Of the many thousands of hi-fi systems I’ve heard at shows over the years, two of the best-sounding and most memorable were based on full-range ribbon speakers made by the Spanish company AlsyVox.

The first was at the 2018 Rocky Mountain Audio Fest where Jonathan Valin enthusiastically ushered me to the AlsyVox room in a rare “You’ve got to hear this!” moment. He was right; the AlsyVox sounded like nothing else at the show, with a transparency, continuousness, and lifelike realism that eluded every box speaker in Denver. Although we were interested in reviewing the speaker, AlsyVox was at the time a small unknown company with no U.S. distributor and no U.S. dealers. As good as a product may potentially be, it doesn’t make sense to review a component that no one in North America can audition or buy.

Then at the 2023 Munich High-End show, I again encountered AlsyVox, but this time the company demonstrated a much more advanced model than what we heard in Denver. More importantly, AlsyVox now had a high-quality U.S. distributor, Rhapsody Audio, and its speakers could be heard in six showrooms across the U.S. (New York, Chicago, West Palm Beach, San Francisco, Portland Oregon, and Dallas). The sound in Munich was breathtaking—perhaps the best sound I’ve heard at an audio show. That second demo, combined with the speaker’s U.S. availability, sealed the deal; I would review the company’s Caravaggio, the second-from-top model.

If you’re like me, the description “full-range ribbon” conjures up the stereotype of a speaker that’s fiendishly difficult to drive because of its combination of ultra-low impedance, hunger for current, and low sensitivity. Conventional wisdom also holds that full-range ribbons don’t play loudly, don’t go low in the bass, lack dynamic oomph in the bottom end, and generally sacrifice visceral excitement for fabulous transparency, speed, and resolution. This generalization is understandable considering that the speaker that largely established that stereotype was the Apogee of the 1980s. That speaker was notorious for blowing up even dreadnought amplifiers, as well as for its overall fussiness. But it was also justly celebrated for its glorious midrange, high resolution, transient fidelity, and spectacular spatial presentation.

But the question remains: Are these limitations inherent in ribbon technology, or can they be overcome with innovative execution?

That question has been answered by AlsyVox founder Daniele Coen, a man who has spent the past 40 years dedicated to perfecting the ribbon loudspeaker. An aerospace engineer by training and an Italian who now lives in Spain, Daniele built his first ribbon speaker 40 years ago as a university student. He worked with a small Italian speaker company for many years, but then founded AlsyVox in 2017 to create the ultimate expression of his life’s work.

The result is a full-range ribbon speaker that overcomes the genre’s traditional shortcomings. Consider the Caravaggio’s astonishing specs: 94dB sensitivity, 4-ohm impedance, and bass extension to 22Hz (the company’s Raffaello has a sensitivity of 97dB). Daniele’s full-range ribbons are such an easy load that he drives his own Caravaggios at home with a 12W single-ended triode amplifier. Think about that: a full-range ribbon driven by a 12W SET. It defies belief.

The Caravaggio reviewed here is the second-from-the-top in the four-model range. I heard the top Rafaello in Munich, but that speaker, with its dual side-by-side woofers, is too big for my 18′ x 27′ room. Besides, the Caravaggio has a unique dual-midrange driver that the company says confers a special quality through the mids. The Caravaggio is a little over seven feet tall, two-and-a-quarter feet wide, and just over two inches thick. It is a four-way design with a massive crossover housed in a separate enclosure that sits behind the speaker. The speaker’s steel frame is clad in black acrylic, with vertical strips of teak wood elegantly highlighting the drivers. The speaker rests on a platform that is supported by four isolation feet. Despite its size, the Caravaggio has an elegant and sophisticated visual presence.

The four ribbon drivers are made in-house. The diaphragm of aluminum-coated Mylar, just 40 microns (about one-and-a-half thousands of an inch) thick, is pleated and tensioned by specialized equipment designed and built by AlsyVox. Nearly 2000 N42 neodymium magnets provide the magnetic driving force, each one hand-installed in the frame. The woofer and midrange drivers are push-pull, with a magnet array on each side of the ribbon diaphragm. In fact, this massive deployment of extremely powerful magnets, along with the push-pull design, is part of the secret to the speaker’s high sensitivity, extended bass response, and dynamic capabilities. It’s safe to say that no ribbon speaker has ever been built at this level of execution. Consider that each speaker weighs 330 pounds out of the crate without the crossover.

