The Heretic A614 Speakers A perfect blend of new and legacy

Warning, these speakers tend to keep you cemented in your listening chair. The Heretics are “album side” speakers if that makes sense.

Spinning Nightmares on Wax’s In A Space Outta Sound, the dub heavy, trippy vibe is intoxicating. Next up, Propellerheads Decksanddrumsandrockandroll. Again, the whole album goes by without the slightest urge to make a playlist. The bass line in “Oh Yeah?” is so much fun. The 12” coaxial driver combined with the ported cabinet adds up to a very organic, tuneful (yet not overdamped) bottom end.

If you’ve looked at Heretic’s website (www.thehereticspeaker.com) you’ll notice the famous shot of EMI studios, with the Beatles in the control room. They are listening to what looks like the larger Heretic A612, but these are actually Altec drivers in the cabinets. Robert Gaboury, the man behind the Heretic has taken this 12” coax and the Altec cabinet design and brought it into the modern age, to produce a speaker that is really a pleasure to listen to.

Powered by the Lab12 Mighty amplifier, which only produces 10 watts per channel, these speakers sporting a 97db/1-Watt sensitivity rating barely make the cool, circular VU meters move from rest. Seriously, how often do most of you listen to music at a 97db level? It’s unbelievable that this pair of speakers, combined with a $2,400 power amplifier can create such an expansive and immersive musical experience. But it does. Pricing is TBA right now, but they will be under $8k/pair for the smaller 614s, reviewed here.

Quick, adjective barrage

All of those audiophile cliches we’ve heard a million times over truly do apply to the Heretic A614s, but they are one of those rare speakers that provide instant fun. If you’re a persnickity audiophile, you’ll find things to nitpick, but then you will no matter what you’re listening to. These won’t be the speakers for you.

You can look at these speakers one of two ways – you can be fussy and point out the small things they don’t do (as you would with every single other speaker made) or you can sink into the vibe and just enjoy them. To give you a reference point of where I’m coming from (because saying a speaker is “fun,” really doesn’t give you much to go on…) my short list of fun, under $10k/pair speakers are in no order, The Vandersteen 1C, The JBL L-100 Century Classic, The Magnepan SMG, A nice used pair of MartinLogan CLS’s, The Harbeth C7s, The Zu Dirty Weekends.

Speakers that are not necessarily the last word in audiophile speakers, but ones that you can sit around all evening listening to music with, have a great time, and not have to engage the audiophile part of your consciousness that feels the need to dissect everything.

Quick setup

Thanks to their relatively light weight – about 40 pounds each, with a profile of 19” wide, 15” deep, and about 26” tall, you can move the Heretics around and set them up easily by yourself.
Having used these in small (10 x 13 foot), medium (11 x 18 foot) and large (15 x 26 foot) the Heretics deliver great results anywhere, though you will get a little bit more bass loading in an extremely small room, that may or may not work to your advantage.

While these speakers come with feet attached for use on the floor, I had the best results getting them about 13” off the floor. Custom stands are on the way, but for now a pair of heavy Sound Anchors stands with 1.25 thick butcher block boards work splendidly. A little blu tack between the boards and the stands really helps too. Getting that tweeter up a little higher than ground level makes for a lot less mid-bass bloom/roundness and gives up nothing on the bottom end. This also helps the Heretics to create a larger soundstage, eliminating a lot of reflection right from the floor.

Because the originals have that EMI heritage, the push for some Beatle’s was just too much to resist, and considering it’s that time of the year here in America again, Revolvers’ “Taxman” was perfect. These speakers do such a great job at holding the bass line rock solid, the drums in place and a clear view of all the harmonies – it’s incredible. And incredibly enjoyable. Whether you prefer the stereo or mono Beatles, this is a treat. Switching it up for Cheap Trick’s “Taxman, Mr. Thief” is equally rewarding. And this is not an awesome recording by any stretch. Yet the slightly round bottom end of these speakers gives a little bit of help to the average recordings in your collection. Again, that fun thing.

For those of you that haven’t been following my ongoing narrative, one of my biggest hot buttons is coherence. Thanks to the coaxial tweeter, these speakers sound like a big single driver speaker with extension. The crossovers are well designed, as the transition from woofer to tweeter is as good as it gets – seamless and free of grain. Regardless of what kind of music you enjoy, these speakers do a fantastic job rendering it.

Vocals are transcendent with the Heretics, both in terms of tonality and the way they can decode layered harmonies. The Heretics are highly natural in their presentation, and again thanks to the high sensitivity, nothing is ever working hard to produce sound – resulting in low distortion and fatigue. These are speakers you can listen to all day without becoming the least bit tired.

Amplification

Don’t let the sensitivity rating fool you, even though these speakers don’t need a tremendous amount of power to play really loud, it’s a quality thing. A few obvious choices (the Cary 805 SET monos, the Line Magnetic 815) didn’t provide killer results, yet the 4 watt per channel Finale is out of this world good. As mentioned at the beginning of this review, Lab12s Mighty (10 watts per channel) is also fantastic. Our Pass First Watt SIT-3 was also a stunner. This amplifier is very speaker sensitive, but in this case, the match is perfection. This single ended solid-state amplifier delivers about 92% of the texture and depth of the best tube combinations, with a bigger image, and a lot more slam on the low end. So, again – big fun with these speakers. And there’s still about five or six amplifiers to try.

