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The Cinnamon Audio Cassia Loudspeaker: Horn, Dipole, Magic!

The Prologue:

"The Cassias are designed exclusively to reveal the inner most detail of your favorite recordings. To bring forth the very essence of artist voices, rendering them tangible, believable, and imprinted in the space right before you."......from www.CinnamonAudio.com

The Introduction:

"Those are cute little speakers"....."They are like babies!" said my wife Amy, herself an accomplished pianist and vocalist who made her living as a professional musician here in our beloved Music City for many, many years. "And they sound REALLY good too!! Maybe some vinyl tonight?"

Poor Amy! Living with an audiophile isn't always easy, and when the dreaded audiophilia nervosa has taken firm hold, speakers just under five feet tall and a mere eighteen inches or so wide can indeed seem, well, "cute" or "little". Certainly, when compared to the behemoth Sound Lab U1 PX Ultimate, Leonardo 8's, or Magnepan MG 20.7's planar dipoles which had preceded them in my dedicated listening space, they were perhaps accurately described with Amy's diminutives. But spoiler alert: The Cinnamon Audio Cassia loudspeaker produces ANYTHING BUT "little sound". After nearly 50 years in the high-end audio hobby, I declare them among the very best transducers I've ever heard, full stop, managing to do all the audiophile "tricks" without ever sounding "processed" or straying from a faithfulness to the organic qualities of music that tell your brain "that's real". In fact, I would go so far as to say that properly set up and amplified, I've yet to find any real competition for them in this audiophile balancing act: Speed, detail, and clarity without etch. Soundscape reproduction without that strange (and highly artificial) mini-monitor "partitioning" of images (in contrast with a perceived organic wholeness). Bass that is at once whole, nuanced, filigreed and textured while capable of bombastic explosiveness when the music requires it. And the "air". Oh, the air! With the (possible) exception of the finest electrostatics from Quad and Sound Lab, nothing comes close. But the Cassia presents believable "air" while preserving a richness of timbre rarely seen even with the best stats. So, do I like them? Yes. Yes, I do!!

Ordering and Shipping:

The Cassia are hand made to order in Portugal, a country rich in musical and cultural tradition. The Cassia (and amazing Galle I and II DAC's) reflect the convergence of the artisan traditions there in their craftsmanship and emphasis on musical reproduction that underscores the EMOTIONAL aspects of the performance. To hear the Cassia is to know and understand this cultural underpinning.

From date of order to arrival in the states was just less than 90 days for my Cassia, which were finished in a gloss Ferrari red. With brass spikes and cups, and in my earth-toned listening space, the effect was stunning. Amy, also a sculptor and painter whose work has been selected for national juried shows, has declared them the most aesthetically pleasing speakers I've owned, saying they "fit right into" our midcentury modern home, curated by her artist's hand.

The Cassia arrived in two large flight cases, and here too, attention to detail. Packed meticulously to ensure safe Trans-Atlantic travel, the cases themselves feature beautiful wooden inlays with the Cinnamon logo and "Cassia" hand burned.

Installation and Set Up:

If you are an audiophile of a certain age, you will recall "Pearson's Laws". One of my favorites was, "If you plug it in and it works, it must not be high end!" If we applied this logic, The Cassia would NOT be high end because straight out of the crates and literally plopped down where my Sound Labs had once rested, I was rewarded by a musical presentation that was nothing short of captivating.

But wait! We all know the admonitions about dipoles, right? Historically, these speakers are exquisitely sensitive to placement, toe-in, distance from the rear and side walls, etc. NOT the Cassia. Don't get me wrong, they certainly did sound better with a little "tweaking" of position, angle to listening seat, and of course rake parameters. But when compared to other dipoles, they seemed almost immune. I so recall the days with Magnepans when the SLIGHTEST nudge could undo months of tweaking. Fear not with the Cassia. I am not an engineer and therefore won't attempt to pretend I am one by offering a technical explanation, but I suspect this has to do with the dispersion pattern of the midrange AMT Horn driver in particular. If the good folks Cinnamon Audio read this review, perhaps they will say more.

 
Initial Impressions and Listening Experience:

With The Cinnamon Cassia installed, an enormous soundscape appeared in my room, with both width and depth extending well outside the physical boundaries of my 24x22x9.5 space. My jaded audiophile friend commented, "It sounds like those tympani are under the basketball hoop out back" (behind the rear wall of my room, a good 30+ feet from the listening seat!)

