Kharma Mini Exquisite Loudspeaker

Beauty is a Rare Thing

Kharma ’s Mini Exquisite is a perfectl y named loudspeaker . More than any other (super) model I know of, it offers a staggeringly seductive blend of fine detail and, yes, exquisite beauty. It will immediately signal the slightest change to any other component in your system—say, whether or not the front-panel displays of my reference MBL electronics are turned on or off (they sound much better off), or a hair’s degree of shift to the overhang setting of a movingcoil cartridge. And yet, as transparent and high in resolution as it is, the Kharma Mini never sounds cold or analytical. If anything, the opposite is true. This speaker has drop-deadgorgeous tone colors and an overall silken presentation.

A two-way floorstander, the Mini Exquisite is the smallest model in this Dutch manufacturer’s flagship Exquisite series. At $45,000 the pair, it is also a very expensive purchase. I can already hear the yowls of indignant protest that a “mere” two-way should cost so much money, as if a speaker’s cost should hinge on the number of drivers stuffed into its box or, like steak, be sold by the pound. I’ll get to price, perceptions of value, and what goes into the Mini Exquisite shortly, but before I do let me tell you that everything I treasure in a speaker can be found in Kharma’s superb little package.

As someone who listens to a wide variety of music, including some fairly demanding rock, I want a speaker with the kind of top-to-bottom coherence, midrange beauty, and disappearing act of a Quad electrostatic, but one that can also play loudly, with excellent dynamics, visceral impact, and reasonable bottom-end extension. I do not and never have cared if a speaker reaches below 30Hz—there’s very little music down there, anyway—and have never cottoned to large, multi-tower arrays because to me they frequently sound just like they look—like big speakers, not live music. Now, while there are a few speakers out there that deliver some of the Kharma Mini’s attributes—and maybe equal or better the Kharma’s sound in some areas—none I know of combine the detail, beauty, and single-driver-like coherence I’ve already mentioned, with the Mini’s exceptional transparency, a wide bandwidth (rated from 30Hz–100kHz) that starts with an impressive bottom end reach and impact and finishes with glorious, diamond-tweeter-born highs, and the ability to disappear as well as any speaker I’ve heard. (Another great Mini, from MAGICO, offers much of what the Kharma does, but it is, at least to the degree I’m familiar with it, not as breathtakingly beautiful as the Kharma is. Both are highly detailed, the MAGICO may be even more dynamic, but the bass of these two speakers couldn’t be more dissimilar. Beyond driver differences, the MAGICO’s enclosure is sealed and the Kharma’s is ported. As listeners who have heard both can attest, these different ways of loading the bass contribute mightily to each sonic signature.) Let me also add that to me the term “transparency” does not simply mean that a speaker is especially clear, though that’s part of it, and it’s not just about resolution, though that, surely, is part of it, too; what it means to me is a component is a transparent window to the source. In the case of a speaker—and this speaker to the max—this means starting at the binding posts through to the speaker cables and on to the power amp and so on, all the way back to the information encoded in a CD or cut into the surface of a vinyl platter.

Consider Libra, from the great sounding Decca LP of English composer Roberto Gerhard’s Astrological Series: Libra-Gemini-Leo. As heard through the Kharma (along with the components listed below), the players in the London Sinfonietta—flute, piccolo, clarinet, violin, guitar, a variety of percussion, and piano—are laid out in my listening room with a highly convincing recreation of scale (both in size and relationship to one another) and a tactile physical presence. And because my room is small and I listen in the near-field, the Mini’s slightly forward projection makes for a thrillingly lifelike experience. There are essentially no speaker boundaries, and the air of the soundstage has enormous width, height, and depth. And as the musicians interact with one another, the air in my room becomes vibrantly charged with their instruments’ energy. Whether from a fat sforzando piano chord that leaps forth before slowly lingering back into nothingness, the quick barrooming bulge of a tympani thwack, the angry sounding pizzicatos of the violin, the classical guitar’s flamenco-like chords and arpeggios, or the in and out pulse of the player’s breath as it flows though the flute’s body. This recording also demonstrates the Mini’s wonderful way with “bloom” or “action.” As the flute, or really any of the other instruments, increase or decrease their output volume, you hear just that, their volume—as in size—blossom and wilt, while moving forward and then receding back into the soundstage.