Diapason Karis III, the audio jewel

The iconic Bruce Lee had an emblematic phrase that said "Be Water my friends". With it he wanted to express a concept of life, by which, you have to have a clear goal in your life and at the same time, be flexible at the same time to achieve it. Like water, always looking for the best way and with less resistance to achieve its main purpose, to reach the end.

The one who is writing this text is not at all flexible or moldable. On the contrary, I am rigid, perfectionist and quite obsessive with the achievement of the challenge set. There is only one moment in my existence when I turn to water, my friend. When I have a musical dialogue with a component to try to "listen" to what it tells me in my ear. There are too many years on this planet to go with pretensions that do not correspond to me. The merit of the sound and its transformation in me, are only attributable to them, acting only as a notary of the kingdom.

After a while of listening to the Diapason Karis III, I find myself talking to the importer for Spain and Portugal of this brand and I tell him that he should listen to a baroque opera, of which I have already spoken on more than one occasion, Ariodante. Soon after having these monitors at home, I had the desire to listen to this work.

Alessandro Schiavi, founder of the firm; has a really interesting biography. At the age of 17 he began working on recordings for the archives of the International Piano Festival of Brescia and Bergamo, held in 17th century Baroque theaters and churches. The Festival focused mainly on music from the 17th to the 19th centuries, with works by Baroque and Romantic artists.

Possibly it is coincidental, not causal. Possibly it has nothing to do with it, although I don't think so. At certain ages we are the aftermath of our life, the result of all the experiences we have lived and the new ones have less impact on us than when we were young. The baroque connection exists.

One of the biggest surprises you'll find when you discover this manufacturer's peculiar way of thinking is when it comes to making the distinction between series. When someone has a name as recognized all over the world as Diapason Adamantes, the most logical thing is to use it. And, let's face it, to abuse it. How many times have we seen a seam stretched to the limit?

Well, nothing at all. As if they were two different products, we find Adamantes V and Karis III. The latter being a reduction in size of the former on an exact scale. All the details, nuances and finishes are identical in the two models. Well, not all of them. Karis is the small one and that is why it has to adapt the size of its transducers to its proper adjustment. Seen in a photograph, especially if you don't have a reference point to orient yourself in terms of actual size, they are indistinguishable.

Some basic data to find out what their main characteristics are:
• Frequency response: 60/20,000 Hz
• Bass transducer: 110 mm Direct Drive Polymethylpentene
• Tweeter: 20 mm silk soft dome
• Efficiency: 87 dB/1W/1m
• Crossover frequency: 3,000 Hz
• Nominal impedance: 8 ohms
• Min. impedance: 7.2 ohms/300 Hz
• Speaker type: rear-firing reflex
• Weight: 4.5 kg
• Dimensions (width x depth x height): 190 x 260 x 285 mm

With this information in mind, I can assure you that the first visual impact when unpacking the speakers and seeing them for the first time was one of discovery. These are possibly the smallest speakers I have ever had in my living room, and yet this was not what had me engrossed. It was their beauty, their extreme beauty. My eyes were fixed on every detail of these Karis III. As they were moderately heavy, I held them with both hands as if they were my most precious possession. The work done on the wood; to be more precise, Canaletto walnut, let's say that it is not the usual work done by other manufacturers. At no time do you have the "box effect" but rather it feels more like moving a block of natural wood between your hands. If it weren't for the awareness of the price of this component, you would like to play with it as if it were a cat. Am I crazy? I don't think so. I simply enjoy our hobby to the full.

They have a rear ventilated port. Because of their dimensions, some may believe that they can be placed on any shelf. Nothing to say, everyone loses money as they wish. In my room they arrived with some magnificent feet. Being able to move the speakers a few centimeters in the right direction turns a good experience into an excellent one. Optimizing our current system down to the millimeter allows us to enjoy the moment and prepare, with much more knowledge and arguments, for the next steps.

I'm feeling generous and I'll tell you another anecdote. When Eric García from Artesanía Audio came to my house to assemble the Exoteryc Rack PRO, he saw the Diapason and was keen to listen to them. Once we finished the job, I reassembled the system as you know it and armed with the tablet and the Roon, we gave Eric free rein to his tastes. He is someone who is used to big international trade fairs and demonstrations of top-level products, where Artesanía Audio is always with the best. That is to say, with speakers and amplifiers that are NOT human-sized. Now do you understand his curiosity with these Karis III? Well, his exclamations of surprise should be the final conclusions of this article.

