Care Orchestra Celestial Deep Breath Evo Speakers Review

Care Orchestra Sartoria Acustica Italiana is a small Italian audio company founded in 2010. The main products of the company are speakers, although amplifiers and cables are listed on their website too, and they are marketed under the brand name Care Orchestra. The Celestial Deep Breath Evo is one of the speaker models recently created by the company, whose mission in speaker design is not only to achieve high-quality sonic performance but also to meet the aesthetic appearance desired by the customers. At an additional cost, customers can request other finish options than the standard matte finish, such as glossy finishes, leather inserts, fabrics, or precious woods, to meet their desired aesthetics. This is the niche that differentiates Care Orchestra from most other speaker companies.

If you’ve never heard about the Care Orchestra brand before, you are not alone, especially if you live in the US. The brand has its presence in the European market, but at the moment of this writing, it has not yet entered the US market and the company is in the process of securing a US distributor. For US readers, this review should serve as a sneak peek at what the brand has to offer to the hi-fi community.

This is also the first time for me to get introduced to the brand. For this review, Care Orchestra sent me their new hi-fi bookshelf speakers called the Celestial Deep Breath Evo. I can tell that Care Orchestra is the type of company that cares a great deal about the products they manufacture from the way they ship their products. Unlike the typical shipment using a standard carton box, the speakers arrived in a nicely padded medium-density fiberboard (MDF) box engraved with the name of the company and the speaker model. I have no doubt that these speakers are well protected inside this solid box during their shipment from the factory to my place. Inside the box, a pair of white gloves is provided to prevent sticky hands from making smudges on the speakers’ surfaces while handling them. I don’t know about you, but I tend to reciprocate how I treat a product based on how the manufacturer treats theirs. In this case, I handled these Care Orchestra speakers with extra care as well.

Care Orchestra produces speakers for various applications. On the Care Orchestra website, their products are categorized into their intended applications (e.g., Hi-Fi speakers, Home Cinema speakers, Portable speakers, Professional speakers, etc.). The Celestial Deep Breath Evo speakers reviewed here are the newest member of their Evo line, which is from the company’s Hi-Fi speakers category. There are currently 7 models in the Evo line, ranging from small bookshelves to rather large tower speakers, divided into Divina and Celestial series. The Deep Breath Evo is the largest bookshelf speaker in the Celestial series of the Evo line.

The Care Orchestra Celestial Deep Breath Evo speakers are sold as mirror-imaged pairs. Their driver configuration and the box geometry are designed to be mirror images of each other. They are box-shaped bookshelf speakers with a twist. One of the top and one of the front-side corners of the speakers are rounded symmetrically in a mirror-image fashion between the two speakers. The inclusion of these rounded corners is a nice design touch that accentuates the speaker’s appearance from just the boring plain boxes.

The first thing that caught my eye when I first unboxed the speakers was their exquisite fit and finish. The cabinets are well crafted and seem to be very well braced as they sounded quite damped to a simple knocking test. The review samples come in a smooth matte black finish, which looks handsome. This matte finish is what the company refers to as a standard finish. From the website, you can see other standard matte finish colors can be selected, such as white and cream. As I alluded to in the beginning, customers can also request non-standard finishes, such as glossy finish or precious wood finish, at additional cost. The provision of the various finish options exemplifies the company’s mission to generate high-quality speakers that also meet the customers’ aesthetic demands.

The Celestial Deep Breath Evo employs a two-way bass-reflexed design. Each speaker is equipped with a 1” dual-ring radiator textile dome tweeter and a 6.5” fiberglass-coated cone woofer. Both drivers are made by Scan-Speak. The tweeter is located off-center in a mirror-image fashion between the two speakers. This tweeter has an extended frequency response to above 40 kHz while maintaining a low resonance frequency of 450 Hz. It also features a patented waveguide.
The woofer has a die-cast aluminum chassis and uses a low-damping SBR rubber surround. The crossover network used is of the second-order type with a crossover frequency of 1900 Hz. The company emphasizes they use high-quality components all around, even internally, including the internal wiring using Van den Hul silver cables.

The Celestial Deep Breath Evo speaker has its vent on the back and thus care should be taken in the placement of the speaker with respect to the wall behind it for achieving a good bass response. A pair of binding posts are located under the vent on the rear baffle. These gold-plated five-way binding posts are of high quality and larger in diameter than what is typically found on most speakers.

