Alta Audio Alec Speakers Reviewed

The Alec loudspeaker, by boutique audiophile speaker company Alta Audio, is a two-way floorstanding model with rather unique technology incorporated. If you haven’t heard of Alta Audio before, you are like me. Our publisher, Jerry Del Colliano, sent me some information about the speaker and asked if I’d be interested in possibly reviewing a pair. After some quick research, I was definitely intrigued. The Alec model, like all Alta Audio loudspeakers, was designed by company founder Michael Levy. While Alta Audio was founded just 11 years ago, Levy has over 30 years of loudspeaker design experience while also helping to bring various meaningful audio technologies to the market. The Alec is the smallest floorstanding loudspeaker in the Alta Audio lineup. Unlike most loudspeaker brands these days, nearly all Alta Audio speakers are manufactured right here in the United States, specifically in Bridgeport, Connecticut. These lower cost Alta Audio speakers are made in China in the factory where some other very high end speakers are also made. When speaking to Levy for a few minutes, you quickly become aware of his passion for his work. The design goals for the Alec loudspeaker, like all Alta Audio speakers, are to produce products with bass extension and clarity beyond normal audiophile standards. The design goal is to transport the listener to the musical venue or recording studio, and to deliver precise imaging resulting with a believable soundstage that packs both depth and width. So, does the Alta Audio Alec speakers meet these ambitious goals? That’s what we are here to explore …

What Makes the Alta Audio Alec Loudspeakers So Special? 

• The rather compact-sized cabinet of the Alec loudspeaker has a really appealing shape and a deep high-gloss finish that will easily fit into nearly any home’s decor. The Alta Audio Alec loudspeaker is a two-way design, with a cabinet that stands 39 inches tall (40.5 inches with spikes). Its tapered side walls are 8.5 inches wide at the top and 15 inches wide at the bottom, while the depth between its front and rear walls is 10.5 inches deep at the top and 12.5 inches deep at the bottom. The top of the cabinet is also curved, yielding no parallel walls. Available finishes include, gloss black ($9,000), and rosewood or beech woodgrain finishes ($10,000).
• The four-step process used to finish the cabinet results in the deepest high-gloss finish I’ve seen for a speaker at its price point. At these prices, you have every right to expect a stunning finish, and the Alta Audio Alec speakers deliver in earnest on the finish front. 
• The drivers used in the Alta Audio Alec speakers consist of a 5.75-inch neodymium magnet aluminum ribbon tweeter and an 8.75-inch midbass driver made of a low-mass Kevlar, fiber and paper composite, with a solid aluminum phase plug.  
• The Alta Audio Alec loudspeaker delivers significantly more/better bass clarity than most typical midsized floorstanders. Bass clarity is negatively impacted by cabinet resonance. To eliminate cabinet resonances, Alta Audio’s solution is a two-step approach. First, Alta Audio incorporates their proprietary material DampHard on the front baffle of the cabinet, instead of standard MDF (microdensity fiberboard). DampHard is a multi-layered, multi-density material. Alta Audio claims that their DampHard material remains dead to virtually all vibration, and my listening experience certainly supported that claim. Secondly, utilizing DampHard enables Alta Audio to greatly reduce the amount of heavy internal padding normally found inside speaker cabinets. Padding is used to dampen resonances, but can also tend to cause bass to sound a bit muddy or distorted. In addition, padding absorbs some of the bass energy, preventing it from realizing its full potential.
• The Alta Audio Alec loudspeaker delivers significantly more infrasonic bass with greater extension, speed and clarity. Conventional thinking is that bass output goes hand in hand with cabinet volume. Yes, tricks like incorporating reflex bass ports can deliver a bit more bass than non-ported designs, but usually it’s at the expense of bass clarity. Incorporating a standard transmission line design can also increase bass output, but with a sacrifice of speed and clarity. Alta Audio has put a different twist on these two technologies to improve bass extension to enhance speed and clarity. Rather than incorporating a standard transmission line, Alta Audio designed what it refers to as XTL Bass (Extended Transmission Line, a patented design). The design combines a 10.5-foot internal transmission line with a rear-mounted reflex bass port. Then, instead of tuning the cabinet at one frequency as is done with standard transmission line designs, Alta Audio used specialized sonic geometry to tune the cabinet at several frequencies, much like a musical instrument. This combination, along with their DampHard material, is the secret sauce that results in the remarkable bass extension, speed and clarity achieved.
• The Alta Audio Alec loudspeaker delivers a natural, cohesive sound across the audio spectrum. Levy spent six months fine tuning the second-order Linkwitz-Riley crossover (the crossover frequency is 2251 Hz) to further refine the cohesion between the tweeter and midbass woofer (for those interested in learning more about crossovers). There aren’t nearly as many two-way floorstanding speakers on the market as there are 2.5-way and three-way designs. It tends to be easier to add bass volume/output by simply adding additional drivers, so that is the route that most designers take. However, a simple two-way design can achieve remarkable results, as I discovered in my time with the Alec floorstanders.

