I have been following the evolution of Talon Audio from near its inception in 1999. Having been privileged to review the original Khorus for the dearly departed Ultimate Audio magazine, I was extremely impressed by the Khorus’ unique ability to present the music with such a smooth and fatigue-free, yet extended and dynamic manner. Music seemed to flow from the speaker in a way I had never before experienced.

The original Khorus was followed-up by the “X” version embodied by a full cabinet redesign and crossover reworking. Soon after, an extensive crossover redesign brought about the X mkII designation. Each of these improvements implemented in the Khorus and the flagship Firebird have found their way down into lower priced models, thus filling out the Talon stable of offerings. Consisting of nine products including two centers and two subwoofers, (review to come of the Thunderbird subwoofer) Talon Audio has established itself as a full-fledged high-end player.

Looking back over the original Khorus review, my only real wish at that time was for everything the Khorus offered but in a scaled up version, a beefier speaker more capable of driving and locking into my large space. Mike Farnsworth, owner and chief designer, assured me that just such a speaker was in the works. Two agonizing years later, the Firebird arrives.

Making great strides in the manufacturing process since the original Khorus, the production team at Talon has crafted a speaker that equals the finest in fit, finish and overall design. Maintaining the obelisk form of the Khorus, the Firebird is more sculpted than it’s predecessor. Featuring aluminum side panels, which greatly reduce resonance, their appearance suggests the folded wings of an eagle upon a perch. These panels extend down to the floor where four 5lb. machined solid aluminum spikes anchor the Firebirds to the floor.

The Firebird is a three-way design featuring a Common Mode Rejection Circuit or CMRC for short. This circuit allows the crossover to “self correct” for phase. Talon now utilizes a bass driver from Focal and the ceramic mid-range driver and ceramic tweeter are from Accuton. The 11-inch bass driver is a single-woofer configuration in contrast to the double or “sandwich” woofer used in the Khorus X mkII. The bass driver is made from a rather secretive carbon composite, which is set into motion by nine neodymium magnets. Dubbed the “W” cone by Focal, the driver extends from 17Hz, crossing over to the five-inch ceramic midrange driver at 600Hz. The Accuton midrange driver crosses over to the tweeter at 4kHz and extends to 40kHz. (The eight thousand dollar diamond tweeter option extends the response to a mind-bending 100kHz.) The Firebird is 90db efficient with 8ohm/6.5ohm minimum impedance. Talon has been able to reduce the THD to less than 1% from 20-100 Hz by increasing driver efficiency. For more technical info, go to Talon’s website http://www.talonaudio.com



I would like to start off the description of the Firebird’s effect on my system by relating the experience of an audio buddy when he first heard the Firebirds at my home. We listened to everything from Rock to Rimsky and back again. It was a very pleasant afternoon. We exchanged farewells, and Bob’s your uncle. (A British phrase for “And that was that”). Three weeks later I got a call from him in a chronic state of advanced agitation. “I haven’t listened to my system since I heard yours. The Firebirds have ruined me!” he exclaimed.

Poor bastard, I know just how he feels. It didn’t take me long to realize that the Firebird is not just a beefed up version of the Khorus. The Firebird is a full blown, full out, from the ground up design aimed at decimating all those that occupy the raging speaker battleground.

Yes, the Firebird retains the beloved traits of the Khorus, but then it greatly expands upon them. In short, the Firebird is one of the most exciting speakers I have ever heard, regardless of price.

So what exactly makes the Firebird so enthralling? In a word: freedom. The Firebird is oh so free of the typical speaker’s knotted hamstring of compressed dynamic range and driver induced colorations and free to such an extent as to, by comparison, join a very few select contemporary designs which have created a new gestalt upon what to expect from a reference speaker. Will The Firebird be able to convince all who listen of its superiority? That is the big question.

Upon first impression, the Firebird will never be confused with a stand-mounted monitor as say the similarly priced Kharma Ceramique 3.2 could be. (To the Kharmas credit, above 40 cycles, and for jazz and classical lovers, it is easily one of the best speakers I have ever heard.) The Firebird is a full range design that reproduces, with gusto, the deep down-low frequencies that can drive a room into standing wave induced convulsions. Proper placement and room treatment is a must. Due to the large size of my room, I get away with little treatment, though the prodigious low-end output revealed some room induced mid-bass exaggeration I hadn’t noticed before.

Coupled to an explosive, tarmac gripping bottom end comes a freedom of imaging that, when present on the recording, will spell out the radiation patterns Steinways, acoustic basses and other generously proportioned instruments in a way that some may find over-blown. I do not. I have never been comfortable with the miniaturization of images produced by a vast majority of speakers that pass for “realistic” in the mainstream of high-end audio. The dynamic range coupled to the wide bandwidth harmonic linearity of the Firebird allows for the full bloom of individual instruments to charge the air. For example, listen to a live tenor saxophone. Man, is that thing a fission of energy, densely colored and explosive. When pushed to it’s inherent dynamic limits, particularly in it’s lower to mid region, it does not compress or flatten. It simply expands, getting louder and louder, bigger and bigger, while retaining a full measure of color. The Firebird comes closer to completing this picture than nearly anything I have heard before.