Perhaps we were cheating a bit at first, using the Pass XS Pre, XS Phono and dCS Vivaldi One with Vivaldi Clock, but even when bringing the associated components downstream in keeping with you’d probably expect to be in a system with a pair of speakers in this price range, the results are still excellent. The only thing tried that was less than awesome was our vintage Marantz 2270. This just sounded flat.

The rest of the story

Looking at the Heretic site, you’ll see there are several other finishes available, and you can order the speakers with or without grilles. If you have munchkins or pets, seriously consider the grilles. Our review pair came in the natural finish.

Gaboury says that the cabinets are made from 12mm Canadian ultra-premium birch plywood. The website says, “Because of tone. Tone comes from rigidity, lightness, and compliance, but not too much.” Rather than go on and on, if there is any way you can give these speakers a listen, if you share some of my listening priorities, I think you will really enjoy the Heretics. Should you have a larger room, or need more bass extension, they also make the A612, which is the same driver in a cabinet with more volume.

Sensitivity remains the same, but there is an additional half octave of bass extension. When Mr. Gaboury catches up with orders, he’s promising to send us a pair. For now, provisionally, I am purchasing the review pair, but I may hold the checkbook close to the vest until I hear the bigger model. I’ve got the room. Either way, these speakers have provided some of the most fun I’ve had in a long time just hanging out and listening to music for its own sake. You’ll only need one or two of your favorite tracks to decide if they are the droids you want.

For now, highly recommended, and #toneaudioapproved.

www.thehereticspeaker.com. (manufacturer)

www.fidelisdistribution.com. (importer/distributor)

But wait, there’s more

At the end of this review, designer Robert Gaboury had a bit of spare time in the middle of getting ready for Axpona, to fill me in on the fine details of how these great speakers came to be. Here’s what he has to share:

First thing, the ductless design.  Thiele/Small parameters are used to predict and accurately simulate low frequency behavior of transducers in closed and vented box. These days, all designers (including me) use software simulation in the development of loudspeaker enclosures.

However, T/S parameters were derived in the 1970s, meaning that Altec designers, when designing the 614 and 612 (1940 something) « utility cabinets » , which are ported, used another method to calculate vent area relative to enclosure volume. I found this fascinating, and decided 3 years ago to investigate, out of curiosity, what was happening.

Nowadays, we all want the best possible low frequency extension in the smallest air volume and most contemporary speakers use vented boxes with transducers designed especially for this. This is usually a tube in a box, and by adjusting area and length (along with enclosure volumes and transducer’s T/S parameters), the box is tuned to « load » the transducer at the lowest possible frequency. Loading happens when the air in the box opposes the cone motion, and at this point (the tuning frequency), the cone motion is nil and vent output is maximal. Below that frequency, the driver is unloaded, moves a lot, yet produces no sound, because the air pressure just escapes the port, out of phase with the driver, creating an acoustic short-circuit.

In recent years, passive transducers have been used when we want to tune a box to a lower frequency that would be practical with a tube (i-e, the tube is too long to fit in the box). This means that modern drivers are made to work in small boxes and generate ample LF. And accuracy in the mid-band is often sacrificed (I’d say always) a consequence of the quest for LF, because in order to allow a small transducer to resonate at – very – low frequency, the cone must be heavy. I simplify a bit, but think of a 1973 Buick Electra hitting potholes, versus a Lotus formula car… The Buick will resonate at very low frequency – and take a long time to settle, but won’t handle as well as the Lotus. As you can guess, the Lotus is a lot stiffer.

Back to the enclosure: a vent tube is always tuned to a specific frequency, say 42 Hz.  I found out, using simulation, that a ductless vent (such as the old Altec) is not precisely tuned. In fact, it is tuned to a much broader frequency band, which is highly desirable:  no « one-note » bass.

Also, a super stiff suspension is very desirable for medium (vocal range) definition. Think Lotus. So, if you accept the notion of a big transducer, a big box and ductless designs, something interesting is possible: musicality. That is Heretic.

Second thing: co-ax design, re-invented. Older professional coax drivers such as Altec 604 (and others) use a compression driver mounted in the woofer voice coil. The downside is the compression driver, which has a large dome (usually 3 to 4 inches). In the Heretic, the dome is quite small, almost as small as a modern tweeter, yet, it is horn loaded by a short aluminum horn, itself loaded with the woofer’s membrane, acting as a waveguide. Smaller dome means smaller mass, means higher resonant frequency (think Lotus), means very good extension – much better than older Altec 604 for example.

Third thing: serial crossover network. This alone is, for the designer, guaranteed headache. Because the woofer and tweeter are connected in series, the network logic is inverted. If you want to fix something in the high frequencies, you must act on the LF section. It like writing with your left hand in front of a mirror. Yet, when (and if) you get it right, it has a level of coherency not possible to achieve with normal parrallel networks used in 99% of all loudspeakers.

For me, designing Heretic was something extraordinary because it opened up a box of ideas that was shut and sealed somewhere in the 1970s, when acoustic suspensiuon was the « in » thing. For me, performance and musicality are two sides of a same token. Along with low mass and tight handling. That’s heretic.