Kudos Cardea Super 20A with Active Crossover

This is a review of the Kudos Cardea Super 20A floorstanding loudspeaker with an external active crossover driven by Exposure electronics. The previous review of the Super 20As as a passive pair is here and the set up process is explained here.

Can there be any more exciting way of walking into your ‘office’ than by turning on the lights, turning on your power supply, your preamplifier, your four monoblocks and your streaming DAC? There isn’t, I can tell you that for nothing, indeed in the search for the ultimate HiFi setup, I barely turn the lights on these days (to reduce electrical noise of course).

Design & Quality

The Kudos Cardea Super 20As were previously described and reviewed here and the full specification is here.

Performance

Ryan Adams – Gold (Qobuz 24 bit, 96kHz)

All the music, all the art, all the joy is in this room, it really is breathtaking.

When you have a system as good as this, with a matching, wide open, clean source like the iFi Pro iDSD, there is only one thing to do, put your favourite album on. Notwithstanding Ryan Adams’ fall from grace, this is still my uplifting, start of a journey, album. It is dynamic, has pace, excitement and it has a story; and it is also a great recording.

Take Rescue Blues, a breather after the frantic opening with a rolling guitar line. The Kudos Cardea Super 20A leave nothing, and I mean nothing, behind. The vocalist is IN the room and the edge of the guitar strings can be heard. Placing accompanying vocals is a joy and picking out individual instruments on the soundstage has never been easier. In the anthemic Nobody Girl, the anguish of the accompanying vocalist in the crescendo is as clear as it has ever been. I end up repeating Sylvia Plath three times in the middle of the album, I know it’s not allowed but needs must, the piano and orchestration step out in front of me, like never before.

All the music, all the art, all the joy is in this room, it really is breath-taking. The problem I have is I’ll never get anywhere near this when it all goes back to Kudos. I’ll have a good go though.

Radiohead – OK Computer (Qobuz 24 bit, 96kHz)

What about OK Computer? I just pour over it, trying to drink in every note and instrument, I note the crisp bassline in Subterranean Homesick Alien from the Super 20As feels that bit more defined. Exit Music is simply divine, from the Other Place, the vocal has never sounded like this, to me.

Cat Stevens – Teaser and the Firecat (Qobuz 16-bit, 44.1kHz)

I’m quite into Cat Stevens at the moment, as a lyricist and thinker, I listened to his Desert Island Disc episode recently. Teaser and the Firecat is one of the first whole albums I listened to on my Dad’s Dual record deck, Akai amplifier with chunky old wooden Wharfdale speakers in the 70s. For good measure, as an 8-year-old, I added my own scrawling artwork to the album cover with a blue biro!

My notes say ‘goosebumps’, ‘sparkle’, and ‘energy’, that’s all I have. The edge of the guitar strings, the edge of the finger on the strings really, in The Wind is simply perfect, I can just feel emotion wash over me, as it did him when he wrote this song after a swim in the ocean. This is a heightened music experience that demands the best source available, I have clearly the best loudspeakers available.

Next, I line up The National’s Trouble Will Find Me (Qobuz 24-bit, 96kHz) in the iFi fixed analogue out to the Exposure preamplifier. Demons surround you, with Matt Berninger’s deep vocal filling your chest. It is a real experience.

Thoughts

You know that bit when you look up unexpectedly when you’re listening to a random playlist? This happened a couple of notable times in my Tidal Daily Discovery, notably with Ryan Adams’ English Girls Approximately’and listening to Bjork’s vocal in Venus as a Boy, there was just that bit where you stop and realise something really special is happening between you and the music.

Derek Gilligan (Kudos’ supremo) was asked in an interview, what are you trying to achieve with your work? His answer was (with permission):

My goal is to bring the live experience into the home; the emotion that you get at a live gig, that emotion has to come through. I like to get that across to as many people as possible.

As far as I can hear, I am getting that emotional response that Derek refers to with these fantastic Kudos Cardea Super 20A loudspeakers that seem to be able to perform in all scenarios. It matters not whether I’ve had them passive, with a Moor Amps Angel 6, a Cyrus Stereo 200 or just about anything else. With this active crossover, the speakers respond with more energy and dynamism to whatever takes my fancy.

If you take a listen to the Arooj Aftab’s NPR Tiny Desk on YouTube (Bluetooth to a Chord 2Go/2Yu into the iFi Pro iDSD) for the live experience Derek Gilligan refers to you can actually hear the room responding to the music, the harp is so clean and once again that guitar is so vivid and clear to feel.

I guess the question is, at this price, is it worth it? I have to say this is an experience I will never forget and it going to be difficult for me to move on from this active crossover setup. In the end, I am clear these Kudos Cardea Super 20A loudspeakers would be my choice for life and if I’m in that place these are the first destination I would choose, I don’t even think I need to hear the Titans, these are my choice.

Overall

In this external active crossover setup, these Kudos Cardea Super 20A loudspeakers are at their peak; articulate, accurate, sparkling and urgently alive.

These Kudos Cardea Super 20A loudspeakers have the capability to offer a heightened music listening experience, beyond that normally available. In this external active crossover setup, they are at their peak; articulate, accurate, sparkling and urgently alive.