You may get the impression that the Firebird was rather forward in character by my description rendered to this point, it is not. The Firebird pulls off a slightly laid back perspective by way of honesty, erasing those nasty little bands and sometimes not so little bands of distortion in the presence range and treble that typically brings the perspective forward, etching the image into space. This trait may have something to do with my Linn Sondek CD12’s perspective. For variety’s sake, I got my hands on the latest incarnation of the Electrocompaniet EMC-1 up-sampling 24/96 CD player equipped with the new “spider” disc clamp. Like the lingering memories of an old girlfriend that you never really got over, I have very fond memories of the original EMC-1 which I reviewed for Ultimate Audio magazine. With the EMC-1, The Firebird’s perspective did move forward in space yet without any significant downside. It’s powerful low and mid-bass came through as I recall yet with added weight and texture coupled to outstanding transparency and treble refinement. This is a great CD player for it’s price, definitely my first choice under 10K. Without getting too involved with direct comparisons with the Linn Sondek CD12, the differences as spelled out by the Firebirds left no confusion between the two players and attested to the Firebird’s neutrality.

The Firebird was able to simultaneously reveal enormous amounts of information while drawing the listener in, rather than thrusting the performance into one’s lap. This makes listening to great recordings a revelation while allowing the listener to enjoy many poorly recorded discs. The Firebird eradicates upper-mid range grunge and treble edge that I have been wrongly blaming on the recordings, opening up a whole slew of previously banished discs to be enjoyed.

Due to these vanishing levels of driver-induced colorations, the Firebird is as chameleon-like as a speaker at this price should be though often are not. Disc to disc comparisons revealed such contrasting production values, perspectives and frequency extension, that each recording became more of “itself” than portrayed through less neutral speakers.


Specifically, the treble in its standard inverted ceramic dome offering is liquid, grain-less, linear and very fast. Integration between the tweeter and the mid-range driver proved extremely well balanced. Never in my listening did the crossover point become apparent. Compared to the Sonus Faber Amati Homage, the treble of the Firebird is just a touch whiter. However, by switching from the Shunyata Phoenix speaker wire to the Silversmith Audio Palladium speaker wire, this trait was totally neutralized. (Trust me, this is no knock to the outstanding Shunyata wire. As you will read in my review, the Silversmith Palladium is one on the top three or four components I have ever heard and multiples of what the Phoenix costs). While the Amati Homage is singular in its ability to render tonal color in the treble, the Firebird makes up ground quickly by being able to handle dynamic peaks and frequency extension with out falling prey to treble hardness, compression or smearing.

The Firebird is one of those products that embody many of the inherent contradictions of live music. Delicate and lilting one second, explosive and bombastic the next, the Firebird remains unfazed. Or better yet, the Firebird effortlessly handles both large-scale dynamics as well as subtle shifts in dynamic shading at the same time. As for power handling, you can be as ham-fisted as you like with the volume knob as with the Khorus X but to an even greater degree. Orchestral peaks such as the finale of Earl Wild’s Piano Concerto In A-Minor from “Grieg, Saint-Saens, Liszt” [Chesky CD050], are projected into the room with such unfettered ease and realism as to raise an Iowa sized wheat field of goose bumps. On the other end of the spectrum, the quietest of sounds are extremely well captured due to a low noise floor and the speed of the drivers.

For instance, transients such as those imbibed among the mass of violins gently bowed during the opening of Giulliani’s Guitar Concerto [Philips PHCP-20081] give ones attention a vast, fertile sonic landscape to explore. This goes a long way in describing what a truly great speaker should do. Much like the Ascendo System M that resides in Clement Perry’s system, the Firebirds ease and resolution makes possible the slowing down of the musical event in a way that allows the listener to observe, digest, and savor the subtlest of action within the sound stage and within the instruments themselves, in real time. This is not related to pace or rhythm. Rather, the Firebirds ability to extract and throw in to focus a given amount of recorded information within a given moment in time. Where lesser speakers smear these hidden, facile nuggets of action, the Firebird keeps them intact and allows the listener to expand their understanding and comprehension of the music’s meaning and the musician’s intent.

As I touched on earlier, the bass as reproduced by the Firebird is enormously powerful, extended and controlled. Once experienced, it is extremely difficult to go back the ordinary. Neither over-damped nor overblown, the bass of the Firebird made its presence felt when called upon much like a well-integrated subwoofer can. Placed too close the front wall initially, the bass was heavy handed and contaminated the lower-midrange. Once the proper placement was established the Firebird really ruffled its feathers showed who is boss.

We recently hosted a party for seventy-five people. With the new Escient hard drive music manager down loaded with two hundred of the all time greatest disco, rap and funk hits of the last forty years organized into neat little play list’s, the Firebird just cranked out the jams. Funkadelic, Snoop Dog, The Gap Band, L.L. (Ladies Love) Cool J, all found their voice through the Firebird. This is no small point for me. I throw a few parties every year and I would be stone embarrassed having to apologize for the typical weak sounding, $32,000 high-end speaker system.

