SOUNDREBELS Review|PEAK CONSULT DRAGON LEGACY


 

 

Date: 2023-12-13

 

With some regret, as due to the consistent actions of the distributor, with this encounter we reached the end of the offering on our market, but also with true joy, because this is kind of a novelty, and second from top model of a brand, which was recently only a hear-say in our country. And I can tell you one thing – it was worth to go through all the degrees of initiation – all the cheaper models in the portfolio – before encountering the tested model. The reason for that is of course getting fully acquainted with the way our beloved music is presented. And in this case, this is always directed towards extracting the beauty of it. Beauty based on vividness, saturation and unobtrusive transparency, what makes us sure, that when we buy something from this brand, we will always reach the heart of emotions hidden in the music. Obviously the refinement of approach to showing that result, is proportionate to the position of the speakers in the price list, but the most important aspect, the general approach to sound, is similar in the whole range. But what am I talking about? About the Danish loudspeaker manufacture, Peak Consult, from whose catalog, due to the efforts of their distributor in Poland, the company Quality Audio, we received the speakers Peak Consult Dragon Legacy, a model that was only recently brought to worldwide market.

The construction of the Danish beauties bases on integration of five modules with drivers – on top and bottom we see a bass section, moving towards the center we have two midrange sections, and finally in the middle a single tweeter section. An important aspect of the whole is the fact, that those are not boring rectangular pieces, but due to clever cutting we get something in the shape of a hourglass, at the same time fighting standing waves. This also means, that although the speakers have a hefty weight – 225kg each, and a significant height – about 170cm, they do not overwhelm when placed in a room. This setup has also allowed the constructors to adjust the distance of radiation of the individual drivers, by bending the outmost parts of the cabinet inwards and pushing the middle to the back. But this is by far not all what was made to create the best possible working environment for the speakers, as the front baffle of the Dragons, similar to other representatives of the family, is covered with leather, which is not only giving them some visual distinction, but also reduces unwanted distortion. Also the diffraction of the waves is lessened by using appropriately angling each section of the cabinet fascia. Regarding the construction of the cabinet itself, it is, which is a standard for this manufacturer, made from four layers of materials with high damping factor. This results in the thickness of the wall reaching 46mm. The sides and the top of the speakers are finished with sheets of solid walnut with black, vertical ribs breaking the monotony. The back panel is also covered with leather, just like the front. And please believe me, the photographs do not make justice to the looks, it really looks great “in person”.

Moving to writing a few sentences about technicalities, we need to mention, that we deal here with a construction tuned with bass-reflex ports, venting to the back of the bass sections. The set of terminals for connecting to the amplifier we have mounted on the bottom part of the bottom bass section. The whole is placed on aluminum legs with oval, flat feet, that extend the support area for the heavy and big speakers. The drivers were, according to the manufacturer, designed in conjunction with another loudspeaker company, Fink Audio-Consulting from Essen, Germany. So we have here 28cm woofers, with membranes made from impregnated paper and foam, using 75mm long throw voice coils. The 15cm midrange speakers have a rubber suspension and membranes made from polypropylene and paper mix. Finally, the tweeter, has a textile membrane and is placed in a wave guide. Finishing the description of the cabinet, another important information is, that the fine-tuning of the phase coherence of the individual drivers (as supplementation of their placement in the cabinet) is made in the cross-over, which is made from the best components available today. Does this sound banal? Rest assured, this is just the most basic description, as I do not want to expand the text beyond reason, and the rest you can find on the manufacturer’s website, its know-how aside. And in fact the things that are not mentioned, those nuances you do not find in the official descriptions, are the most important for the final result. Which ones? I do not know. But I will try to describe what is the effect of those in the next paragraph.

