Hello all,
Well, my week is over. And the RC3R's have been a good companion for the time.
First of all, my system:
Souce: Sony DVP 7000es
Pre: Crown Straight Line 2
Power: Crown Power Line 4
Cables: Cardas Crosslink IC and Speaker
My current speakers are floorstanding 2-ways built by Keith Kidder. He named them the "Rhyos". The driver compliment is Vifa M-18 mid and SS 9000 series tweeter. The cabinets are massively constructed and braced with 2" roundover on the tweeter baffle and a variable woofer brace. They have a compartment for sand and a seperate compartment for the crossover at the base. Why do I mention this? Well, it's my reference and this will be aparent later.
My listening included many Black CD-R's direct copied from albums I own or borrowed. All were done using my computer with 1x recording on an external Yamaha cd burner.
Some recordings I spent time with.
1: Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition (telarc).
2: The Bad Plus, These are Vistas
3: Tom Petty, Wildflowers.
4: Volodos Plays the Rach 3
Well, as many of you know, bookshelf speakers with relatively narrow baffles (<1ft) image pretty well. I set the RC3R's 8 feet apart on 34" high stands and initially set them to pointing at my seat on the couch. This provided good sound, but a couple days later I faced them forward and then the soundstage widened considerably.
As has been said, these are cohesive sounding speakers. The real genius here is the integration of the dissimilar drivers. Surely this was challenging. Every recording that was put through these speakers was immediately enjoyable and not exagerated in any way. Sometimes the bass was strong but only when the music demanded it. This is one area where a well made floorstander improves things. The Rhyos were much stronger in this regard. Ask Rick to make you a RC3R in a floorstander, he will!
The most talked about thing about these speakers is the use of a ribbon tweeter. Rick seems to have used this driver conservatively, as it never drew attention to itself. But it might be that it is overly padded. Strings were never given the "air" I'm used to. The overall effect was a bit more reserved than I'm used to. Again, my reference speakers are different. I'm used to them and that colors my opinion.
The midrange dome is the neat little treat with this design. It's what made me want to try these speakers. If you look at the stats, one should be hearing the dome from 800~5000hz. In other words, the flesh of the music. Now I don't know where Rick chose to cap the upper and lower ends in his design, but the overall effect was natural, if not jumping out at me. Piano was accurate, but the "mid-hall" perspective is something I'm not used to.
The SS woofer is indeed robust. But I felt I didn't really get to hear this mid-woof's capabilities in this design. The hand thrown paper of the woofer cone is gorgeous to look at but was all that expense wasted? Again, the Ryos's Vifa M-18 seemed to handle bass even better at a raw driver cost of roughly one third of the Scan Speak 8545.
When listening to Night On Bald Mountain, the orchestra came together like I've rarely heard. Not the sort of cavernous depth or football field wide soundstage fabled in magazines. No, it was just a good, anchored presentation and the ability to sound consistent and at ease and with the dynamic swings of the music. I'm used to the bass being more powerful and I felt like the horns weren't as forward as I'd like, but an adept handling of some complicated music nonetheless.
The Bad Plus's last song, "Silence is the Question" is my favorite track. It is a passionate growing cacophony of sound. Piano, Bass Drums. The Rc3R's handles the dynamics with ease and I found myself enjoying the track as I usually do, even if it wasn't happening in my lap.
Tom Petty's "It's Good to be King" was the most odd sounding of any piece of music I played through them. All I can say is, it sonded like Tom was caught in a cardboard box, and the keyboards were way too far back to be real for me. But other songs on this album sounded fine.
I need to be clear. This is a well made speaker. The cabinet is first rate. The finish is shiny, deep and bulletproof. Is this speaker good? I wish I could tell you. This is a maddeningly subjective hobby. You don't know what sort of ears I have (or how much wax is in them), so how can you trust a review?
Who's this speaker for? I'd say a dyed in the wool music lover, NOT an audiophile. Why? One needs to not suffer from the "sickness" and simply enjoy the music coming from the RC3R'S. Maybe this is the sort of person Rick is, and maybe he'll be sad that my neophyte perspective fails to appreciate this. Because I really feel, at the end of the day, one needs perspective, not equipment to enjoy this hobby.