The Caravaggio costs $200,070 with the standard X Crossover, and $258,421 with the upgraded XX Crossover, the configuration reviewed here. The two crossovers are identical in topology, but the XX features exotic cost-no-object inductors, capacitors, and resistors. As described in the sidebar, the crossover is fully symmetrical, which doubles the number of components required.

The sidebar has more design details, but this is a good place for a refresher on ribbon speakers. The term “ribbon” has been applied to any flat-panel speaker that is driven magnetically (as opposed to electrostatically, as in an electrostat). But there’s a distinction between a true ribbon and other types of planar-magnetic speakers. That distinction is this: In a ribbon speaker the entire diaphragm is electrically conductive, and the audio signal flows through the diaphragm. This is contrasted with a speaker like the Magneplanar in which a thin conductor is bonded to a non-conductive film diaphragm. The audio signal flows through the conductor, generating the varying magnetic field that reacts with the fixed magnetic field to move the diaphragm back and forth. You can think of the conductor bonded to the diaphragm as analogous to the voice coil in a dynamic speaker, but here in straight-line segments. In a ribbon speaker, the diaphragm is the conductor, and has the advantage of being driven uniformly over its entire surface area. There’s one other fine distinction you should consider: A ribbon is a “true” ribbon if it is attached to the frame only at the top and bottom. Drivers with fully conductive diaphragms that are attached to the frame along all four sides are technically called “planar” drivers. Consequently, the Caravaggio has, technically speaking, ribbon midrange, tweeter, and supertweeter drivers, and a planar woofer. Despite this distinction, I think of the AlsyVox speakers as “full-range ribbons.”

Listening

Daniele Coen traveled from his base in Valencia, Spain, to my home in Albuquerque to set up the Caravaggio. He was accompanied by Bob Visintainer, proprietor of Rhapsody Audio and AlsyVox’s U.S. distributor. Rhapsody has an interesting business model; in addition to a showroom in Brooklyn where Bob is based, there are five additional Rhapsody listening rooms around the country. Most of these are customer homes where a potential purchaser can listen to a range of Rhapsody-represented products and then complete the purchase through Bob in Brooklyn. The Rhapsody room in Dallas was specially built by a customer who was so taken by the sound of his AlsyVox speakers in his home that he opened a separate commercial showroom with two identical built-from-scratch listening rooms, one for AlsyVox and one housing the mighty $750k Magico M9.

The Caravaggios arrived with the speakers packed in individual flight cases and stacked flat on a pallet. Two large plastic cases housed the external crossovers. Removing the speakers from the flight cases and assembling the base and feet is a delicate and time-consuming process. After the speakers were assembled, we spent the rest of the day and most of the following day listening and fine-tuning the placement and the crossover settings.

As described in the sidebar, the crossover has input terminals to connect to the power amplifier and four output sections terminated with SpeakOn jacks, one section for each of the Caravaggio’s four drivers. Each of the four output sections offers multiple jacks of slightly varying output levels so that you can fine-tune the tonal balance; you simply connect the umbilical cable to a different jack for a bit of boost or cut if desired. Because the crossover is fully symmetrical, you actually move two cables per driver to engage the boost or cut.

I was surprised by where Daniele and Bob positioned the speakers as a starting point—far out into the room (9′ from the backwall) and spread impossibly widely apart. Dynamic speakers in this position would have no center-image solidity, but that was not a problem for the Caravaggio. The speakers were positioned almost right next to the sidewalls, which doesn’t induce the usual problems of side-wall reflections because of the flat panel’s dipolar radiation pattern. Viewed from above, the speaker produces sound in a figure-of-eight pattern, with almost no energy directed to the sides but equal energy directed behind the speaker and in front of it. In addition, planar speakers have very narrow vertical dispersion, which means almost no ceiling and floor bounce. You can see on The Absolute Sound’s YouTube channel a video of Daniele in my listening room describing the Caravaggio.

The speaker has no provision for biwiring or biamping, so we ran the CH Precision M10 amplifiers in 300W mono mode. Daniele and Bob were both very happy with the Caravaggio’s performance in my room. In fact, that’s an understatement; the ability to position the speakers anywhere in the room without domestic considerations is a key element in realizing the Caravaggio’s potential. Plenty of space between the speaker and the wall behind is essential to its performance.

Describing the experience of listening to music through the Caravaggio is a challenge because the sound is so different from that of point-source dynamic speakers. That challenge was made even more difficult by the Caravaggio’s stunning performance in so many areas. (Where does one begin?) Moreover, the Caravaggio’s extraordinary qualities combine synergistically, with one amplifying the other, making it more difficult to ascribe a specific musical perception to a specific performance attribute. Indeed, the Caravaggio’s continuousness of presentation and organic “wholeness” defies dissection.

