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Last week I visited Ultimate Audio in Porto twice. The first visit was brie, just enough for a sniff. The second was more deliberate. Not professional in the strict sense, because I am not, in the strict sense, but intentional. Above all, driven by a real desire to listen. To truly listen to the two systems currently on demonstration, each in its own room, each with a distinct philosophy.
This is not a direct comparison. That would miss the point. What I was looking for was identity. How each system speaks in a demonstration context. And, most importantly, how far each one can carry emotion. Unvarnished emotion.
The music selection was mine. Tracks I know by heart. The listening time was sufficient to create intimacy, and that changes everything.
This is not a review. It couldn’t be. These systems were not experienced in my own room, with my own equipment, over time. What follows are conscious, contextualized, and honest impressions. I know both rooms well, from dozens of listening sessions over the past years.
ROOM 1 — Revival Atalante 7 Évo + Accuphase E-4000 + Aurender A-1000
The initial sensation is paradoxical: comfort and surprise at once. Familiarity, yes, but clearly on a higher level.
At home, I live daily with a system that shares its DNA with this one: Atalante 3 speakers with an Accuphase E-280, fed by a tube DAC, the Fezz Equinox. What I encountered here was that same spirit, scaled up.
More treble extension. Deeper soundstage. Greater physical scale. More substance, without losing agility or elegance.
The room, larger and deeper than the one where I heard this same system weeks ago, finally allows the Atalante 7 Évo to breathe. And when they breathe, they deliver exactly what they promise on paper.
Bass arrives with impact, body, and control – remarkably fast for drivers this size. Nothing excessive, nothing designed to impress by brute force. Organic, yet free from obvious coloration.
The midrange is the heart of this system. Voices with texture, presence, and humanity. High frequencies extend with more air and detail than in my home system, revealing micro-information in recordings I thought I knew intimately, without sharp edges or aggression.
The soundstage has height and width, but above all depth and stability. The room fills, not with sound, but with music.
Dynamics, both micro and macro, are handled with Accuphase’s trademark calm authority. Energy without tension. Control without rigidity. This, to me, is the Accuphase sound.
Notable listening moments:
- Tom Jones, “24 Hours”: chesty voice, raw texture, emotional scale intact.
- Ali Farka Touré & Ry Cooder, “Ai Du”: a familiar signature, now with more air, depth, and substance.
- Arooj Aftab, “Baghon Main”: Anoushka Shankar’s sitar tastes like ginger; Aftab’s voice, cinnamon.
- Dominique Fils-Aimé, “Birds”: three-dimensional stage, exemplary definition, full extension.
- Tom Waits, “Blue Valentines”: I heard his breathing. Almost felt his breath. Absolute intimacy.
- Maria Bethânia, “Canto de Oxum”: startling percussive attack; Bethânia’s humanity untouched.
- Camané & Mário Laginha, “Com Que Voz”: piano with body and attack; voice rooted in center stage yet projecting throughout the room.
- “Fanfare for the Common Man”: orchestral scale, controlled impact, exemplary decay, precise three-dimensional mapping, and details previously unnoticed.
What stayed with me:
The Atalante 7 Évo represent a genuine leap over the Atalante 3, just as I had heard with the Atalante 5. The Accuphase E-4000 exerts a serene authority that amplifies the emotional message.
I missed the integrated DAC of the Accuphase DP-450 I heard in the previous, smaller-room session. With it, this system would be dangerously close to a perfect score.
ROOM 2 — Diptyque DP 85 + Axxess Forté 3 + SVS SB-3000
Here, the framework shifts, and radically so.
Yes, this system delivers detail. But above all, it delivers music, at a visceral emotional level.
The idea that carried through both sessions was simple and clear: drop your defenses. Let the music do what it was created to do.
The Diptyque DP 85 have a rare ability: they carry the emotional context of the music directly to the listener’s guts, without filters, without anesthesia. Sound does not come from the speakers; it occupies the room. Sometimes it seems to arrive from behind, from all sides. Three-dimensional. Enveloping. Almost esoteric.
Precision is absolute, as only panel speakers can achieve. Yet never clinical. These speakers do not forgive poor recordings, but the music is always there. It gets through. Whole, intact, and emotionally charged.
Notable listening moments:
- Sade, “Smooth Operator”: her voice cradled me. Literally.
- Melanie De Biasio, “With All My Love”: a blow to the chest. A voice that aches.
- Dead Can Dance, “Yulunga”: a spiritual, three-dimensional experience. This is esotericism.
- Bertrand Renaudin, “Marais maison”: speed, detail, natural timbre. Pure magic.
- Colter Wall, “Manitoba Man”: the weight of the land in his voice.
- Buika, “Volver, Volver”: absolute emotional rupture.
- Gaspar Varela, “Mudar de Vida”: a reminder of why the saxophone is a woodwind instrument.
- Carlos Paredes, “Mudar de Vida”: Portuguese soul. My eyes filled with tears.
- Plácido Domingo, “Vesti la giubba”: raw emotion. A grown man like me, tearing up?.
- Mariza, “Ó Gente da Minha Terra”: Mariza and I, conjoined twins, linked by heart and Portuguese soul.
- Abrunhosa & Camané, “Para os Braços da Minha Mãe”: the concept of the room finnaly makes sense. Music as catharsis. Things rise to the surface. I feel like I’m running into my mother’s arms.
What stayed with me:
This system is not for everyone. It is for those unafraid to feel.
It is not neutral in the traditional sense. It is honest. Raw. Human – viscerally so.
If you love music – not sound, but music- and feel the need to release what is buried deep inside, do not be ashamed. Go to Ultimate Audio in Porto, near Serralves Foundation. Walk in. Sit down. Listen. And let it all out.
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