FERN & ROBY RAVEN III - REVIEW
FERN & ROBY RAVEN III
In the preview of the Fern & Roby Raven III speakers, I wrote:
The first thing you notice about the FERN & ROBY Raven IIIs is that they are quite beautiful, beautifully made of real wood. To see them on the website and then in person are two completely different experiences. I would liken the experience to seeing Henri Matisse’s Flowers, 1907, in a magazine for far too many years, and then seeing the painting in person at the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Suffice to say that the experience was far beyond astonishing or magnificent. You’ll find Flowers (page 3, July issue) continually making its way across exhibitions in the AudioKeyREVIEWS magazines. Yes, the FERN & ROBY Raven III does indeed bring a measure of that experience.
After living with the Raven IIIs for several months now, one quickly realizes that their outer beauty is by no means skin deep. There’s been many a listening session that has brought me to this understanding, while a number of components, from DACs to integrated amplifiers to streamers, were sent on their merry way, unable to meet the minimum criteria necessary for evaluation.
Unfortunately, folks, this happens, but as stated across my reviews and on our website, “We don’t write bad reviews, we just send the components home. Because who knows, maybe the issue was our inability to provide the appropriate synergy for the component in question.” I have seen and listened to a number of reviewers’ truly “interesting” systems and understand that perhaps this is the reason for those bad reviews. Yikes!
The Raven IIIs are amplification-flexible—they play with 8 watts all the way up to, I’m told, 400 watts. This, given its other traits listed below, makes it a reviewer’s dream. And especially for a reviewer/audiophile/music lover who does not listen to loud, bombastic music, or who has attached his reference stereo system to his television or movie projector…just saying.
REFRAIN: Unlike most other reviews, this review will be non-sequential, as it will start with how the component actually sounds and not the process of physically “undressing” it and/or laying out its various parts, specifications, etc. Think of this review, then, as a non-linear movie—Memento, Kill Bill, Arrival, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, etc.—that likewise starts at the end and winds its way to the beginning.
The Setup
My new listening room’s dimensions are 14 feet (4.63 m) by 18.5 feet (5.64 m). The system is placed along the short wall. The left side of the room is open. The floors are carpeted, and while I prefer area rugs, the carpeted floors work very well with regard to taming reflections and other unwanted anomalies.
I placed the Raven IIIs eight feet apart, two feet from the side walls, and 42 inches from the front wall. I sat with the Raven IIIs toed, so that neither their right or left sides were visible. It was a quasi-equilateral triangle, as the angles were not quite 60 degrees and its two sides were not quite equal to its base, but you get the idea.
The System - tWO-CHANNEL Reference
Grimm Audio MU2 Streamer/DAC/Preamplifier
AIR-TIGHT ATC - 5s Preamplifier
AIR-TIGHT ATM - 1E Amplifier
ATMA-SPHERE - GEM Integrated
LYRIC Ti 100 Single-Ended Integrated
Devore Audio Orangutan 0/96
Fern & Roby Raven III Speake
Franco Serblin Accordo Essence
Kubala-Sosna Interconnects (XLR, RCA), speaker cables, power cords
Grimm Audio SQM Interconnects (XLR, RCA)
TORUS AUDIO power conditioner
RSX BEYOND, MAX power cords
SEISMION Amplifier Stand (powered)
The Sound & things
The Fern & Roby Raven III is an intimate speaker: it brings forth the resolution, detail, and nuance needed to create a connection with listeners and usher them into a jazz club, speakeasy, or the local coffee shop. In this respect, the Raven IIIs evoke a performance that is freed from the confines of the speakers themselves and places the performance, depending on the recording, right in one’s room. I paired the Raven IIIs exclusively with tubed amplification of the single-ended, Class A, and Class A/B varieties, and in every instance was served exceedingly well.
No doubt the Raven III’s technical abilities—94dB efficiency and 8-Ohm impedance—worked wonders with the 20 watt Lyric and allowed it to shine far above its mating with less technically adept speakers. The Air-Tight combo—ATC-5s Preamplifier and ATM-1E Amplifier—would also put forward their best performance, with a weight, gravitas, across the bass region, and a rich, highly engaging midrange that their quartet of EL34 tubes are known for producing.
