newzooreview -
I thought I would chime in with a few of my impressions, because I live in Centreville, VA (next to Fairfax) and spent a morning with Dennis in April listening in the same manner you did. At the time, he had the AVA amp, but he did not have the preamp, which was a pretty recent acquisition. He also did not have the HT1-TL, although I believe it was in work at the time. So he switch boxed an HT3, a normal HT2, a ST (dome), and my Rocket 760.
We started out upstairs with the ST, and as you know, its a decent size room with a couch and wood floors. He basically sat me down, went over to the amp and just cranked it on some busy orchestral piece. I was pretty floored right away, because for their size, I thought a vanilla ST had quite a bit of bass, sounded great at very loud volumes, and really had a great soundstage that I hadn't experienced with my Rockets. He hooked my Rocket up to the right channel and balanced the music back and forth, and it was fairly apparent that the midrange on my speaker was not up to snuff and I was sold on an upgrade right then and there, but to what I didn't know yet.
We proceeded to carry everything down to the basement and switchbox the snot out of stuff. Overall, considering the price differential, I thought the ST did very well to hold its own vs the other speakers (in the list I mentioned at the beginning of the write up). Overall, the ST probably felt less refined than the HT3 or HT2, but I felt at times the soundstage or depth was superior coming out of one speaker. But this was kind of dependent on program material, some times the HT2/HT3 was better, sometimes the ST, and quite a bit of the time, didn't seem to matter. They could all play quite loud very cleanly, and one at a time, sounded very accurate with regards to timbre and so forth.
The major conclusion that I came to was that the ST performed very well in terms tonal accuracy/timbre, played very cleanly, had nice bass extension, was small and fairly light, and they were easy to drive...meaning it was a speaker I could live with for the next 10 or 20 years and be really happy with. It didn't do anything wrong in my opinion, but switching it up with an HT3 was going to show areas it didn't do as well and let me decide if the shortcomings or the money was worth it. Spending more money and moving up the Salk lineup was going to mainly get me two things. The first was increased bass extension and oomph. While quite good the ST is no HT3 in this department. The second would be that last 5% in the tonal accuracy/timbre department. I play the drums, and while switchboxing all those speakers, I could tell a difference in the ST versus the ribbon HT2/HT3/HT4 in some of the cymbal work, snare drum rim shots and things like triangles or bells/chimes. The ST handled these quite well, certainly better than my Rockets, but hooked all together like that, I could tell the difference and to me the money to go up for my two channel was worth it considering the many years they would be in my home.
The HT1-TL was not an option for me, and if the only difference is a little less efficiency, your amp will overcome that. So I really think the HT1-TL is a very strong release, so much so that I would project that there won't be anymore ST-RT demand. The lineup will really stabilize out to ST dome, HT1-TL, HT2-TL, HT3, and HT4. As I said above, I really think the ST is a fun speaker that is very accurate, it has a sizzle to it. I just wanted to go with a Veracity line purchase, and have the magic of the ribbon and that Seas driver (well I ended up getting a bunch of stuff, but in any case you get my point).