice.

The first impression of these loudspeakers is that they are fast. Really, really fast. Transients are fast enough to sound spookily lifelike at times, and instruments that are all about the leading edge and the attack and decay sound like they are being directly injected into your head. That holds whether it’s Maurizio Pollini bashing seven bells out of a piano while playing Chopin’s ‘Revolutionary’ Etude [DG] or George Harrison’s awesome solo on ‘The End’ [The Beatles, Abbey Road, Apple], it’s played with the kind of transient speed and attack that keeps you enthralled.

Quicksilver

This quicksilver transient response is frequency dependent, however. Instruments with a lot of midrange and high-frequency component have that almost supernatural speed. However, staying with ‘The End’, Ringo Starr’s much-admired drum solo (which builds from the kick drum and bass tom-tom), it still sounds fast, but not exceptionally fast.

But then you begin to think about this a little further. In that small-room context, you are hearing down into the depths of that bass drum. No, not gut-wrenchingly low but low enough to make the drum beat felt in room. And all the while this bass is full and rich and ‘chewy’ enough to put a wry smile on your face.

This is early impressiveness, that immediate ‘wow!’ factor of a product being able to do something you weren’t expecting it to do. But following behind that immediate ‘wow!’ moment, the OGY does something you absolutely do expect it to do and do very well; imaging. And yes, it is here that the OGY excells with unamplified instruments especially in a natural acoustic space. The title track from Anouar Brahem’s Blue Maqams [ECM] is a perfect example; the space around the musicans is excellent, and you can almost feel the interplay between the musicians as they riff off one another too. It’s as expansive as the culture-clashing jazz they play.

The French Connection

I felt in a way that the OGY has some of the musical elements I liked about the French Rehdeko RK115 that I used years ago. The OGY has the same directness and immediacy… and it has some of the same tonal balance. Like that quirky-yet-brilliant loudspeaker, it has a distinctly rolled off treble and bass compared to more conventional loudspeakers. And like the RK115, when you listen to them, you don’t care. However, what the OGY has over that French full-range loudspeaker of old is a tonal balance that the Closer Acoustics design isn’t so ‘quirky’ that only bassoons and harmonicas sound great.

Although the Closer Acoustics OGY does so many things extremely well and its bass and drive belie its size, eventually physics sneaks up on a loudspeaker. What it ultimately lacks is headroom in both frequency and volume level. However, this sounds like stating the bleeding obvious, but it is worth stating. The OGY can go pretty loud given its size, and do so with only the smallest motive force from an amplifier, but other loudspeakers of similar size and price handle playing louder with greater aplomb. Large orchestral swells, The Count Basie orchestra in full swing [try ‘Whirlybird’ from The Atomic Mr Basie, Roulette] and the OGY tends to give you a choice of dynamic range and scale at regular listening levels, or blurring of sounds when the volume gets too hot.

In fact, this closing blast of Basie helped encapsulate the Closer Acoustics OGY perfectly; it’s a loudspeaker with a distinct and clearly defined comfort zone (small room, low power amp, not a party animal) and if that tallies with your own listening comfort zone, you are going to be extremely hard pressed to find anything that comes close to beating the OGY in its own terms. It’s so much more than nice jazz played with soundstaging in mind!

Technical specifications

• Type One-way, crossoverless stand-mount loudspeaker
• Drive unit EMS LB5 by Electro Magnet Speaker, France
• Impedance 8Ω
• Efficiency 91dB
• Frequency Response 40Hz–18kHz
• Power Handling 15W
• Finish Acacia, birch ply, oak, walnut veneer, piano black acrylic, white acrylic
• Dimensions (H×W×D) 312 × 132 × 306mm
• Weight 6kg (8.6kg acrylic version)
• Price From €1,490 (birch)-€2,013 (piano black) per pair, stands €249 (650mm), €279 (700mm). All excluding VAT.

Manufacturer

Closer Acoustics/Stereopolis

www.stereopolis.com

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