But the soundstage, amazing as it was, took a backseat to the stunning truth of timbre I was experiencing. Streaming hi-resolution tracks from Qobuz using a MacMini via a Tchernov Reference USB into the equally impressive Cinnamon Galle II DAC, I was greeted with a pervasive sense of real instruments in real space with real dynamics. Real. Real. And real!!

The Cassia reproduce a sense of real instruments true to their timbre and tone, for sure. But also true to their spatial qualities. Large instruments sounded, well, large. Smaller instruments occupied less space, but in no way lacked "body". This preserved the illusion of truth in sound staging and imaging. And finally, real dynamics. In my large room and driven by a 21 WPC New Audio Frontiers Supreme 300B SE integrated amp (with the equally amazing New Audio Frontiers Stradivari preamp) the Cassia were so dynamically unrestrained that it was hard to believe my own ears, knowing as I did of the relatively modest power available to them (though at 97db efficiency, and a very amplifier friendly 10 ohm impedance, I should NOT have been surprised, especially given their dedicated HYPEX Class D amplifier modules handle the two 15" bass drivers and all frequencies below 150 hz) Whether the Vienna Philharmonic or techno, the Cassia were ready to (forgive me!) pump up the jam!

But all audiophile nonsense aside, high end audio is about listening to music, and for me, music that elevates. And it is in this critical realm of authenticity that the Cassia shone most and shone brightest! Pianos sung out in layered, nuanced, three-dimensional space with ever-so-natural attack, decay, and ringing overtones. Recall I hear live piano on a regular basis played several feet away from me by my talented bride. I KNOW what a piano sounds like, and this was it. Sopranos soared. Low level details, like back wall reflections or fingers gliding along strings on fret boards, were immediately evident. Inhalations. Exhalations. The SKIN of drums. In my listening notes, the following words and phrases repeated themselves: Organic. Natural. Of ease. Soaring, Coherent. Just RIGHT. Plain RIGHT.

The authenticity of the Cassia drew me into the music deeply and consistently. It was ultimately their ability to allow me to suspend disbelief, to experience the musicians as if they were living and breathing in the space of my home that distinguished what the Cassia accomplished sonically (and accomplished in a fashion that I, after 49 years in the hobby, have never before experienced).

I consider myself jaded, because I am. But the first night with the Cinnamon Cassia loudspeakers was a VERY late (early?) one. Track after track, I knew a long work day beckoned but simply couldn't stop. "Just one more" I would tell myself. And then one more after that.... It was a kind of excitement I no longer thought was possible for me to experience with audio. Yet, I was experiencing and embracing music new and old with fresh enthusiasm and a sense of wonder I thought was likely long past.

My enthusiasm sprang in part from the way the Cassia managed to unravel complex passages while still maintaining a sense of the organic whole. I wasn't listening to 120+ musicians on a "mini-stage" compressed into my (by comparison) small room. I was listening to the Vienna Philharmonic. This summer my wife and I visited Salzburg, Austria for the international music festival there and actually sat in that lovely hall and listened to this amazing orchestra, which somehow magically manages to speak as one voice. The Cassia are true to this experience. I call it "the there that is there". The sense of the air of the hall, the low-level ambient sounds that define the real thing vs. the reproduced. The Cassia do this as well, if not better, than any, drawing the listener into an engaging, satisfying, and most of all coherent musical experience. With the SW1X MPA III "Oracle" 45 mono amps this quality was on uniquely impressive display. When I played the Adagio from the Mozart Piano Sonata No.4 in E Flat Major with Jerome Hantai my good friend, and Audio Mentor Bob, now with more than 60 years in the hobby, immediately turned to me and said, "This is the most natural sound I have ever heard in a home."

In my "real life" as a psychiatrist I am keenly attuned to the first words the patient speaks upon arriving for consultation. I have learned it is often the case these first few moments are both rich in content and deeply steeped with meaning. So, when a relatively new to the scene audio company offers these words first in the context of their description of an ambitious new product, they certainly have my full attention:

"The Cassias are designed exclusively to reveal the inner most detail of your favorite recordings. To bring forth the very essence of artist voices, rendering them tangible, believable, and imprinted in the space right before you."......from www.CinnamonAudio.com

But even more, when that product proves to very much fulfill the kind of lofty promises made therein, I feel the need to share it with other music lovers who, perhaps not unlike myself, may have spent decades searching for the elusive "Absolute Sound". And thus the impetus for this review.