It doesn’t take a “golden ear” or even any previous exposure to high-quality audio to instantly appreciate that the Caravaggio doesn’t sound like a box speaker. It has a vivid and lifelike realism in timbre, imaging, transient speed, resolution, physical energy, and in dynamics that make it sound that much closer to live music. The instant the music starts, there’s a sudden frisson of excitement as this remarkable loudspeaker brings the music to life.

This gestalt reaction is the result of a host of specific performance attributes that I shall try to parse and describe. The first is that the Caravaggio presents a kind of physicality to the sound, not just in the usual terms of bottom-end weight and heft, but in the tangibility and presence of instrumental and vocal images, both texturally and spatially. The impression of an instrument or vocalist existing in your listening room—right there—is spooky. The way images float in space, completely detached from the loudspeakers, is unlike that of any dynamic loudspeaker. A vocal entrance is startling in how it suddenly appears with such realism and tangibility. Images have bodies, as though they were three-dimensional entities, not flat projections. Percussion instruments sound like they are in the room with you—the transient fidelity, resolution, and timbral realism combining to thrilling effect. I was listening to the Analogue Productions LP of Getz/Gilberto and the entrance of Getz’s golden-honey-hued sax was so lifelike that it sounded as though it were recorded yesterday. The effect is simply thrilling. (Fans of this record should check out his lesser known but musically and sonically equal predecessor Jazz Samba, with guitarist Charlie Byrd.)

The Caravaggio has a very present, immediate, and upfront spatial presentation, but not in a forward or aggressive way. Rather, it simply has an extraordinary vividness and tangibility of instrumental and vocal images. Lead instruments and vocals are upfront, but quieter instruments and those toward the back of the soundstage are appropriately positioned in depth. In fact, the soundstage depth, air between images, and ability to hear deep into the hall’s acoustic are nothing short of stunning. The massive soundstage is incredibly detailed and resolved, with pinpoint image localization, extremely fine resolution of the lowest-level information, and transients of even the quietest sounds imbued with lifelike realism.

This stunning sense of depth and dimensionality is only half the story; the Caravaggio’s soundstage is literally wall-to-wall; these speakers can be positioned much farther apart than box speakers without losing center-image focus. The result is that the astounding spatial presentation isn’t confined to a window in front of you, but rather seems to occupy the entire front half of the room with no definite borders. If it sounds like the entire front half of the room is participating in reproducing the soundstage, that’s because it is. The Caravaggio’s dipolar radiation pattern produces just as much sound from the back as the front that faces the listener. Moreover, the speaker’s radiating area is massive compared to that of a dynamic loudspeaker. Combine those two factors, and you have a recipe for a sound that’s not confined within a window frame but rather creates a convincing illusion of replacing the listening room with the recorded acoustic. Play something like The Arnold Overtures in 176/24 from Reference Recordings, and you’ll hear a cavernous acoustic populated with images precisely positioned along a continuum from front to back with tremendous resolution of the individual players and sections within that acoustic.

This spatial immediacy is fostered by the speaker’s utter transparency—a sense of nothing between you and the music—but also by the Caravaggio’s spectacular reproduction of timbral density, tone color, and physicality with instrumental and vocal textures.

I had a feeling of immersion in whatever acoustic space the recording was made in, from intimate studio recordings to concert halls and everything in between. Yet I never felt that the Caravaggio was “inventing” this sense of space, making everything sound expansive. Rather, the Caravaggio accurately reflected what was on the recording. An intimate track like Neil Young’s beautiful “Harvest Moon” was portrayed with appropriate images sizes and overall scale. Speaking of intimacy, the Caravaggio has an uncanny ability to create the impression of the performer communicating directly with you in that immediate moment, so realistic are the timbre, image tangibility, and sense that the music simply exists rather than being recreated by an electro-mechanical contrivance. In this sense, the Caravaggio crosses some kind of threshold, leading the listener into a powerful involvement in the musical expression.

To realize this performance, however, you must be prepared to position the Caravaggios well out into the listening space away from the backwall. The speakers were positioned in my room 14′ apart (outer edge to outer edge) but only 9′ from the listening seat (they were nearly 9′ from the wall behind them). I’ve never had speakers spread so wide in relation to the listening distance. While experimenting with placement in my room, moving the speakers back toward the wall behind them slightly diminished the depth and feeling of the soundstage having no boundaries. (It also increased the bottom-end heft and weight.) Even a foot makes a difference. The soundstage was still fully developed and deep, but that last measure of magic only happened with the speakers very far out into the room. Don’t plan to put the Caravaggio a foot from the wall behind it and expect it to reveal the full measure of depth encoded on some recordings.

