Hi All,
Great to see a Vandersteen board!
I'm a relatively long term fan of Vandersteen speakers. I bought my set of 2CE Sigs new in 2003, and haven't looked back ever since. I have been enjoying them thoroughly all of this time, from 2003 until a couple of weeks ago. In that time, I've added and or changed just about every piece of my system at least once. I've gone from single run 4VS speaker cables to bi-wired, and upgraded the cables to 8TC altogether later on, I added a turntable and phono amp, and upgraded those a few years later, I've added power conditioning, added one 2WQ subwoofer, changed from a solid state integrated amp to separates in a tubed preamp and amplifier, I added a second 2WQ, added a DAC, and finally added TT speed control - and in all of that time, I never had the urge to touch the 2CE Sigs. They have been just great. I especially enjoyed them for their sense of depth of soundstage. It's like instruments and vocals each get their own part of the stage. No matter how loud the other parts may be respectively, all of the sounds can be heard exactly where they belong, and unaffected by eachother.
The double 2WQ sub setup was something that I did most recently, and honestly I procrastinated because I always thought that I had more than enough bass from the single sub. That was true, actually, and the second sub really doesn't change the amount of bass you get from the subs. What is does is it changes the midrange of the main speakers, and makes the entire soundstage just blossom and become wider. It's a much more dramatic difference that I could have imagined, actually. It truly brought the 2CE Sig/2WQ combo to "mini 5A" status.
So not being able to leave well enough aone, I went to Audio Connection to see John Ruttan, and I auditoned the Treos. I had heard the Quatros for some time in past sessions, and also the 5's and the 7's. The Treo, to my ears, gets you into much of the greatness of the Model 7, for a fraction of the cost (a little more than 1/10th!). What is gained over my beloved 2CE Sigs is unmatched clarity in the highs and mid-range. I'm running them with my 2WQs still in the system, so there is a high pass filter still in the chain. This makes the already great Treo midrange even better, sparing the speakers from having to reproduce those lower bass notes, and allowing my amplifier to work a whole lot less by focusing on those highs and mids. The lows are, of course, taken care of by the 30W amps onboard each 2WQ. I have them contoured right now at about half way on the dial, with the sensitivity set at around 12:30-1:00. The Treos blend beautifully with the 2WQs, with my subs in each corner and the Treos along the same wall, but off the back wall by a fair margin.
So far, I've been very impressed with these new speakers. All of my "demo worthy" music, predictably, sounds great - better than the 2CEs in just about every respect. More surprising, though, is just how much of my "bad sounding" music from my 2CE Sig days now sounds great through the Treos. I was always disappointed in the limp sonics of Impex's Billy Joel 52nd Street reissue. I even tried to sell my copy. Glad I didn't, because the Treos brought it to life. More than just a tonality difference, these speakers just energized the pace, the drums, the vocals, the sax - everything. My 45 rpm copy of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours was always one of those albums that sounded very very good, but that I just never craved to listen to. Not anymore - I now knw why Fremer waxed poetic about this pressing.
The "nose" of the music, for lack of a better term, is shead of the speaker much more so than the 2CE Sigs were. Where the voices and lead instruments seemed to always be recessed slightly in the 2CEs, coming from the middle to rear of the speakers, the Treos project their soundstage outward more, to maybe a foot ahead of the speakers. The detail is just amazing. It's cliche, but I'm honestly hearing all kinds of new sounds and details in very familiar recordings. Other songs seem to change entirely in sound. Take "Blood Roses" by Tori Amos, for example. My 2's always reproduced the harpsichord throughout that song with appropriate detail and attack (even if a bit recessed). On the Treos, however, the sound is less baroque, and more of a characture if itself - clearly the intent all along of Tori Amos. You can hear the wit through that sense of musical clarity. I had a similar experience on the song "Almost Lucy" of Al Stewart's Time Passeges album. This song has been a crack it up, listen to the size of the sound and all of that percussion" type of tune. Friends listening to it on my 2Ces with 2WQ were blown away by the wall of sound in that track. On the Treos, however, that is all stripped bare. Turns out that the song isn;t an all-out, fiesta style percussive romp at all - it's much more delicate than that. The sound is still dynamic and rythmic, but it now hits you on a much more emotional level just through the music. It's amazing how important those details are. I had thought that the improvements would be all about the dynamics and clarity, but the smaller moments, the midrange moments are really where the Treo just takes no prisoners.
I don't have the means to do a straight comparison, but the Treos even without the added 2WQs impressed me more than the original Quatro cloth model. Not surprising, I suppose, since the Treo is derived from the much better Quatro Wood model. Mine do not have the CT option, but honestly, the "stock" tweeters are really nice and non-fatiquing. The sound of the Treos with the double 2WQs is dynamic and full, yet articulate and all out powerful when the music calls for it. I'm enjoying exploring my music collection all over again, album by album. They sound like "Mini 7's" to my ears!