Why Should You Care About the Alta Audio Alec Loudspeakers?

The audiophile enthusiast interested in the Alta Audio Alec loudspeakers is someone who really cares about hearing infrasonic bass delivered with clarity and impact beyond expectations, without the need for a subwoofer. At the same time, they want seamless integration with the higher frequencies for a natural sound with realism. They are looking for a speaker that can transport them to the venue or studio in which live recordings were produced. This audiophile is likely using their two-channel system in a multipurpose space, such as a family or living room, and doesn’t want to overpower the aesthetics with behemoth boxes (spousal acceptance hinges on using a reasonably-sized speaker that also looks good). 

Some Things You Might Not Like About the Alta Audio Alec Loudspeakers

• Being a boutique brand, it can be a challenge to find a local audiophile dealer at which to audition the Alta Audio Alec speakers. Alta Audio is currently carried by just 30 dealers across the United States, as per the company’s website. If you don’t happen to live near one their dealers, another option I suggest is to look at attending one of the regional audio shows where they are participating. These shows can be a great opportunity to audition several different brands in just a day or two. If there are no shows nearby, another option is to contact Alta Audio directly for suggestions.

Listening to the Alta Audio Alec Loudspeakers … 

For this review, I connected the Alta Audio Alec loudspeakers in place of my reference Aerial Acoustics 7T floorstanding loudspeakers. Music was streamed from a dedicated Apple Mac Mini server to a Classé Delta stereo preamp and amplifier. Silver discs were played from an Esoteric CD/SACD player. My listening room is long, but a bit on the narrow side. I started off with the speakers in the same slightly toed-in position that the Aerials occupy. The result was good, but not as good as I had hoped for in early listening. Through further experimentation, I ended up moving the Alta Audio Alec floorstanding speakers a foot closer together and moving my listening seat back about 18 inches. This setup now closely resembled the recommended setup in the owner’s manual. That was a drastic improvement to the positive. 

The first trait I noticed when starting to listen to the Alec speakers was their greater than typical sensitivity rating of 93 dB. Starting from the default volume setting on my stereo preamp, the Alec speakers played noticeably louder than the larger Aerial Acoustics 7T. While both have an impedance of four ohms, the Aerials are rated at 89 dB sensitivity. While the Alta Audio Alec loudspeakers certainly deserve ample quality amplification, with a decent amount of headroom, to perform at their best, based on my experience, I wouldn’t expect them to be very difficult to drive compared to other speakers.

I was really interested in evaluating whether the Alec floorstanders indeed met the stated design goals that Michael Levy had in mind. These goals included creating a cabinet that doesn’t produce resonances that cloud or distort the music and fine-tuning crossover values of the second order Linkwitz-Riley crossover and cabinet to a new standard, enabling the speaker to deliver unprecedented clear, fast and powerful bass in a compact cabinet size. To test out the Alec’s bass performance, I listened to several very familiar bass-heavy tracks that I’ve used multiple times to review speakers. Listening to Lorde’s track “Royals” from her debut album Pure Heroine, I was instantly blown away by the speaker’s ability to deliver real bass extension with more clarity than I’d heard before in my listening room from any other loudspeaker of similar size. I had not felt chest-thumping bass like that from this track without either a subwoofer or a much bigger loudspeaker in the mix. The same effect was evident on the several other tracks with prominent bass that I listened to as well. The Alta Audio Alec loudspeaker definitely hits above its weight class when comes to delivering chest-thumping bass with a clarity rarely heard in other floorstanding speakers in its size range. From my experience, I became convinced that here is really something special about the design of the Alec’s XTL bass transmission line, combined with its reflex bass port and the speaker’s lack of internal padding that led to the clear, deep bass results I was hearing consistently. Make no mistake, these speakers go low. Very low. The Alta Audio Alec floorstanding speaker is definitely the first midrange-size speaker that didn’t prompt the desire to add a subwoofer. I mean, unless you have a propensity for organ music or EDM (electronic dance music with synths that go far lower than, say, the 47 Hz of the bass guitar), the Alec provides all of the bass extension you’ll crave on its own.