The bass is not only powerful and extended, it is agile, and correct in color. Listening to the Yellow Jacket’s The Spin,from “Music for Bottom Dwellers” bass sampler [GRP-DIDX-026311], the facile bass line that carries the ecstatic sax and piano improvisations throughout the song, is rendered with equal measure of transient accuracy, control, and full-bodied, wide bandwidth extension. In my room, the resolution in the bass region was not quite up to the level of resolution throughout the rest of the spectrum. There was a very slight thickening of textures that stands out in comparison to the airier more transparent mid-band and treble. I soon found out that this was due, to a large extent, to the Jeff Rowland Coherence preamp. Switching to the Gryphon Prelude put the low frequencies squarely on the same page as the rest of the frequency range.

In it’s present form, fully realized is another great way to define the Firebird. Music sounds complete, all the pieces I have come to search for in the Audiophile puzzle are in place completing the picture. Like a great composition one idea flows beautifully, effortlessly into the next, leaving the message clearly expressed and intact. There is nothing even remotely mechanical or un-organic about the Firebird, unless it is being improperly fed. The Acuton mid range driver of the Firebird anchors its presentation with a liquid and dynamic grace. When the source is right, such as Cowboy Junkies Lay it down, there is a wholeness that spreads seamlessly in all directions. The mind is given free reign, taken off guard from frequency related anomalies that distract and diminish the musical experience. Female vocalists like Nora Jones show off this seamless integration so convincingly. The Firebird does nothing to disrupt the illusion of the performance.

As for amplification, I would suggest sticking to high-powered, wide-bandwidth designs. The best match I have found so far is the 500W per channel Gryphon Encore (Review to come). The Firebird really responded to the 200 extra watts the Gryphon offered over the Rowland 302 providing greater reach and control into the bass as well as an overall sense of stability and extended dynamic headroom.

Comparisons

Occupied by some of my favorites speakers such as the Avalon Eidolon, the Sonus Faber Amati Homage and the Ascendo System M, the $20k+ speaker market is fiercely competitive. In one area of performance or another, each of these designs represents the state of the art. Taken collectively these speakers put up one hell of a showing and prove invaluable in understanding just how accomplished the Firebird is.

Compared to the Avalon Eidolon and Amati Homage for instance, the Eidolon, may give the impression of greater soundstage delineation, a left to right and front to back enormity and precision, which is breathtaking. Yet compared to the Firebird, the Eidolon cannot come close to matching the energy, harmonic density and dynamic explosiveness produced by the Firebirds. The Sonus Faber Amati Homage with its shimmering, densely rendered and radiant mid-band and rare level of treble color is truly a thing of beauty. Though, again, the Amati Homage is hamstrung by it’s inability to let fly with the dynamic ease afforded by the Firebird thus keeping the over-all picture rather tidy and compressed, though to a lesser extent than most speakers. The $40k Ascendo System M put up the greatest overall challenge. The Ascendo like the Firebird is so complete a design, finding fault comes down to an intuitive sense of how the music strikes you rather than any substantial shortcomings. The diamond tweeter equipped Firebird comes in at $6k over the Ascendos price, so choosing between the two may simply come down to aesthetics and appropriate speaker size for the room were they would be placed. (The Ascendo’s size, while not in the Wilson Grand Slam category, is considerably larger than the Firebird).

I am interested to hear the reaction to the Firebirds from those that find Wilson Watt/Puppies to their taste. These are two vastly different sounding designs. Let’s just say that the Wilson’s are not my cup of tea. I have auditioned them countless times with a plethora of ancillaries too numerous to name. Each time I would really hope to get what all the fuss was about. And believe me, from a political standpoint, it would be a whole lot easier to love the Watt’s than not. However, with each audition I would find myself so restless, I could not wait ‘til the music was over. Properly fed, the Firebird will never give you the “ants in the pants” that the Watts always give me. (This is just one man’s opinion on one of the most successful products from the most successful speaker manufacturer in high-end audio history. Wilson lovers, please keep the raging e-mails to minimum.)

Conclusion

Talon Audio Technologies has come up with a speaker that thoroughly expresses the capabilities of its unique technology and the vision of its creator, Mike Farnsworth. Like my experience with the Linn Sondek CD12, I was left a little sad that so few music lovers will be able to afford and experience the joy of living with such a fine speaker day in and day out. From what I understand, the Talon Hawk offers a large measure of the Firebird at a fraction of the cost.

But if you’re looking for a truly full range speaker, the Firebird should be perched at the summit of your list. Even if you are looking at $50K, $60K or even $80K speaker systems, I urge you to go hear the Firebird first. Its comparatively compact dimensions should not fool you. Find a dealer that has spent the time to get the set-up right. If the system is up to it, the Firebird will deliver true reference class performance in a musical manner that is all too rare for speakers at any price.