I spent entire days listening to the Raven IIIs, in truth for pure enjoyment, though there were many times when hand was forced to pen and pen to pad, so compelling was the listen. I’d then contemplate for a moment and think to myself, “This is a relatively inexpensive speaker, certainly as compared to a few of the others I’ve reviewed—how is it doing this?” And I’d continue listening.
The Raven IIIs proved to be musical, highly transparent, resolving, and exceptionally detailed. There was also a spaciousness—air and ambiance—that gave volume to venue after venue in the most nuanced and beautiful ways. Notes, riffs, even complete artists not noticed or heard before came to the fore and became part of the mix. The way the Raven IIIs handled horns was astonishing. The ‘blatt’, timbre and tone, and three-dimensionality of horns was always more, well, real than it had been with other speakers, and this constantly drew my attention. It also facilitated many, many “horn-rich” albums—Coltrane, Miles, Desmond, Gordon (Dexter), Cannonball, Lloyd (Charles), Shepp (Archie), etc.—and it was musical bliss. If horns are your thing, you will definitely want to hear these speakers.
The Raven III’s voicing places it closer to the neutral zone. This will, of course, have the benefit of letting you hear music via your stereo system as it was meant to be heard. And changes to said system will be easily identifiable, which for a reviewer, especially, is a very good thing. That said, the presentation, regardless of amplification, was always technically very good, engaging, and, given the musical content, toe-tapping fun. This “little guy” served up music that always drew me in and kept me engaged for long hours.
The Fern & Roby Raven III’s volumetric cube—its soundstage—is wide beyond the width of the speakers and quite deep. The depth is especially true with the Lyric Ti 100 MkII, though it is also present with other amplifiers, and height is good. Spatial recreation—horizontal positioning, layering to depth, relative spacing, air, and ambiance—via the Raven IIIs is superb. Despite its diminutive stature and single driver it consistently went to the head of the class with regard to its ability to, well, stage the music.
Bass
The Fern & Roby Raven IIIs, coupled to the Air-Tight combo— Air Tight ATC-1 preamplifier and the ATM-1 amplifier—provided a great degree of weight to the upper and mid-bass regions while also providing some wallop to the sub-bass. Given the Raven IIIs’ eight-inch single driver, this proved quite surprising. No, it did not plumb the sub-bass depths to the Holy-Bass-Head-Grail, but I imagine that was not its reason for being. What the Raven IIIs did was beautifully render the music from all my “bass-addled” tracks, and there were a great many, that did not require attainment of the Holy-Bass-Head-Grail.
Delfeayo Marsalis’ “Secret Love Affair,” (The Last Southern Gentleman, Troubadour Jazz Records) where I utilized the Raven IIIs with the AIR-TIGHT combo, delivered all the bass without missing a single beat. And as stated in the AIR-TIGHT review:
There was also great texture and dynamics, while the horns demonstrated exceptional timbre, tone, and bite. There was an aliveness that in truth was startling, fresh, and engaging.
Truly, the Raven IIIs not only delivered on the various “bass-addled” tracks: the soundtracks from a couple of my favorites—Music from the Benjamin Button soundtrack and the Blade Runner soundtrack—all had tasty bits of bass that were surprisingly reproduced by the Raven IIIs and their eight-inch single drivers. I had not expected the tautness or the depth or the alacrity of the Fern & Roby Raven III’s bass response, but it was impossible to argue with. Bravo!
Midrange
The midrange via the Raven IIIs was quite spectacular in that it provided exceptional transparency and resolution—clarity—copious amounts of detail, while rendering tone, timbre, and texture that was both natural and compelling. In a way, I was taking dual notes as I reviewed the AIR-TIGHT combo as allied to the Raven IIIs.
Andy Bey’s “Angel Eyes” was more than provocative as played through the assembled combo—Grimm Audio MU2, AIR-TIGHT combo— to the Fern & Roby Raven IIIs. Andy’s beautifully aged, gravel-rich voice was textured, in-room, and palpable. Everything was there, and with the Lyric Ti 100 MkII Single-Ended Triode integrated as wed to the Raven IIIs, while bass depth was scaled back, everything else—whole-cloth beauty, detail, stage depth, layering, and spacing—was profound. I listened to vocal music for hours afterwards.