So how did the tested Danish towers fare? Without further ado I will tell you – they were splendid. First of all – a big speaker means an appropriately big sound, close to real scenic setup. Secondly – the sound is always full of energy, enclosed in the reproduced music and appropriately dosed. And thirdly – keeping all the ranges in check we avoid the effect of the music being strained, which results in a very relaxing presentation, even if we deal with music full with artistic madness. Yes, the saying “bigger can do better” cannot be denied in well designed speakers. But they need to be well designed, just like our tested speaker, visualizing the music with all the packaged expression, energy and refinement, and not intimidating the listener with an undefined amount of cacophonic effects. The Dragon avoided the latter completely during the dozen days they spent at my home. If I could condense the time of the test to once sentence – if that would at all be possible – I would say, that this time was like sonic Olympics. One time it was full of spirituality, enjoying baroque music with emphasis on Claudio Monteverdi presented by John Potter in “Care-charming sleep”. Another time the individual sounds were placed in silence and seemingly never ending, when exploring the repertoire of the Polish group RGG “Szymanowski”. And in a different moment full of madness, darkness and scenic aggression when listening to Black Sabbath on the self-titled disc. Each time I have got a differently formulated package of sensations, adequate to the played genre. Most interestingly, everything happened while keeping the sound esthetics known from all other Peak Consult speakers. Like I mentioned before, this meant a sound full of saturation, vividness and well controlled energy, directed towards nice roundness. How is it possible that the Dragons did not fail with harder music? This is a result of that, what I wrote earlier – bigger can do better. It was the elimination of the impression of the sound being strained, nice leading of the bass, even when it was a little upped in terms of amount, and finally the impetus of the sound on the level of live events made the Peak feel like a fish in the water not only in quieter repertoire, but also in the more adventurous ones. It worked so well, that it was really hard to stop listening in the nights during the week, when I needed to get up early for work, but you also wanted to turn the volume up, not minding the late hours, just to be closer to the virtual stage. You think that you have something like that at home? I think you might not, because in case of really big, well driven by an amplifier, loudspeakers, increasing the volume the sound does not get louder, but seems to be growing. What does this mean? When we have smaller speakers, when upping the volume, we also increase the amount of distortion, resulting from strain. With big speakers, we just increase the amount of energy. The effect is, that when listening to small speakers loud we do not have a chance to understand what someone sitting next to you is saying, but when listening to speakers in the likes of the Peak Consult Dragon Legacy, we have absolutely no issue conversing regardless of the amount of decibels generated. This is why, when dealing with calm material – like John Potter and RGG – they could easily extract the second bottom of that music, something found only with the best reproductions at home, the soothing spirit of melancholy. On the other side of the barricade however, with rock rebellion, minimization of distortion combined with the ability to show music from it’s nicer side, imprinted in those speaker’s DNA, resulted in a show of not only phenomenal kick, but also absolute freedom of filling the room with a feast of sonic cavalcades, called to life by raging rockmen, once melodic, other times painful, but always full of expression. Those were truly Olympic games, full of surprising twists and turns. But not only in the sense of creating the most overwhelming amount of decibels, but the quality of sound regardless of their amount. I assure you, this is something only the best can master, and the tested speakers are absolutely amongst them. This was so phenomenal, that it will remain in my memory for a long, long time. This was kind of surprising, because knowing the lower models from the catalog of this manufacturer, I did not expect, that the Dragon turn out to be a true wolf in a sheep’s skin. Beautiful and nice on the outside – both visual and sound wise – but absolutely ruthless when needed. Kudos to them.

Reaching the end of the meeting with the Peak Consult Dragon Legacy, time came to determine the target group for them. Unfortunately, for a very prosaic, and to the ground reason, it will be very small. And with this I mean the price, which is vastly limiting the potential interest group, albeit absolutely compensated for by the sound. But let us not kid ourselves, the price is quite prohibitive. But if your life makes a twist and allows you to reach this level of technical and quality advancement, as presented by the tested Danish speakers, I see absolutely no counterindications for anybody to reach to them as your holy grail. Why? We get the momentum and calmness in one, regardless of repertoire and regardless of the volume we play it at. And this makes only our own idea of the sound, sometimes coming from a wrong impression of how music should sound, stand between us and the Peak Consult. But it will not be our or their fault, but just incoherence of characters, so common between various specimens of homo sapiens. But this is life.