Another design goal of the Alta Audio Alec loudspeaker I was interested in exploring is whether the Alec loudspeaker could truly reproduce music recorded live with enough energy and realism to bring the venue into my listening room. Others have made that claim before and, on occasion, a track will deliver. Consistently delivering that feeling of being in the recording space is much harder to make good on. I attend a lot of live performances, and am always looking for recordings that simulate that same concert venue experience. So, I listen at home to a lot of music recorded live, always searching or those tracks that will transport me to the actual performance. For this review, I listened to several tracks recorded live, including Brian Fallon’s (aka SYML) track “The Walker” from his Live At Hangar 30 EP. I was already very familiar with the Seattle singer/songwriter’s studio recording of this track. For this live EP, Fallon, along with six others, recorded the track in an old airplane hangar in Seattle’s Magnuson Park. The stripped-down live version of the track includes Fallon on piano, a string quartet, and a percussionist who also plays a Moog synthesizer. Listening to the track, I was immediately aware of the large, reflective space of concrete, glass and steel making up that hangar. The long decay of the opening piano solo, followed by Fallon’s vocal, provides a real sense of that large space. It was as though I was sitting about 10 feet in front of the ensemble in that hangar. When the backup singers join in, the resonance of their combined voices gives a real sense of a vast space of hard surfaces. When the percussionist strikes a woodblock during the track, you can clearly hear the sound echo in the space, confirming its large size. The cello has realistic depth and character. When the percussionist strikes the drum, there is great bass weight and clarity, too. Everything sounds as it would if you were attending the performance in the venue. And it didn’t matter if I was listening to Sara Bareilles, Sting, Jess Glynne or The Eagles’ live recordings, the venue was repeatedly reproduced in my room. I’ve not experienced another speaker that could reproduce the recording venue or studio space in my room so consistently.

 I listened to several familiar tracks I’ve used before to evaluate the Alta Audio Alec’s imaging ability. On Chris Stapleton’s track “Death Row” from his From a Room: Volume 1 album, the soundstage was revealed in front of me when played through the Alta Audio Alec speakers. The precise imaging of each instrument was firmly locked into its own location, with clearly defined space between each. Stapleton’s vocal and electric guitar were dead center, with the bass guitar to his left (my right) and the drum kit behind the two guitarists. The hypnotic bass guitar playing provides the foundation for this track, while Stapleton’s soulful, raspy vocal and stellar guitar playing, when heard through the Alec speakers, caused me to keep turning the volume up. With each instrument sounding so lifelike and locked into place, I played the track again. And I found precise imaging to be a trademark of the Alec speakers as I continued playing other tracks by Stapleton and many other artists as well.

Will the Alta Audio Alec Loudspeakers Hold Their Value?

While Alta Audio is a boutique brand, I suspect audiophiles who have heard the speakers before will have an appreciation and would be willing to pay a decent price on the used market for the level of performance the Alec delivers. It might take a little longer to sell than slightly more mainstream audiophile speaker brands, but audiophiles in the know will appreciate the build quality and performance. Well cared for, the Alta Audio Alec loudspeakers should command a very respectable percentage of their retail price should they come on the market. 

What is the Competition for the Alta Audio Alec Loudspeakers?

There are a lot of competing floorstander loudspeakers in the $10,000 price range of the Alta Audio Alec loudspeaker, but most are either 2.5-way or three-way designs. There just aren’t many that are two-way design floorstanders. Thinking of well-known and respected audiophile brands, the Sonus faber Maxima Amator is a two-way design in a slightly taller cabinet, standing 44.1-inches tall compared to the Alec’s 40.5-inch height. Its sensitivity is 88 dB, with the same impedance rating as the Alta Audio Alec. Instead of a ribbon tweeter, it sports a 1.1-inch soft dome tweeter, a seven-inch midbass driver, is a beautifully-finished speaker, and it is considerably higher in price than the Alec, retailing at $15,000. 

Another well-respected two-way design tower speaker is the Magico S1 MkII with an extruded aluminum cabinet, a one-inch diamond-coated beryllium tweeter and a seven-inch midbass driver. Like the Sonus faber, it is quite a bit more than the Alta Alec, retailing at $19,600. The fact that I’m mentioning these two loudspeaker competitors at all is a testament to the performance levels I experienced while listening to the Alta Audio Alec floorstanders over the last two months. While these alternatives might use more exotic materials or have an even better finishing standard, in my opinion, strictly from a performance perspective, the Alta Audio Alec speaker could go toe to toe with these models and not embarrass itself at all. In fact, based on my experience, you would have to be looking above twice the price of the Alec loudspeakers to find noticeable performance improvements. The Alta Audio Alec floorstander is that good. And that makes the Alta Audio Alec loudspeaker a terrific value, even at their not-inexpensive price.

Final Thoughts on the Alta Audio Alec Loudspeakers …

The Alta Audio Alec loudspeakers absolutely deliver on their lofty stated audiophile design goals. Namely, they deliver greater bass extension, and more power and clarity than any other similarly-sized tower speaker I have heard in my listening room or, really, in any venue. The Alta Audio Alec speakers also deliver such a believable soundstage with precise imaging. Maybe it’s a result of these traits, but you will be shocked at how well the speakers recreate the venue or studio where a live recording has been made. 

Can you find a better-sounding loudspeaker? Not really, at these prices. You can find “different” but not discernably “better,” until you start looking at spending close to twice the money, and that’s a whole other level of investment. For those serious about their music and in the market for a speaker of this size and price range, the Alta Audio Alec loudspeaker should be at the top of your must-audition list. They are a hidden gem worthy of seeking out. I would travel to hear them or pay a dealer to ship them to you for an in-home demo if you are a music enthusiast who loves deep, tight and awesome bass, paired with gorgeous, wide and detailed imaging and soundstage.