When I was studying recording engineering many years ago, I read an interview with a famous engineer who said, “I love the sound of air above 20kHz.” That expression stuck with me and was brought vividly to mind by the AlsyVox’s feeling of unlimited top-end extension. It was like taking a lid off the soundstage, with the sense of air seemingly extending to the stratosphere. The Caravaggio’s treble is so open, extended, fast, detailed, and transparent, yet never bright or edgy. This speaker’s transient speed and resolution are simply thrilling. I think that this quickness in reproducing leading-edge transient signals without overhang contributes to the Caravaggio’s richly detailed soundstage. Very low-level sounds, particularly transient sounds such as percussion, have a lifelike immediacy and pinpoint localization that infuses the soundstage with a sense of vibrancy. (See the sidebar for more on the relationship between transient speed and image localization.)

The Caravaggio’s ability to resolve vanishing low-level treble detail further contributed to that sense of lifelike realism. For example, maracas don’t sound like a swish of treble energy, but rather like many tiny beads colliding in a hollow wooden vessel. The individual transients that make up the instrument’s sound are fully resolved rather than being smeared. Brushes on snare drum have a similar verisimilitude in the exquisite resolution of the instrument’s micro-structure. This may sound inconsequential at best, but it’s details like this—and others in combination—that contribute, consciously and unconsciously, to the speaker crossing the threshold from great sound to a transcendental musical experience.

It seems somehow wrong to talk about the Caravaggio’s treble separately because the top end sounds simply like an integral part of the music, not a separate entity. A violin’s overtones, for example, sound like what they are—a natural extension of the fundamentals, not the steely edge overlaying the timbre that is so often heard in reproduced music. The continuousness extended to the entire spectrum; the speaker presents a uniform voice, tonally and dynamically, from the bass to the top treble, with zero discontinuity between drivers.

The Caravaggio is distinguished by yet another quality that contributes to its sense of realism—instruments are reproduced with richness, power, and physicality, rather than as a pale vaporous facsimile. This quality is immediately apparent on every instrument, but particularly on piano. The Caravaggio reproduces a concert grand’s full measure of weight, authority, and majestic power, manifesting a more authentic rendering of the instrument’s size, presence, and tangibility. Big left-hand chords are simply phenomenal, possessing a thundering quality that’s musically thrilling. This characteristic is due, in part, to the Caravaggio’s massive radiating area, which can more closely approximate a piano’s size. The way the big ribbon moves air is more like the way a piano radiates sound. The result is a density of tone color, a richness, and a feeling of being in the presence of a large object producing sound than is possible from even the best dynamic loudspeakers.

But it’s not just the macro qualities that the Caravaggio gets right about piano—it’s also the microdetails. Listening to Costantino Catena playing works by Debussy and Schumann on Fazioli F278: The Sound of the Concert Grand, I could hear the precise dynamic envelope of the hammer hitting the strings, the strings vibrating, the soundboard reinforcing the strings, and then how those sounds decay. The Caravaggio’s ultra-fast transient response, exquisite resolution of fine detail, and ability to convey the instrument’s physicality combine to make music that sounds at once realistic, visceral, immediate, and absolutely thrilling. Moreover, the sound is completely devoid of that metallic “shattering” character during forte passages in the upper register, a common loudspeaker affliction. I mention these individual components of the piano’s sound not because the Caravaggio separates them or fosters an analytical dissection, but rather to describe how all the accuracy of these sonic components contributes to the speaker’s overall sense of realism.

My great friend and colleague Neil Gader visited to hear the Caravaggio, and at the end of a short solo piano piece described in precise detail exactly what I’ve been talking about. The Caravaggio’s qualities are unmistakable. I’ve used piano as an example because the instrument’s size and physicality are so difficult to reproduce correctly, but the qualities I’ve described apply to every other instrument.

At this point you may be thinking that here comes the bad news—ribbons are hard to drive and lack visceral power in the bottom end. On the first point, although the Caravaggio benefited from the CH Precision’s 300W, the power meters indicated that it could play at realistic levels with much less power. Indeed, I drove the Caravaggio’s to any listening level with the 100W WestminsterLab Rei (reviewed in Issue 349). Daniele told me that his system with 12Wpc has many virtues, but that the Caravaggio’s dynamic power, bass extension, and physicality are best realized with a moderate-to-high-powered solid-state amp.

