Okay, I have spent a little time now with this ugly prototype pair.
I also added a brace and some No Rez to the W frame lower section. That seemed to tighten up the bass response and made it a little cleaner still.
These things are still burning in but I have formed some initial thoughts.
The bass response is as good as anything I have ever heard. It maybe better than anything I have every heard. It plays really low, tight, and clean very much like an LS-9 but has an advantage in that it just doesn't load the room. It hits, it hits hard, and then it's over. There is no delayed decay of room pressure.
These will play really loud, and really clean to really high levels. Dynamics are scary good. They reproduced the drum solo demo better than anything I have ever heard. These speakers do real drums.
The speakers project a nice deep sound stage with solid placements. Nothing really appears to come from the speakers themselves unless something is recorded panned just to one side only. Vocals are solid to the center with good depth and very good body. I am a real stickler for female vocals and so far they pass with flying colors.
The sound of a piano is another something that I am a real sticker for. I think these handle the attack and initial strike of the piano as well as anything I have heard. They just seem to have a really quick response time, like the rise of the transient response is there in spades. The tonality of the first strike of the piano's notes are also as realistic as I have heard from any speaker (and I have a piano in my house). What I am still a little less than impressed with is the trailing edge of the piano notes. It betters what I hear from most dome tweeters, but doesn't seem to let go of the note quite as fast as the planar magnetic tweeters that I use in many of my other designs. The planar magnetics hit the note and then let go of it, returning back to the black background a little more quickly. This compression driver sounds like it holds on to it just a little bit longer. Some of this may go away with more break in time on it though so I feel it is still early for me to make a judgement on it yet.
Acoustic guitars sound great, and putting a little volume on them really gives you a sense for the body of the guitar and the vibrance of the body itself. This is often lost with most speakers.
Then there is what it does with amplified electric guitar....
It's like the performers guitar amp is sitting right in front of you. I played some Jeff Beck at really insane levels yesterday and it was easily the most realistic playback I have ever heard from that track. I think it is called "Space for the Papa", or something like that. These speakers have the real feel of the guitar down really well.
In one word I'd have to sum these speakers up as really "FUN" speakers.