In Closing:

The Cinnamon Audio Cassia is a relatively diminutive musical giant. Hand made in Portugal, the company motto "Made to Matter" could not ring more true to my experience. Because the Cinnamon Audio Cassia "matter" in what matters most: their faithful, authentic, and completely engaging reproduction of music that elevates. I've come to think of mine as musical time machines, so startling real and engaging is the presentation. At $50,000 base price per pair they are certainly not "cheap", BUT the price to performance ratio is singular. In my room now are a pair of Leonardo 8 loudspeakers, Danielle Cohen's predecessor to the Alsyvox Botticelli, currently listing at well over $120K USD, depending on configuration. The Cassia are very much at home in such rarified air. What's more, they are easy to install, beautiful to behold, infinitely customizable in appearance, and thoughtfully executed to allow for excellent bass reproduction in a variety of rooms. They are also, to quote Amy, "cute" and small enough to fit in most real-world rooms without renegotiating the marital contract. If you value emotional engagement with the music and a beguiling presentation, true to the real world of actual music, you owe it to yourself to hear the Cassia.

Technical Specifications:

~97 dB/W/m
10 Ohm
25 Hz to 30 kHz +- 3dB
 
  • Pure dipole, hybrid topology
  • Passive analog mids and highs. Superlative crossover components
  • Reamplified active lows. 250W, DSP enabled, frequency and time corrected

75 kgs/unit, Height: 145, Width: 41, Depth: 60 cm​


Associated Equipment:

Schue Das Laufwerk II TT
True Glider Arm
Hana Umami Red Cart
VIVA Little Fono phono preamp
MacMini running ROON Core
Cinnamon Galle II DAC
NAF Stradivari preamp
NAF 211 SE Stradivari and Supreme 300B SE amps
VTL MB 450 mono amps
VTL Deluxe 140 monos (fully professionally refurbished and fitted with "Brown Base" 805's)
Classe CA M600 monos
PS Audio Stellar 1200 monos
Coincident Technology 845 Turbo SE
BACCH4Mac (and later, BACCH SP)
Tchernov Ultimate USB/IC/Speaker cables
Wolf Von Langa Berlin loudspeakers
Leonardo 8 loudspeakers
Sound Lab Ultimate 1 PX loudspeakers with all current upgrades/mods
Sonus Faber Guanieri Homage loudspeakers
bouncehit
deep_333
2,434 posts
 

- Drivers bought from someone else.

- No cabinet to design...open baffle (easy peasy)

- Cinnamon put a gloss finish on baffle,

Now he wants 50k, apparently...

I'd say 8k or 10k is more than enough for Cinnabon working out of his garage with no overhead (built to order).

it doesn't look like he deserved anywhere close to 50k.

 

bouncehit OP
86 posts
 

@deep_333 

Have you had a chance to hear The Cassia?

Best,

BH

jrareform's avatar
jrareform
187 posts
 

Lol the gawkers and jaw droppers speak loudly.  As if 50k was the most a speaker could cost.  Go check out top of the line Wilson's and Magicos and these will sound cheap.

50k is a lot but considering people spend $250k on a supercar and drive it once a month... if it gives the buyer the ultimate listening pleasure then so be it.  The reaction to expensive gear is hilarious to me.  You can't afford it so it must be terrible!  Lol

I second the OP - have you heard the speakers in question?  If not I'd hold judgment until you do.  OP where you at?  I'd be down to jam on those things 😂 

grannyring's avatar
grannyring
6,696 posts
 

Some unfortunate  comments here, but somewhat understandable if no first hand experience with Cinnamon Audio and a lower desire/passion  for the best audio has to offer.  Yes, Cinnamon Audio speakers are fantastic as are all of their electronics.  @bouncehit you have some wonderful pieces in your system. As a Galle dac and streamer owner I also appreciate what Cinnamon Audio has accomplished and smile every time I listen to my system.  Hope to meet you someday as a fellow Nashville area audio enthusiast.  
 

 

hjdca's avatar
hjdca
247 posts
 

@bouncehit 

Interesting speakers.  It is nice to see new designs and technology entering our audiophile hobby.  If I understand correctly, the mids and highs are managed by an analog passive crossover, and the lows are digitally processed and amplified with an active crossover/amplifier.  It seems this would solve the issue of matched bass with the open baffles.  It would nice to hear more comparisons with typical tower ported speakers in the same price range and the synergy between the analog and digital part of the speaker.  Thanks for the info ! 

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