The Celestial Deep Breath Evo speakers are designed to be used without grilles. Hence no grilles are included with the speakers. The review samples include the optional anti-dust covers made of transparent plexiglass (see pictures). These covers attached to the front baffles of the speakers magnetically. I am not convinced that these dust covers are effective in preventing dust from getting to the drivers as the gap between these covers and the speaker baffle can still allow dust to slip in. They are still useful, however, for preventing accidental poking or touching of drivers. Personally, I prefer to have the usual acoustically transparent grilles to cover the drivers, either for the look or for protecting them from dust.

Following the recommendation in the speakers’ manual, I placed the Celestial Deep Breath Evo speakers on 24”-tall metal stands to put the tweeters at my ear level and spaced them at a distance that is about equal to their individual distance to the listener position (8.5 ft). The manual also recommends pulling the speakers into the room such that their rear baffles are at a distance of 1.25 to 2.5 ft from the wall behind them. In my setup, I felt that the bass was a bit overpowering and sounded boomy if I followed this recommendation. Hence, I pulled the speakers further into the room until I got what I thought was the best bass response proportion. I ended up settling in with the rear baffles at about 3 ft from the wall behind the speakers.

As suggested in the manual, the left and right speakers were configured such that their tweeters were inward of the vertical symmetry plane of the speakers concerning my listening position. I also experimented with toe-in during my listening evaluation and concluded that the speakers did not need too much toe-in for achieving good imaging and sound staging. In the end, I settled at around 10 degrees of toe-in.

With a 4-ohm nominal impedance and 91.5 dB sensitivity, the Celestial Deep Breath Evo speakers are not at all difficult to drive. For this review, I used the excellent Michi X3 integrated amplifier to drive them. The Michi X3 can generate 350 W/channel into 4-ohm speakers, and this is proven to be more than sufficient for the Celestial Deep Breath Evo, even to drive the speakers to louder-than-I-care volume levels. The sources used for the evaluation were the PS Audio PerfectWave Transport and the AURALiC Aries G1 streamer.

When I first started my critical listening tests after giving the speakers a sufficient break-in time, the Celestial Deep Breath Evo speakers immediately impressed me with their prowess in vocal reproduction. Both male and female vocals sounded natural and full-bodied through the Celestial Deep Breath Evo speakers. Even the singers’ breathing as captured in the recording sounded real and palpable. The whole presentation of the speakers was intimate yet not forward. The speakers’ midrange strength was complemented by the speakers’ airy, detailed, and extended treble. These speakers could also generate quite a lot of bass, more than the typical bookshelf speakers could. They are rear-vented as I mentioned earlier so their placement concerning the wall behind them mattered. In my room and setup, the speakers needed to be pulled a good amount into the room to eliminate overpowering the bass registers. But once this aspect of placement was optimized, the speakers always presented music with a solid bass foundation.

In general, the Celestial Deep Breath Evo speakers seemed to be at home with various kinds of music. Be it vocal-heavy music, acoustical ensemble, or electronic music; the Celestial Deep Breath Evo speakers reproduced them all with flying colors. Sure, there were moments when I hoped certain aspects of their sonic presentation were better, but not many of those instances occurred during my evaluation. For example, these speakers might not have the last bit of transparency in their presentation, but this aspect was only noticeable through comparison with more transparent speakers. The overall musicality of the speakers more than made up for this little drawback. Even though the Celestial Deep Breath Evo speakers could generate a good bass response, on some music with deep bass content, I felt that the bass definition slightly lacked. Also sometimes, I missed the presence of the low bass extension that was outside the reach of the Celestial Deep Breath Evo speakers. This situation could be remedied by adding a good subwoofer to the mix. During the review, I got a chance to pair the Celestial Deep Breath Evo speakers with my Rythmik F12SE subwoofer, which improved the overall bass definition and the deep bass extension, opening further the soundstage presentation.

Celestial Deep Breath Evo speakers exemplify Care Orchestra’s mission of offering great-sounding high-quality speakers in customizable finish.

I truly enjoyed my acquaintance with the Care Orchestra Celestial Deep Breath Evo speakers. These speakers are built using high-quality components all around and look handsome in their understated, simple look. The standard fit and finish of the speakers are excellent, reflecting the company’s care for the aesthetic appearance of its products. On top of that, the finish of all Care Orchestra speakers can be further customized based on the customer’s request and preference. Despite this unequivocal finish options offering, apparently, Care Orchestra’s attention to the performance of the speakers never wavers. The Celestial Deep Breath Evo speakers reviewed here deliver solid overall sonic performance that impresses me a great deal. Their excellent craftsmanship and strong performance easily justify their asking price.