Update 7/8/14:
Listened to three speakers this weekend. B&W 804, 805 and Salk SS10.
B&W 804, 805:
These speakers were auditioned at Modia in Houston. Driven by a mid-level Denon receiver using a DVD player as a disc reader directly into the receiver. The room that the speakers were in was awful. The room was 15' x 10' the speakers along the long wall and directly behind that listening position was glass wall. I have no idea who is designing these listening rooms at my local audio stores but it is frustrating.
B&W 805: Great stand mount speaker. The mid-range is smooth and detailed, one of the best I have heard. The highs had quite a bit of sparkle, due to the diamond tweeter. The highs were very detailed but rose above the mid-range a bit too much. The highs were a bit fatiguing. There are two reasons I can blame for the fatigue. One, the speakers were firing directly at my shoulders. If I played with positioning I could have removed some of that harshness. Two, the glass wall behind the speakers. No doubt, this caused a lot of issues with reflections. Bass was great for a stand mount. The speaker didn't try to extend itself beyond its capabilities. The mid-bass was near perfect and the bass rose and decayed with perfect timing. There wasn't the slam of a tower or sub but with a sub these are hard speakers to beat. Imaging and sound stage was great. The sound flowed directly from in between the speakers. These are gorgeous speakers. Call me a sucker for "Audio Jewelry" but the piano black was beautiful and that nautilus tweeter is just cool to look at. I didn't like the binding posts. They were a nice chrome finish but the screw itself was smooth and difficult to grip. If using spades or bare wire you would need some sort of rubber grip to get a good connection. All-in-all a great BM speaker for $5000. I would to have loved to hear these in a better room with better electronics. I have a soft spot for B&W since they were my first hi-fi speaker and I like their house sound. The diamond tweeter was a bit fatiguing but I'm going to have to try to hear it again in a different room. When I was driving home my ears were ringing a little.
Although I said this was a great BM speaker for $5K I believe that an ID brand could do better for the same money, this is a comparison I will be making soon.
B&W 804: Not much of a review but these speakers were nowhere as good as the 805. The bump in mid-bass was dramatic and the speaker overall was not coherent. After two songs I had enough. My GF even recognized the difference very quickly. The speaker had the mid-range and highs of the 805 but the poor bass handling ruined the speaker.
Salk SS10: Auditioned at Bob's Condo (fsimms). I have been debating on how I was going to write this review for the past couple of days. First off I would like to thank Bob for his hospitality. Inviting a stranger into your home to listen to your $20k system takes a lot of trust. But honesty above all else.
We fired up the system and my first thought was... What is going on? The sound is dull, smeared, distorted/noisy, and unbalanced.
Something isn't right, to me. So I turned down the music and started talking to Bob about his setup. I thought...ok... I know what I like, let me change some things.
1-First change was installing the back panel over the mid-range. This cleared up the smearing. Bob's speakers are less than 2' from his front wall. My thinking is that I am hearing the rear sound too close in time with the direct sound.
2-Second change was setting the tweeter attenuator from -3db to 0db. This gave life to music, the highs starting to become more prominent.
3-Third change was figuring out where that high frequency noise was coming from. I traced it to an amp in the other room hooked up to another set of speakers. Once that was cleared up I could pin point more high frequency noise coming from the speakers. We ended up determining it was from his PS3 that we were using to play CDs. We changed the input to a high resolution internet format.
4-Fourth, we had to get some tubes out of the mix. Bob has a tube stage at some point in his chain. We bypassed the tubes.
5-Lastly, The balance was off, the left speaker was louder and sounded a bit different. I noticed that the left speaker was firing directly at my left shoulder and the right speaker was firing 2’ to my right in the seated position. Since I wasn’t going to move this man’s speakers around we changed the balance level to favor the right speaker by I believe a .5-1db. This fixed the level but the speakers still sounded a tad different, since the left was firing directly at me. No big deal.
After all these changes I was told that I was the "Anti-Bob", haha. I turned to him and said "So you bought one of the most accurate speakers only to add things that distort the sound?" Bob chuckled and said "Yes".
My preferences were completely opposite. Bob grew up listening to records and tubes. I grew up in the Digital era. Records and tubes are not nostalgic and comforting to me. I recognize these sounds as noise and pollutants to the signal. To each their own. The reasoning I am bringing all of this up is not to be unappreciative of Bob’s hospitality but rather to stress the importance of auditioning speakers on your own. Do not listen to what people on the internet have to say... at all. One set of speakers can sound completely different to two sets of ears and even on two different setups in the same system! So now that the system was setup to my liking we can review:
First we listened to some Pink Floyd. I use Pink Floyd to gauge how well the speaker places and separates sounds. There are also a lot of complex electronic sounds mixed in with voices and actual instruments. The speaker did well. The layers were placed where they needed to be. The different guitars were distinguishable. Acoustic guitars were full bodied with very clean mid bass. Electric guitars were exciting and the highs had a touch of sparkle. Vocals were accurate but not clinical. Next we moved onto Coheed and Cambria. They are a progressive rock band who are fast, and complex. I was impressed by how well the speaker was able to create a nice soundstage and separate the instruments. Each instrument individually was exciting to listen to and the overall presentation was enjoyable.
After we were finished I was left wanting more. I could have spent hours trying different music. Learning new information about the tracks that I have been listening to for the past 20 years. This is what it is about…the music.
Nothing about the sound stands out. I guess this is how it should be. Any of the speakers that I auditioned that had something that stuck out ended up being an issue. Most of the time they try so hard to bring you in with striking highs that it ends up creating fatigue. With the RAAL you can sense that there is details beyond what you can interpret. I believe this creates that “air” that people mention. Call me a RAAL fan-boy.
We weren’t really able to test the bass. Bob lives in a condo and we auditioned the speakers mid-day on a Saturday. I would expect that it would be great for a full range speaker, but I can’t comment.
The finish on the speakers are nice, I believe it was Ziricote. I am impressed by the top head of the speaker, how complex it is. It is shocking that an ID manufacturer can create a speaker with this much cabinet detail. This is a big speaker, much bigger than measured dimensions would suggest. It definitely creates a presence in the room. And this leads me to the room. This speaker really needs room to breathe. I would imagine at least 4’ off of a wall. One of the main benefits is the open mid-range and if you are close to a wall I don’t think you get the intended “ambience” affect.
Overall, the speaker sounds a lot like my HT2-TLs. The highs are clean, airy, detailed and non-fatiguing. The mid-range is accurate, fast, and detailed. Although the SS10 gets the nod for accuracy. With the right electronics I’m predicting this speaker could be create the last degree of accuracy. I could tell that the speaker’s capabilities were not in-sight. It is this head-room that separates the HT2 from the SS10.
I’m sure it would do better in the bass category, but as I mentioned, I couldn’t test the limits.
If I didn’t have the upgrade bug I wouldn’t be rushing out to trade my pair of HT2s in for the SS10. Is the SS10 better? Definitely, but I believe you need the room and the electronics to make the difference worthwhile. This shows how good the HT2-TLs really are for the average audiophile with average gear and an average room.
But who are we kidding? Who wants to be average? I want that Accuton in my system!
