Bruce e-mailed me his thoughts and ask me to post them for him here. See below:
Bruce, from Canada (eh) well I guess that will have to do, and a kind greeting to all of you.
There might be some interest in a few thoughts on the V's so here goes.
I ended up with these speakers because of the Usher Be 718's. I used to be a minimonitor kind of guy so at the time when all the reviewers where swooning and drooling about the Ushers I decided to buy a pair. The "short story" is I ended up with the stock version rather than the Music Matters version which has the reworked crossover by Danny. I eventually did own a pair of the USA version, but after much listening and tweaking of my system I came to the conclusion that the speaker was deadly boring.
Ruler flat frequency response, good drivers, good box, but just not happening for me.
Enter the V's which Danny assured me would smoke the Ushers. In order to provide some structure for my thoughts, and even though the Ushers are a minimonitor and the V's are an imposing floor stander there are some useful comparisons.
The obvious suspects; imaging. As you would suspect not much of a contest. The 718's with something like " Amused to Death" were capable of creating a seamless room filling experience with the dog barking over in the next township and old Bill Hubbard dripping sweat down the side of your neck.
The V's are good but they are constrained by the physical boundary of the speaker. Imaging and soundstaging happens primarily between and behind the speaker although front to back layering is very good on the V's. bass response; As you would suspect not much of a contest. The 718's are horrible, and as has been said before the servo controlled subs in the V's are superb. Tight articulate bass with good impact. Take just about any recording, rock or whatever and you can follow the bass line with ease. Its a real treat for me to be able to sort out what's happening in the lower octaves.
A short note on the tweeters. The Beryllium tweeter in the Usher's is really quite good. I like the tweeter in the paudio's too but I don't think it has the feathery touch of a good Be tweeter nor the creamy smoothness of something like a Scanspeak Revelator. Still pretty darn good though.
Not much of a rave( except for the bass) so far for the V's but here it comes.
There is a tactile, see through quality to the midrange on this speaker that is really special. I would characterize it as the ability to be able to listen farther back down the recording chain and get closer to what the recording engineer might have been hearing and also what the artist was trying to convey.
Unlike the Ushers this speaker is far from boring, it has a natural , almost live feel to it which makes long listening sessions a joy.
This speaker gets so much closer to the music than something like the Usher's that it isn't even close. I have heard my buddy's Dynaudio Temptations driven by massive Thresholds wired for 220v, and in all honesty I would not trade them for the V's. The 40k Temptations do not have that little bit of magic that the V's have.
Are the V's a perfect speaker, no they are just very, very good.
Cheers
Bruce