Treble+
I had noticed on Charles Mingus’ “Ysabel’s Table Dance” (Tijuana Moods, RCA-Legacy) when reviewing the Air-Tight Combo that the way the Raven IIIs handled the various horns and Ysabel’s castanets was more “energetic and had more dynamism,” was more “real” and more alive than I had heard it before. All the necessary details and micro-details, the spatial information, the timing, etc., appeared to be on hand as the various musicians, one after another, performed at Casa Heartsong. It was very clear that with the Raven IIIs, all horns or “horn-abetted” materials came alive, were timbrally and tonally spot on, and had an alacrity that horns are supposed to have, and in a most sublime fashion. This was from a speaker, mind you, with no dedicated tweeter!
And Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue (Blue Note), one of those “horn-abetted” media, likewise came through with an immediacy, a timbral, tonal, and textural whole-cloth accuracy that other speakers I’ve reviewed simply did not. How does a diminutive single-driver speaker of limited relative cost do this? How is this possible? I had to ask Christopher of Fern & Roby. His response:
“To address the issues (undesirable resonances in the surround and the primary cone), we designed a filter to subtly adjust them into a desirable range, allowing the single driver to perform optimally. The net effect was satisfying with deeper perceived bass and more refined detail.
“The filter isn’t a crossover because we aren’t using it to manage multiple drivers and it allows the best characteristics of the driver to shine. Some might say that this kind of correction should be made in the driver design itself, eliminating the need for our filter, but after studying the problem and looking at the options available with the driver, I determined that any mechanical changes I would make to address the hot spots I wanted to eliminate would also smother the qualities of the driver I loved. The filter is the best and most correct strategy and I believe it is part of what makes our overall design so special.”
Well, it worked, and to excellent effect, bravo!
Design—Look and Feel
The Fern & Roby Raven III speakers are decidedly Mid-Century Modern (MCM) speakers, built primarily from solid walnut or solid ash, with Richlite forming the front baffle and a walnut veneer plywood the back panel. I find them quite beautiful, and their diminutive stature would no doubt make them welcome in many a home, including homes with MCM as their primary motif—though given their size, there would be few small apartments that could not comfortably accommodate the Raven III speakers. I imagine them beautifully taking the place of the speakers in my San Francisco Fillmore Center apartment back in the day, when the apartments cost less than a third of the price they are now.
The Technical Specifications
FERN & ROBY Raven III
Frequency Response: 30-Hz to 20,000-kHz
Impedance: 8 Ohm
Efficiency: 94 dB
Conclusions
What Christopher has accomplished with the Fern & Roby Raven IIIs is exceptional, both technically and musically, hidden in a beautifully constructed though petite container, and its eight-inch single driver completely belies its rather daunting talents. In this respect, it is the classic “you can’t tell a book by its cover.” Though once you’ve read it or listened to it, much if not all will be made clear.
The Raven IIIs will scale easily with paired amplification ranging from as little as eight watts to 400 watts, which exceptionally few speakers can even dream of doing. And given their voicing, the Raven IIIs will allow one’s system—various curated components—to “sing” in the manner for which that very system was assembled. Further, all component and wire changes made before the Raven IIIs will be easily distinguished.
The Fern & Roby Raven IIIs are petite, beautifully built artisanal speakers of exceptional technical abilities and superb musicality. In many ways, they are like an entry-level Porsche as opposed to the Ferrari or the Lamborghini in that all the glitz and bling are not there, but the performance certainly is. The Fern & Roby Raven IIIs are an easy Gold KeyNote Award winner, and you can bet your bottom dollar you will see them again in November’s Best of the Year Awards issue.
Pros: Musical and technically adept speakers that are very efficient, beautifully made, and unobtrusive in a home context.
Cons: Sub-bass is there but in limited form, though most will not miss it.
The Company
Fern & Roby
Raven III Speakers:
Natural Ash: $8,500
Natural Walnut: $9,150
702 E 4th St
Richmond, VA 23224
info@fernandroby.com
(804) 233-5030
Bristow, VA
Tel./fax 301 705 7460
borderpatrolaudio@gmail.com
http://borderpatrol.net
