Meanwhile, I had become so attuned to the enormous speed, the meticulous transparency and  the loudspeaker vanishing entirely from the sonic image that I decided to part with the LumenWhite. The Goebel Aeon explicitly outperformed it in all the criteria aforementioned and sounded - yes, I know, I'm repeating myself - much more homogeneous and, despite all the detail resolution, neither a bit analytical nor somewhat chilly: In more than ten years also the developments in loudspeaker technology didn't stop at their gates. By the way, the DiamondLight surprisingly found a buyer in Japan after I had placed an advertisement in the German Audio-Markt. But let's switch back to Goebel High End's Aeon. It allowed me - and sometimes also a colleague - to perceive things during the test runs that you necessarily don't want to become aware of. For example, when testing the SOtM switch, it left no doubt that an analogue power supply connected to the clock of the switch would ever yield a sonic advantage. The fact that both the quality of the power cable used to connect to the power supply of the clock and also its polarity were audible, I first bashfully kept to myself. When testing the peripheral companions of the Ansuz Switch, I finally dared to publish my experiences. "The high resolution of a system certainly isn’t a blessing at all. Sometimes you get to hear more than you want to," is what Roland Dietl likes to say on these occasions. But if you're really out for knowing how components sound or react to external influences, there is nothing better than having an extremely high resolution at one's disposal - provided that the extremely transparent system doesn't sound too analytical or even technical. And that's indeed not what my system in synergy with the Epoque Aeon is supposed to do.

Oliver Goebel and I briefly undertook some experiments with the Basotect® absorber panels in the area behind the loudspeakers, but eventually even removed the two panels, each of the size of an LP. On the one hand, it would be quite unfair in upcoming loudspeaker reviews if my room was fine-tuned to match the Goebel speakers, and on the other hand - and that's much more important - even such small amounts of absorption material seize a quite valuable part of the Aeon Fine's spontaneous response and openness. And it's precisely the ability to reproduce transients almost as genuine as real instruments that fascinates me about the bending wave driver in conjunction with the fast, small woofers. I did already mention that the Aeon reaches an extremely high level in what previously used to be my most important discipline, a broad spatial imaging entirely detaching from the drivers. But there are a few other top-class speakers that are able to perform this way as well. Ultimately, it's the rendering of the transients that makes the Goebel Aeon unique to me.

As much as the Aeon enthralled me: I couldn't finally opt for them before I hadn't heard those speakers again, which had particularly won me over with their bass energy after having spent rather lean years with the LumenWhite in terms of upper bass. Under no circumstance this comment should be taken as a general criticism of the WhiteLight. The somewhat weak upper bass was mainly caused by my listening room: However, when trying out the Lumen in the listening room of a colleague before selling it, there was no lack of low-frequent energy at all. If it had similarly sounded in my room, I hadn't ever considered selling these maple sculptures. But let's get back to the speakers with the blissful bass: After encountering the equally fast and precise bass response of the Aeon, the previously prefered bass abundance now appeared to be too much of a good thing to me. The decision for the Epoque Aeon Fine was taken.