By: Greg Roberts - 10/11/2021

We're staying healthy and happy and hope you are as well.

Business continues to be very good and we are so thankful. Typically we see our business slow down during the summer months, we think because people are traveling and/or doing outdoor activities and not sitting inside listening to music. Well this year, that didn't play out that way, even though from what I understand, people are back to traveling and vacationing again.

It looks like Capital Audiofest will still be held November 5 - 7 in Rockville, MD, and Volti Audio will be there with Triode Wire Labs and BorderPatrol Audio. We'll be showing both the Razz and the New Rival at the show, alternating between them each day.

I will have three new pairs of Volti Audio speakers for sale at the Capital Audio Fest Show:

Please see me at the show for pricing and deal making

The New Rival speaker is complete! Man, that took a lot longer than I thought it would. Crossover tuning can be very time-consuming.

Before I tell you what's different about the New Rival, I'd like to tell you what remains the same:

What's different?

The Rivals have been out for five years now, and during that time I've had plenty of thoughts about things I'd like to improve.

The Rival cabinet continues to be made of 1” thick Baltic Birch plywood, but all the parts are now cut by a CNC machine, which means the new cabinets are even higher in quality than the original, with an improved internal bracing structure and an improved port pathway.

For all models of the Rival, I have made some sonic improvements with adjustments to the crossover, port tuning, and damping material. I've re-voiced the speaker to improve driver integration between the woofer and the midrange, along with a couple other tweaks. I've also changed the way I build the crossover to improve signal transfer by eliminating connection points, and with the use of high-pressure crimp connections in key areas (backed up by solder).  The New Rival has a bit smoother sound than the original one and I'm happy that I was able to improve on what was already a great sounding horn loudspeaker.

All Rivals will now have the same feet - similar to the Type II feet currently shown on the website, but without the angles, painted black.

All Rivals will now come standard with Triode Wire Labs internal wiring and Lexan crossover covers (which were options before)

You'll find that the options/pricing structure of the Rival lineup is much easier to understand now.

Pricing has changed a little bit. Type I's are higher in price with the entry level model at $11K, Type II's remain at about the same price when you consider options that are now included, and the top of the line Special Edition Rivals are a little lower in price than before.

As of this writing, the New Rival webpages are still not complete and uploaded to the Volti Audio website. I do apologize. But I have them mostly complete (I do almost all my own website work) and they should be up on the site fairly soon. Meanwhile, just send me an email if you want to buy a pair and I'll help you out.

Here's a few pictures of New Rivals that have been shipped out this year.

Just a quick note about the Razz speakers. I don't want to seem like I'm gloating, and I'm not - or not much anyway - it's just that the Razz, in 18 months, have already outsold the Rival, which was introduced five years ago! Very exciting indeed.

In my last newsletter, I featured a set of Vittora speakers for sale, veneered in Walnut Burl. I'm happy to tell you that they have been sold and now reside in a nice new room in St. Paris Ohio.

The remodeling of the room was not quite complete when we delivered the system, but I decided to show you pics of this system anyway so you could see Volti speakers in a real room!

My customer, Ron, has owned a pair of Klipsch Khorns for many years, and after remodeling this room in his home specifically for his stereo system, he decided he wanted to step the system up just a bit. He started by ordering a complete Volti Audio upgrade kit for his Khorns, and soon after realized that he wanted more than that - much more. I sent Ron an essay that I wrote that compares fully upgraded Khorns to Vittora speakers (I'm one of very few who have owned both, and actually had both in my listening room at the same time), and after reading it, he decided he wanted to really step up to a better designed and built speaker system.

Vittoras are hard to beat, especially when mated up to some really great electronics and cabling.

Of course I teamed up with my other amigos to put this system together because honestly I don't know how speakers, electronics, and cabling could ever have better synergy than our stuff has.

The three of us converged on Ohio at nearly the same time - Pete drove in from Long Island, Gary from Maryland, and me from middle Tennessee - for a weekend of system setup, listening, eating and drinking. Ron was a great host and we had an absolute blast all weekend.

The system performed flawlessly and the sound was easily one of the best I've ever experienced. It all went together easily too, kind of like setting up at a show.

You know the speakers, right? Our top of the line Vittoras with two ELF cabinets and a 600 watt Marchand amplifier to power the ELF's.

The main system amplifier is a BorderPatrol S20 EXD EXS amplifier, which I think is probably the finest amplifier in the world. This is a top of the line amp from BP and has the monster EXS power supplies, one for each channel. Rated at twenty watts - when coupled to the Vittoras it sounds like a clean and easy 100. The amp is on the top left of the rack with the two power supplies at the bottom left. The amp plinth is finished in matching walnut burl veneer.

An Innuos music server provides the digital source, with a hard-drive and full streaming capabilities. This feeds into a BP "Furry" DAC and then a BP preamp - the wooden box on the upper right of the rack - that for now is a temporary unit filling in while the new permanent one is being built.

The turntable is one that I have had for many years and rarely used, so I decided to sell it to Ron. It's a beautiful table made by JR Transrotor with speed controller, a Van Den Hul cartridge and a Clearaudio phono-pre. A great sounding analogue rig.

Of course everything is connected via my favorite cables from Triode Wire Labs

During the remodel, Ron had his electrician install a dedicated circuit behind where the equipment rack would go and he also ran a new CAT8 cable that would connect the music server directly to his internet router. The system is spooky-quiet.

AC power is conditioned by a PI Audio Group UberBUSS with a custom front panel veneered in walnut burl. As we were sitting and listening to music, Pete saw an image in the veneer on the front of the UberBUSS that he said looks just like Dusty Hill of ZZ Top! (formerly of course)

Can you see him? . . . sunglasses . . . beard . . . nose . . . mouth

The sound quality from this system made it very clear to everyone in the room who heard it, the importance of system synergy.

For me, I get a lot of satisfaction from helping a customer put together a system of this quality level, and I'm very fortunate that I get to do it every once in a while. Thank you so much Ron.

How about any of you? Can I help you put together a world-class system in your home?

So will we see you at CAF? Let me know. If you'd like to arrange an after-hours listening session, I can set up any of the three pairs of speakers I'm bringing.

Well that's it for this issue of the Volti Audio email newsletter. Thank you for subscribing and until next time, trust your ears and as always, Have Fun!