These speakers are
heavy. A
lot heavier than the RM-40's which I recently packed up. Hoisting them from laying on the floor to upright felt about like doing a 335 lb squat which is as much as I do in the gym for fear of injury.
Cabinets are obviously built to a totally different level of quality than the RM-40. They are incredibly solid and dead. The Wilson Grand SLAMMEs (which a friend owns) have nothing on these.
Listening was a bit delayed by a problem with my brand new JRDG 302/4. Turns out one of the four output channels is not functioning. Right now I have the right speaker biamped and the left speaker biwired. I'll switch both to biwiring later. Not happy about having a very expensive and brand new amp malfunction, but when I called JRDG I was transferred to Jeff Rowland himself. He was incredibly nice and suggested that I bring the amp up to to him at CES so he can fix it himself ! He's bringing his tools and spare parts. He thinks one of the four ICEpower modules or its power regular is bad. The parts inside the amp are modular so I probably could fix it myself, but since he offered I'll let him do the dirty work.
First listen of the RM-40's "out of the box" -- dramatically better than the RM-40's. There is no mistaking the true line array of midrange panels. The bass sounds better integrated and much more powerful. I definitely will not be needing subwoofers. My wife said they were "cleaner" and I would have to agree. Even without any tuning I was hearing the best reproduced sound I've ever heard.
The RM/x does have some unfair advantages over the 40's, specifically a decent amount of room treatment added after the old speakers shipped out and a much better amp to drive them. Also the preamp and one set of interconnects has been removed from the signal chain (I'm driving the amp directly from the dCs Elgar Plus with its digital volume contro). But I am confident the RM/X themselves are in a different class than the RM-40, which they should be given the difference in cost and lead time. I think Julian's prior comments about the differences between the RM-40 and RM-X were right on.
I've removed a tiny pea-size dab of putty from each passive and probably will hold off doing any more fine tuning for several weeks while they continue their break in.
There is still a lot of work to do in the media room, including a 4' x 6' piece of foam going in between the speakers on the front wall, some will be cut away to accomodate a 60" plasma TV. Also drapery fabric will be hung on the walls, concealing the fiberglass panels and hiding speaker wires for the surrounds in the future.
New cables are also on the way -- two pairs of speaker cable and one balanced interconnect (Pursang from Argent/Roomlens). May try some other cables too, including Ridge Street Poiema and VeraStarr Silver Reference.
All for now. Enjoy the pictures!
The outer sarcophagus. A very, very big box.
Hmmm... anyone need a coffin for cheap?
The mummy being removed from the inner sarcophagus. That's Brutus helping me out.
The ribbon array #1
The ribbon array #2
Eye of the cyclops
12" Megawoofers kicks serious ass!
Looks fine without the flash. Will try to clean up with some distilled water and a microfiber cloth. The hex nut, which may not be present on the other pairs of RM/x, locks the head in position.
Top pair of posts bypasses the passive filter on the woofers to allow use of an electronic crossover
