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From
JazzTimes, February 2008 by Mike Quinn: Speakers can take up to several hundred hours of
playing time to begin sounding their best. However, as soon as I had the
Nines up and running, I had to call Mr. DeVore to tell him that these
were the most outstanding speakers I’d ever heard in my home.
Immediately, that first day, I noticed a very real “layering” of the
sound, a precise positioning of the instruments from front to back,
offering a very palpable aural perspective, a sensation I’ve rarely
experienced in such a pronounced fashion. It was absolutely
three-dimensional and I hadn’t even set up the speakers properly.
Despite this inexact placement, they were already performing like
superstars with lifelike focus, finesse and verve. DeVore speakers are renowned for their unflinching but
relaxed accuracy to the music. Nothing added, nothing subtracted, no
neon lights screaming, “Listen to me!” I have often used the phrase purity of sound when
discussing DeVore, and that is what they offer, music in its purest,
most unadulterated, truest-to-life form with no sign of strain or
overemphasis. Velvety and seductive without being soft or muted, big and
authoritative without being irritating like Popeye’s Bluto, or like
Popeye himself. When music plays through these speakers, you pay
attention; the music grabs you and won’t let go ... and you like it! “Do
it to me!” you scream over the Dolphy LP. Oh! The pleasure seems as
though it should be a mortal sin. Music pours out of the Nines with a grace and natural
fluidity not often heard at any price. Individual instruments are far
easier to delineate, even in complex instrumental textures. Female
vocals, well, they’re sexier than a 1-900 call. Listening to a charming
10-inch Prestige LP of Sonny Rollins and Thelonious Monk, the timbres
and dynamics were so real and vivid I completely forgot the disc was
made well over 50 years ago. These DeVore speakers never let the music
down, never get in its way but, rather, let the locomotion and drive
possessed by the music set the pace. Nothing drags, nothing wilts. The
result is like a drug: you don’t want to stop listening, you just want
more and more and more. And more. I could go on, but I think you get the picture. I’ve gone through more than a handful of speakers in the past 15 years or so. But the buck stops right here. Or better, the bucks stop right here. I’m not letting go of these handsome cherry wood boxes; they will stay in my living room. My jazz collection has never sounded jazzier, my 1,000 Brazilian LPs have never sounded more Brazilian. These DeVore Nines are keepers. Read the full review here. |