Welcome back to the Videohifi.com pages. Today I invite you to listen with me to a small classic of our (Italian) national production, the Opera 1.5 AV two-way stand-mounted speakers. They do not represent an innovation, for sure, in Opera's vast catalogue, but I am intentionally investigating their explicit multimedia abilities. In fact, besides supplying optimal performances in stereo, the 1.5 behaved fine also in home-theater duties.
This opening statement gives me the possibility to explain how I select the products I review in Videohifi.com.
As far as I am concerned, in fact, I only write about the products I think deserve a review. For this reason, in a very clear and honest way, you won't find a brutally negative review written by myself in these pages. If a product doesn't work for me, I send it back, apologizing for the fact I just can't review it - no grudges, no controversies, just a clear and objective service: those products which are featured here have deserved our showcase for their unquestionable qualities, not for agreements of who-knows-which-type with manufacturers and distributors. Now that I have told you that, I can slowly come to the features of the subject of this review.

The listening system

The system is my usual one (here are the details); excepted for the audio-video system, new to these pages: DVD player: Sony DVP-NS300; 32? 16/9 100hz TV set: Sony KV32LS60E; A/V amplifier Sony STR-DE585; Jbl SCS178 5 speakers set, with active subwoofer.
A small entry-level system, assembled with a special care for the synergy between the components.

Listening rooms

The listening rooms are also my usual ones (see Listening rooms), but the home theatre one is new: a mid-to-large size room, where the system is positioned on a large specialised fitted wall, in front of which, at the room center, a comfortable sofa is placed to enjoy movies and multichannel music. The subwoofer is placed on the right-hand side of the front wall, far from room corners. The surround channels are installed on the rear wall at a an approximately two meters height; the cabling is wired into chase.
Acoustic treatments haven't been foreseen yet, only the furniture has been positioned with an ear to the acoustic results. A complete Audio Carpet set is arriving, however, but more about that in another issue.

Description

The speaker under examination presents itself as a parallelepiped with the usual dimensions for a bookshelf, the edges of the imposing external panels are rounded off; you get the sense of a solid product since you get it out of the box. The woofer is a nominal 13 centimetres, as is usual in cabinets of these dimensions. The drive unit that I liked the most for its audio qualities is the tweeter, a one-inch silk dome. The crossover component selection is in line with the cost of the product.
The thing that has hit me the most, and generated various reflections in me, is the quality of the cabinet, decidedly some notches above those commonly found in non-Italian speakers. To define the binding posts massive and easy-to-use would be an understatement, considering the abundant savings we often see for this "particular". The only really slight fault I find in the build quality of these speakers is the fact that the grille isn't perfectly in line with the front baffle. A reasonable explanation could be that this may be a demo/review pair; I don't think, however, that this would be a good policy, as reviewers will tell about these faults, even if an imperfection like this doesn't have any consequence on sound quality. Anyway, the speakers are just beautiful and look very well, both in the living room, where they improve the décor, and in the listening room, where they stand up noble and slim, low price notwithstanding.

Listening

My first actual approach to the subjects of this test involves the beautiful, almost forgotten Welcome To The Pleasuredome by Frankie Goes To Hollywood. This lets me appreciate the best quality of the Opera 1.5AV, their soundstage reproduction abilities. The stage embraces, covers, colours the wall behind the speakers. The wall sings, plays, reverberates. As soon as the music begins, the speakers disappear, to reappear only at the end of the listening session. If I were blind, if I weren't fully in control of myself, I would think I were in front of a sounding wall, that, escaping to the laws of Physics for some strange reason, is able to sound two meters behind its position. The speaker don't seem to notice the wall behind them and enjoy throwing everything a pair of meters behind them.
Who knows how the FGTH drummer feels, suspended at third floor height out of my window, but please! don't tell him he's playing floating in empty space, if you break the spell his awakening could be traumatic…

In the horizontal plane, the baffle external boundaries are transcended, more than once the sound is clearly outside the speakers position, unimpeded by furniture, walls and everything else the eye can see on its way. I can firmly assert that I have never, ever experienced this kind of soundstaging abilities in a speaker in this price range.
Let's see the other parameters. If I raise the volume, I don't experience any hardness in the mid- or upper midrange, any sibilants or any hint of collapse of the stage.
The tweeter demonstrates to be a quality driver, the star of this speaker. The midrange is another remarkable feature of this design, voices are solid, liquid and gassy, following faithfully the tone and the quality of the recording session work. I am quite amazed at these speaker's ease and at the way they don't try to impose themselves.

Overall dynamics are fine; they aren't reference-level, but, as we will see in a multichannel context, these Opera speakers are able enough to involve the listener during all of the listening session. Listening fatigue doesn't sneak its head, thanks, no doubt about it, to the high range, which doesn't ring, and to the overall introspection abilities of the speaker. Maybe the lower range can raise some doubts, being a bit dark while not very extended, not really forceful but well articulated. I have heard better; in any case, the woofer seems to suffer high listening levels more than the tweeter, as in more than one moment I have experienced hints of hardness and of loss of detail raising the power delivered by the amp.

Venial sins, due to the unavoidable compromises in the realisation of a perfectly successful design - the ideal user isn't a metal-head, for sonic characteristics and constructive ones. To enjoy completely all the strengths of the 1.5AV the best musical genres are: small chamber ensembles, jazz trios or quartets, high quality pop and rock. If you love instead: Pantera, Iron Maiden, Metallica, you can easily find your satisfaction else.

The audio of the video

In an audio/video context, the 1.5AV have confirmed the positive features they have showed in stereo, demonstrating to be comfortable with explosions, tight dialogues and last-generation special effects. I had some troubles at the start, trying to convince my center channel loudspeaker to work with partners so different from itself. As I solved, to the best of what has been possible, the problems of excessive directionality of the dialogue channel, I made some tests with audio and video multichannel program. I also had to recalibrate the subwoofer and the surround speakers, but not to a headache-inducing extent.

In the Pink Floyd The Wall movie, our small speakers have pulled a soundstage unheard before in this system; as it is obvious, the soundtrack is the star in this DVD, so the burden is on the front channels. The Operas accomplished their mission well, I think even Waters and Kamen would have been satisfied.

Playing material less strictly related with music, as the "Gladiator" movie, the Operas behave themselves, returning to show their balance and restraint. Dynamics, very important in home theatre also, are fair; what lags behind is the lower range, which, while being superior to that provided by my reference speakers (obviously, the 10cm woofer which equips the JBL speakers can't work miracles), can't reach what other speakers have provided in this system.
At the end of the day, I can say that these speakers can provide much pleasure to their owners in a multichannel system; we had only one pair of 1.5AV to test, and we had to partner them with another manufacturer's set. It might be that we will be able to test a full Opera multichannel set soon, with two pairs of 1.5AV, a dedicated center speaker and a sub.

Conclusions

I have to say, closing the listening test, that I didn't like the 1.5AV out of the box; I have needed some time, not because of run-in or of the difference with my usual reference frame - not at all. I think it was because of their restraint. These are speakers aimed at refined tastes and empty pockets, which don't try to make you love them for any particular feature: they try to let you forget them, to pass unnoticed even in the most complex passage. They aren't evidently coloured in any particular range; once well set-up, they disappear from the stage and, most noticeably, to reveal the qualities of the upstream components. This is, if I have explained myself well enough, what every speaker which tries to be an "audiophile" one should do. The meaning of "audiophile" is somewhat confused today; to me, balance, transparency, dynamics and soundstaging abilities are the basic features needed to aim at that uncommon definition.