And on the second point, what dynamic power, bass extension, and physicality this speaker delivers! It belies the stereotype of the ribbon speaker as polite, refined, delicate, and lacking bottom-end slam and dynamic contrasts. When you combine this power and weight with a ribbon speaker’s unrivaled transient speed, the result is nothing short of thrilling.

Very late in the review process, I had an opportunity to perform the ultimate test of the Caravaggio’s ease of being driven. Rick Brown of Hi-Fi One brought the David Berning/Hi-Fi One SET Reference 20W ZOTL monoblock power amplifiers to my listening room (also see the video preview on our YouTube channel). Although far from a typical SET in every way, particularly in bass impact and dynamic performance, the 20W SET drove the Caravaggio to fully satisfying listening levels with shocking bass weight, power, and dynamic impact. The SET also revealed something else about the Caravaggio; the speaker had even more to give in exquisite rendering of timbre, liquidity, treble smoothness. The Berning/Hi-Fi One SET’s many virtues combined synergistically with those of the Caravaggio, resulting in a heart-melting sound that transcends mere “hi-fi.”

Conclusion

I must begin this summary with a caveat. The performance I’ve described was realized with ideal placement of the Caravaggio well out into the room with plenty of space (nearly 9′) between the speaker and the wall behind it. I’m sure that the Caravaggio can sound wonderful closer to the wall, but to realize its full potential, you need to position the speakers away from the backwall, which can be a challenge in many homes.

With that dispensed with, I can say that the Caravaggio is one of the world’s greatest loudspeakers. The qualities that make it so spectacular are manifold: uncannily realistic rendering of timbre, image tangibility, expansive and detailed spatial presentation, ability to portray the physicality of instruments, transparency, resolution, and transient speed. The Caravaggio also transcends the traditional limitations of ribbon speakers; it is remarkably easy to drive, will play loudly, and delivers fabulous bass weight and low-end dynamic authority. In this sense, it is a sui generis creation.

But describing the Caravaggio with this audiophile checklist seems somehow wrong. This big ribbon is utterly coherent and continuous in every way, sounding so uncannily like live music that it makes you instantly forget about specific sonic criteria. The best summary of the Caravaggio is this: Every time I sat down to listen, I felt a visceral thrill the instant the Caravaggio brought the music to life—a thrill that was sustained over many hours and across diverse musical genres.

It’s a magic trick that never gets old. 

Specs & Pricing

Type: Full-range four-way ribbon loudspeaker
Frequency response: 22Hz–40kHz
Sensitivity: 94dB
Impedance: 4 ohms
Woofer width: 320mm
Midrange width: 37mm x2
Mid-tweeter width: 25mm
Supertweeter width: 5mm
Crossover frequencies: 700, 1500, 4500Hz
Dimensions: 2′ 3″ x 7′ 3.8″ x 0.213″
Weight: 330 lbs. each net, not including external crossover
Price: $200,070 with X Crossover, $258,421 with XX Crossover

ALSYVOX S.L.
Calle Doctor JJ Domine, 4/2
46011 Valencia – Spain
+34 697 454 945
info-alsyvox.com

RHAPSODY AUDIO (U.S. Distributor)
Brooklyn, NY
rhapsodyaudio.com

Associated Equipment

Analog source: Basis Audio A.J. Conti Transcendence turntable with SuperArm 12.5 tonearm; Air Tight Opus cartridge; Moon 810LP phonostage
Analog source:  Wadax Reference DAC, Reference Server, Reference PSU, Akasa interface
Amplification: CH Precision L10 Dual Monaural linestage; CH Precision M10 Dual Monaural power amplifiers
AC Power: Shunyata Everest 8000 and Shunyata Typhon 2 conditioners, Shunyata Omega and Sigma NR V2 power cords, Shunyata AC outlets, five dedicated 20A lines wired with identical length 10AWG
Support: Critical Mass Systems Olympus equipment racks and Olympus amplifier stands; CenterStage² isolation, Arya Audio RevOpods isolation
Cables: AudioQuest Dragon interconnects, AudioQuest Dragon Zero loudspeaker cables
Grounding: Shunyata Altaira grounding system
Accessories: The Chord Company GroundAray noise reduction
Acoustics: Acoustic Geometry Pro Room Pack 12, ASC 16″ Round Tube Traps
Room: Purpose-built; Acoustic Sciences Corporation Iso-Wall System