Visit to Arke Audio (Rocklard)

There isn't much that tempts me to get in the car and travel to listen to people's systems these days, but one piece of kit caught my eye a while ago now. A set of ETKA speakers, designed by Troels Gravessen and built by our very own Rocklard (Jason), stood out to me as a potential journey worth making.

After a few weeks of talking to Jason, his passion for speaker building and HiFi became clear. Numerous Whatsapp messages were exchanged, and an invite was extended to visit his home and put these ETKA to the test.

Troels has a superb reputation for speaker design, and not having the requisite skill to make these up myself, the chance to hear a pair and see if the “legend” is true, was too good an opportunity to turn down. As part of our message chain, Jason also expressed an interest in listening to the SP10, PMAT-1010MK8SE, the BT2, Avalon and 686….literally all of my system lol. So, I packed the lot into the car at 06:00 and set of to the Peak District.

Upon entering the listening room, the Etka stood proudly. Their finish is clearly the result of hours of passion and attention. They are quite the sight in the flesh. I had a look at Jason's system. A Rega R8 with Cadenza Black cart sat at the top of the rack, his BB3 below. Then the Musical Fidelity P-100 and a Musical Fidelity Dual Mono Power amp, the number of which I forget. Jason explained that pre and power has received copious amounts of upgrades from John Sampson(?) so are not to be taken as stock when referring to performance.



I could see a pair of Clearer Audio RCA cables, and a pair of Chord speaker cables.
(oh no! lol)

We listened to a couple of tracks via Jasons new “Arke” standmounts and swapped the speaker cables and preamp into the system. As the speakers are still undergoing final revisions, I don't feel it’s fair to talk about them in specifics, but I will say that the speakers demonstrated a large difference in SQ when the Chord cables were removed and some OCC ones i had taken with me took their place. This is a very positive result. The Preamp change from ML P-100 to BT2 was, IMO, also quite significant, but Jason Struggled a little to adjust from the presentation of the P100 to the BT2.





At this point we swapped to the ETKA. My feeling being that in order to give components (that are being compared) the best opportunity, the best speakers in the room should be used. Jason agreed and we swapped to the EKTA. Pretty quickly I started to feel like I was listening to a very good speaker. There were a couple of niggles. In listening to Eva Cassidy, the applause was a little congested. A little squashed and her vocals were in Jason's words “making me uncomfortable”



I didn’t disagree. We then listened to GoGo Penguin. The name of the track escapes me, but it is essentially a Jazz track with Piano, Drums and double bass. The track was sounding pretty good apart from some edginess in the HF. We listened to it and where the track got complex, there was a little congestion. At this point I asked if we could put the 686 in.

We did. We played the same track and IMO things started to improve. Less congestion, less mush in the busy sections, but still not quite where I had hoped the speakers would get us to. Sure, there was more resolution, transparency, refinement etc, but that bit of magic that gets the hairs standing on end was alluding us. The open window was still closed.

I think the next thing we swapped was the TT. The SP10 and new PMAT-1010 MK8SE went in and pretty much lit this system up. The SP10 and MK8SE arm blew the soundstage wide open and the transparency and resolution went up in orders of magnitude IMO.

But it was the last piece of the puzzle that really brought this system to a point where i was sitting up and taking notice. I had taken a pair of PC-Triple C cables with me. I asked where to fit them into the system and noticed a ribbon style cable. I asked if that was a Nordorst cable? It was….

Out it came and in went the PC-Triple C……OMFG!

Gone was that edginess that had niggled all the way through. Gone was the slightly lean (noticed by Jason early on) tonality. Totally removed. What we had now was a literal show stopping sound.

The Etkas, playing the same GoGo Penguin track again, now sounded SOOOOOOO refined. There was absolutely no strain, no enhanced edginess, no congestion or LF mush. It absolutely sounded the best it had so far.



The Etka then got put through a serious run of test tracks. “Hans Theessink and Terry Evans”:

The vocals….OMG the vocals! Hans Theessink growling out the lyrics was utterly spine tingling. Thee vocal chords vibrate and rhasped and this was delivered with unerring solidity. The guitar was pin sharp, distortion free and the tonality was possibly perfect. Am i mad? I could be getting carried away tbf, but it was amazingly pure. Crisp and clean, but natural. Not a hint of artifice of limitation on what you could hear.

The window was now wide open, laying in the garden and the wall had been removed.

I got goosebumps.

We played Sera Una Noche and the soundstaging, nuances and acoustic cues were delivered from a soundstage that no longer had any attachment to the speaker's physical form. I have said for a long time that the better the speakers are, the less the sound clings to them and the EKTA gave free flight to sound.

We played a few tracks that Jason knew well and comments like “i have never heard my speakers sound like this” were uttered to each other.

We then dropped Eva Cassidy back on. I think we listened to the whole of side three. The last track being a particularly poignant one, Tall Trees in Georgia.

Wow.....just wow. Jason mentioned that if you can feel the emotion of a song like that, you cannot be far off. He was right. The emotion and sincerity of the track flowed into the room and onward into the soul like as effortless as sunshine through a window. It was beautiful.

Jason then added his sub into the mix. I will admit, I am not a fan of subs and have never believed they can work or integrate seamlessly into a system. WRONG!



The SUB improved everything, absolutely everything we were already gushing about. Turn the sub off and the sound suddenly recessed into a flatter soundstage with a leaner presentation. It was mind boggling. I can now absolutely see the merit of what this could bring to a system.

In conclusion, I have to say that the system we ended up at, basically mine with Jasons BB3 and Speakers, is one of the most impressive sounds i have heard anywhere. The ETKA delivers solidity, precision, naturalism, accuracy, transparency, scale (for their size) power, heft (for their size) and best of all, a performance I could, and would listen to for hours on end with a smug look on my face. DIY has offered the best bang for buck in every other part of my system, so today should have come as no surprise.

Troels reputation is now on very good footing with me, and Jasons work is absolutely stunning. The Etka are coming here for a few days in the very near future. If they work here, they will not be leaving.

Anyone considering a pair of speakers would be very wise to see what Jason could offer from the Troels catalogue. It would be money well spent!

Pair of Q Acoustic 500s anyone?