I’ll start by saying that this is the most I’ve ever spent on a pair of speakers. Yeah, I know. But hey, I’ve got other hobbies and a kid in college and a daughter getting married next year, so.
That said, I love these speakers on 90% of the music I play on it. They are extremely resolving, they have great imaging (more on that later) and they do have bass. Not MICKEY by Lil Yachty bass but it’s definitely there, a genuine and good enough mid 30’s deepness. But I will be the first to admit that I’d probably enjoy them more with a sub. Leaving thing as they are for the time being. When I say they’re resolving, they are more than just resolving, they can be downright harsh if you don’t think about where you put them and what you put around them. I did wind up spending quite a bit of time getting the distances right since they’re almost trapezoidally placed in a wide open room. A fair bit plants and moving rugs around in the house and getting my IKEA masterpice of corner sound absorption artwork and they sound good. They sound very good. They sound insanely good when listening to things that are instrumental. Horns, brass, drums, latin percussion, damn there’s a track I listen to a lot by Generoso Jimenez, an old time Cuban trombone player. The track is called Las Trompetas Se Divierten. There are section of the track that have a horn playing in my house, six feet away and if I reach out, I’d touch them. That’s the good part. The bad part is that they can and will sound shouty if you don’t take great care to adjust them just right.
They seems to be very sensitive to that, and the one way I was able to bring it under control for the majority of the music I listen to was to give them very little toe in. The lens warps things a bit but they’re probably 4 degrees toed in, so relatively flat. This also has the effect of widening the sound stage and given the trapezoidal placement withing the room, the imaging is very good.
One of the other things they excell at is dispersion, because so much of the sound comes from the 10" driver (35 to 12k) I can be cooking in the kitchen and still get pretty decent sound out of them, you can move about the room and even listen to them quite a bit off axis and they still sound good. So I can imagine they’re good social entertainment or party speakers. You get music from the just about everywhere.
I have an amp that can power the hell out the speakers, 500 watts into 8 ohm, these are 12 omh so whatever the math works out to be, still more power than the speakers could handle (rated at 200 watts) so the amp never really is anywhere it has to sweat, and to top it off they’re very efficient so they’re loud. But here’s the flip side of that, I find myself wanting to turn them up, because they do not come alive until they’re being driven hard. At low volumes they simply sound like it’s a shame to even have them on. But man can they go loud, with no distortion and the more you drive them the more you want to turn it up and again, no distortion. So I’m very satisfied when I get to set things lose.
Finally, they’re bright, or can be bright, but thankfully knowing that and having the luxury to wait and match the remaining components I was able to very easily tame the brightness of them. A very rich and sweet and musical Bel Canto DAC 2 feeling into a Schiit Freya + with a set of Electro Harmonix tubes which take the sweetness and does a little more magic to it, and adds a little more space to it and by the time it’s all said and done, I’m not thinking of anything but how much I’m enjoying what I’m listening to.
So I kept the speakers, I am enjoying the speakers but I can also see how someone might send these speakers back because I did a lot to make them sound the way I wanted them to. Probably more effort than some might want to go through, but I had the time and the spare dollars and the ability to trial and error a few things over the past few months. BTW, the build quality is phenomenal and I did spring for the clarity cap upgrade for them.
Forgive any rambling and any grammatical errors, I wrote this with a drink in hand, of course, while listening to music.
Peace, love and harmony fellas.
