And a couple more questions: can Alsyvox rock with the best of the speakers that excel at rock? How close do they get to the state of the art "rock speakers"?
Do all models in the product line up sound identical, just scaled for different-sized rooms? Or do the larger, more expensive models provide more realism?
I have been in the luxury position to compare the standard Botticelli, the Botticelli X (external crossovers), the Caravaggio Single and the Caravaggio full in my room.
The difference between the Botticelli and the Botticelli X was competently described by Bob, nothing to add there. Moving up the range the most apparent is a reduction in distortion, an increase in dynamic reach and soundstage expansion. Interestingly even the standard Botticelli sounds lower in distortion, significantly more transparent, images larger and is more dynamic and room encompassing then the Focal Utopias I have on hand here. It is also considerably more powerful in the sub bass, say below 60Hz and low frequency organ sounds really shakes the room, it very obviously moves more air then the dual 11" woofers of the Focal. Perception of loudness is different, with the dB meter showing 95dB it's playing very loud, to have a similar perception of loudness from the Focals the dB meter is showing about 100dB. Do note that this is REALLY loud in my perception, measured at the listening position, calibrated meter, C-weighted. I do not normally play at those levels. This may be part of why they sound less distorted and cleaner as they just sound much louder at lower SPLs but I'm just guessing there.
The Caravaggio Single is a significant step up imho, it does not come with a more (apparent) powerful low bass, but it is better defined. What it does add to a significant degree is upper bass/lower midrange impact. The whole midrange is a significant step up in performance in all aspects, 3 dimensionality, detail, colour saturation, transparency, quite a difference. I'd say for Bass and top end it is about 20% better, not really warranting the 40% up price, but the midrange is more then worth every penny. I was not expecting that as listening to the Botticellis my line of thought was it was so good in the midrange because of the wide range of the mid ribbon (750-5000Hz) and was somewhat expecting the Caravaggio to lose some points there with an additional crossover point at 1500Hz. But in reality it is undetectable/seamless and the added dual 37mm low-mid ribbons make a seemingly HUGE difference.
Moving to the Caravaggio Full, it is again more of a qualitative improvement, it does again not sound much more powerful in the low bass, BUT, my room size is likely holding their potential in that area back, 5.65 meters wide and 11.8 meters long does not allow the freedom of placement you'd like with 4 panels. It does again sound bigger and still even less restrained, and again lower distortion. This is with configuring them as a 5 way, subwoofer panel to 70Hz, Caravaggio single bass panel from 70-500Hz. Running the Caravaggio Single bass panel full range, so not high passed at 70Hz, completely overpowers my room, using them that way definitely requires a larger room. It's fun for a few minutes of techno tracks, probably awesome for movies, but not for me, at least not in my current space. I will revisit that option when we move to a larger space though in the next few months and will report back.
An interesting discovery was how large of a difference grounding the external crossovers make, it's kind of huge. Daniele supplies shorting plugs which connects the aluminium crossover boxes to the amplifier ground (speaker cable -), the effect of that is borderline shocking. Need to explore that further.