And I'll leave you with a brief explanation that the company gives on its own website and that I think is important to highlight: "The Diapason Direct Drive technology applied to the woofer, developed in collaboration with the Norwegian company SEAS according to Diapason's specifications, allows the rear connectors to be connected directly to the woofer, without using a low-pass circuit. The result is a listening experience that perceives low frequencies reproduced quickly and realistically."

Equipment used in the tests

Sound source:
» EMT 948
» Nuprime DAC 9X
» Roon Server
» Qobuz Studio
Power amplification:
» Bow Technologies WAZOO XL
Speakers:
» Diapason Karis III
Cables:
» Wires4Music in cabling:
    » Horus Hybrid RCA interconnection
    » Evolution in speakers and mains power
Rack HiFi:
» Artesanía Audio Exoteryc Rack PRO

Before moving on to the musical evaluations, I would like to mention another influence caused by our guest. Among the group of regular analysts, I am one of the first to embrace digital sound. Now it is nothing strange, at the time it caused a bit of a stir. Well, with these speakers I have had the need to use both the EMT 948 turntable in analog and Qobuz-Roon-Nuprime in digital indistinctly. Why? I don't know, music rules.

Many years ago I interviewed a singing teacher at his home in Barcelona. Beyond the interview itself, we struck up a good relationship and he taught me the huge difference between loud volume and filling a room with volume. Projecting the voice to a point or filling the space with it. I mention this because there is a U2 song that is a whole treatise on the subject, apart from the lyrics. And I'm sure you all know it. The famous "With or Without You" begins with some repetitive notes and soon after, a "carrier" frequency marks the personality of the song. On top of that musical base, omnipresent all the time, the song itself develops. Managing to reproduce the carrier, which fills the room (in my case, 30 m²!), with a woofer that is, pardon the expression, ridiculously small, is impressive. And Bono's vocal expression is clear and transparent, on top of the base, without blurring the sound at all, listening at a medium-high level, 21 degrees room temperature and low humidity. I use a remastered 2007 version in 16/44.1 from Qobuz through Roon.

With this experience, I launch into the Caribbean sounds of Third World and their "1965 (96º in the Shade") and their reggae-pop. With this type of music I look for the spatiality of the tweeter and its capacity for presence in the room, as well as its level of brightness and color. The soft pop of the rhythms does not mask the sound at all and it is really easy to identify all its liveliness and experience of it. With these two songs, I had a clear idea of the sound imprint of these speakers and where I had to go.

I left the digital system parked to activate the analog. I went double or nothing and launched into the recordings of a young Montserrat Caballé. The morphology of these speakers is specially designed to enhance voices and, if these voices are divine, the result is guaranteed. What should have been a stroll through cuts from "La Boheme" became a whole listening to the opera (*). I couldn't stop listening. The particular "background noise" of vinyl gives something to the music that, far from being annoying, hooks you, and hooks you a lot. And hovering over everything, the voice that came from the heavens, and which from time to time projected itself towards my face and left me transfixed on the sofa, exhausted and disarmed before the endless vocal arsenal of a true diva of opera, without marketing to oversize her but, alone, quality in abundance.
Montserrat's voice was not human; it did not have our imperfections. When she sang it was like listening to a voice coming to us from another dimension, parallel and unreachable at the same time. Reproducing this is very complicated and with Diapason Karis III I have experienced it, rather than listened to it, in my living room, my private temple where the gods sometimes hear my requests and respond to them.

(*): Dear distributors and manufacturers. I am very slow with revisions because I get very distracted.

I don't believe that anyone can listen to these Karis III without immediately saying that they have "rediscovered music in their recordings". Their delicate treatment of the voices and the presence with which they are able to project them towards the listeners, I am sure will open up a new world to old recordings that we thought we knew perfectly well.

Its compact measurements are very deceiving with respect to its real capacity to cover a medium-sized room. It reaches up to 60 Hz. If we respect this measurement, it will provide us with an unprecedented musical experience in such a small size. They are beautiful, elegant and visual attractions, and showing them off rather than hiding them is a strong point they have.

If you have a high-performance music system with speakers that go down to 25 Hz and a lot of associated muscle, consider getting something like this as a second system for a different musical experience. If the best moments of your life have happened in the stalls, living other tormented lives, these could be your speakers.