Having only heard the Tintoretto at
@Rhapsody I cannot comment on what to expect moving from that to the Botticelli, maybe Bob can weigh in on that as he has had both in his room. I can however comment on the differences between the Botticelli, Botticelli X and Caravaggio. We used the Focal Maestro Utopia EVO prior to the Botticelli. That does not really compare as the Botticelli, being a full range planar system has an entirely different presentation, and it's just plays in a different class altogether. Why I am mentioning this is because there was one thing which the Focals did "better", which was pin point imaging. This is where the "X" comes in. The "X" brings external crossovers to the equation, it's not just the same crossovers placed in an external cabinet, but the crossover circuit is different (though both are still 1st order) and you get higher quality parts. This brings that pin point imaging quality to the table, increases detail levels, drops the noise floor and increases transparency and clarity to shocking levels without negatively impacting musical performance.
Needless to say these external crossovers are standard on the top of the line Caravaggio.
The biggest difference with moving from the Botticelli X to the Caravaggio is in the midrange/upper registers. Low bass performance is similar, it plays with a tad more authority, extension seems similar, it has a bit more kick and bite in the upper bass, all in line with what you'd expect from a ~15% larger ribbon. However the midrange is a different story. The Caravaggio adds dual 37mm wide ribbons moving it from a 3-way to a 4-way design. That is a very significant step up in performance, I can't help but thinking ribbon surface area matters, a lot, especially in the midrange. Of course the crossover points change from 750-5000 to 500-1500-5000 which may very well play a part in this, though I don't believe that is the mayor actor as I'll outline later what happens if you turn it into a 5 way. But anyway, the midrange impact just becomes visceral / physical with the Caravaggio, adding more realism, 3 dimensionality and, just believability to the performance. Images are spawned into existence with an incredible manifestation power and force I have not
heard experienced before. Very impressive.
On to the subwoofers. You have 2 ways to use these. You can turn it into a 5 way system by low passing the subwoofers and high passing the Caravaggio woofers at 70Hz, or you can run the Caravaggio full range and have the subwoofers augment low bass output till 70Hz. Cutting to the chase I did not get much from this. Turning it into a 5-way did appear to very slightly lower distortion but overall the performance did not improve notably over just the Caravaggio panels used stand alone. Using the subwoofers to augment low bass (running it in parallel with the Caravaggio woofers) only resulted in just too much low bass for my room. Although fun to play around with it for a while, it does produce some incredible room shaking output, it increases room noise too much with rattling walls furniture and gear. That just moves way to much air for my "humble" 66 m2 (710 ft2) space. The text on the Alsyvox website reads: "Also a separate dedicated subwoofer panel (one each channel) is available and it is recommended only in very big rooms from 80sqm", they're not kidding, I would recommend to not even consider these unless you do have that very large room. As we have a new 112m2 room under construction right now I will follow up on this later on. Right now I cannot even imagine what the Michelangelo with 4 of these beasts would be useful for, but if you have a huge open room and need insane bass output, there appears to be something out there for you. I will just add to this story I've owned a lot of active subwoofers in my life, the last ones being a pair of Rel Gibraltars, those did not move even close to the amount of air of just the Botticellis, let alone be even close to comparable in bass quality, detail or transparency.
