Usher comes of age

marvda1 · « **on:** 26 Feb 2012, 08:04 am »

could not find a good place to post this.

has anyone heard the usher mini dancer 1 or 2? you can get these with a diamond or berylium tweeter. i went to take my usher power amp in to the distributor to ship off for repair and he had a pair of the mini dancer 2 ($5000 pair). these are a major step up from my usher 6381 ($3400). not as powerfull sounding in the bass but the bass is tighter, midrange much cleaner and fast. a good deal more detail and the looks of the speaker (think sonus faber) are drop dead gorgous. got me thinking about how to come up with the cash. now i want to hear what the diamond tweeter sounds like. here's a review i found.
http://www.avguide.com/review/playback-23-usher-audio-mini-dancer-two-floorstanding-loudspeaker
let me know what you think if you have heard them

lonewolfny42 · « **Reply #1 on:** 26 Feb 2012, 12:07 pm »

Marvin....

Check with Captain Humble/Jeff or Bigfish/Ken....they both own Mini Dancers.

Captain Humble's Mini Dancer 2....

Captain Humble · « **Reply #2 on:** 27 Feb 2012, 05:22 am »

Hey Marvin,
Chris shot me a message directing me to this thread.
I replaced my 6391's with the Usher Mini Dancer 2's in the picture.
I'm still at the same address and you're welcome to give them a listen.
No rush because I'll be keeping them for a very long time.

Jeff

Captain Humble · « **Reply #3 on:** 3 Mar 2012, 04:00 pm »

Marvin, I guess I should have mentioned I'm experienced with both the Titanium and the Diamond tweeters. I had a demo pair in birch with Titanium tweeters for months. Then my walnut cabinets arrived with the Diamond tweeters.

The Diamond tweeters make a good thing better. More detailed and smoother. Not analytical and never a nasty on high piano notes. I've owned the 6381's and the 6391's. The Usher Diamond Mini II's do everything significantly better. You won't have to concentrate to hear the difference. The bass is faster / tighter and they are also better balanced overall. Simply put it's a more refined speaker and a great buy at $5K.

marvda1 · « **Reply #4 on:** 3 Mar 2012, 05:07 pm »

i agree with you 100%, with just the little time i had to listen to them. the ones i heard were diamond cabinets which i understand are better braced than the cabinets that came with the Be tweeter but stan had replaced the diamond tweeter with the Be tweeter.
stan thinks the difference heard between the Be and dmd tweeter on the mini 1 and 2 is not worth the $700 price if you already own the Be tweeter but there is a big difference in the sound of the two when you get to the larger dance speakers.
i am weighing my options now. a group of guys coming to the lone star audio fest plan on going over to listen on that friday. i'll get with you on a visit long before that.
looks like there might be a small problem with speaker cables that are internally bi-wired as those terminals are pretty far apart.

charmerci · « **Reply #5 on:** 3 Mar 2012, 06:15 pm »

Mini-Dancers? They should change the name though - I keep expecting them to be very small desktop speakers.

marvda1 · « **Reply #6 on:** 3 Mar 2012, 07:36 pm »

jeff, have you seen the red finish? i thought it was real wood veneer untill stan pointed it out. i also saw the white finish, did not like as it lookes like plastic to me.

lonewolfny42 · « **Reply #7 on:** 3 Mar 2012, 07:37 pm »

Quote from: charmerci on 3 Mar 2012, 06:15 pm

Mini-Dancers? They should change the name though - I keep expecting them to be very small desktop speakers.

No....those would be the Usher Tiny Dancer speakers...

Not really tiny....

marvda1 · « **Reply #8 on:** 3 Mar 2012, 08:10 pm »

any one collect pocket knives? the ushers are calling my name.

http://www.allaboutpocketknives.com/knife_forum/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=14933

Captain Humble · « **Reply #9 on:** 4 Mar 2012, 01:52 pm »

Quote

i agree with you 100%, with just the little time i had to listen to them. the ones i heard were diamond cabinets which i understand are better braced than the cabinets that came with the Be tweeter but stan had replaced the diamond tweeter with the Be tweeter.

Again I've heard both. My walnut II's have the beefed up bracing and a very heavy metal base. The birch did not have the extra bracing and had a wooden base.

Quote

jeff, have you seen the red finish? i thought it was real wood veneer untill stan pointed it out. i also saw the white finish, did not like as it lookes like plastic to me.

I have seen the red S-520's, but red or even white Mini II's is news to me. Stan's website shows Pioneer Birch, Walnut and Maple (special order).
http://www.usheraudiousa.com/products/loudspeakers/dancer-series/dancer_mini_two

Quote

looks like there might be a small problem with speaker cables that are internally bi-wired as those terminals are pretty far apart.

From the center of the top post to the bottom of the bottom post is about 5 1/8 inches.

Quote

i am weighing my options now. a group of guys coming to the lone star audio fest plan on going over to listen on that friday. i'll get with you on a visit long before that.

I look forward to your visit.

ohlins · « **Reply #10 on:** 4 Mar 2012, 01:57 pm »

I love mine...

Captain Humble · « **Reply #11 on:** 5 Mar 2012, 05:28 pm »

CORRECTION!

Quote

From the center of the top post to the bottom of the bottom post is about 5 1/8 inches.

It should read: From the Center of top post to the CENTER of the bottom post is about 5 1/8 inches.

Sorry

Letitroll98 · « **Reply #12 on:** 5 Mar 2012, 08:49 pm »

Would it make a difference? It seems from the pics as if both neg. legs are on the bottom and both pos. legs are on the top, so the same distance has to be spanned be they bi wire cables or not. Am I missing something and/or being too anal?

marvda1 · « **Reply #13 on:** 5 Mar 2012, 11:30 pm »

the reason i asked was because the internal bi-wire cables (4 connectors bananas) may not have the length to spread out vertically.

Letitroll98 · « **Reply #14 on:** 6 Mar 2012, 04:02 am »

Quote from: marvda1 on 5 Mar 2012, 11:30 pm

the reason i asked was because the internal bi-wire cables (4 connectors bananas) may not have the length to spread out vertically.

Please forgive me, I realize this is totally inconsequential, but if you look it doesn't matter. Unlike most bi-wireable speaker terminal set ups that have positive and negative legs for the tweeter on top and the same for the bass on the bottom, these have both positive legs on the top and both negative legs on the bottom, so it doesn't matter if your speaker cables are bi-wired or not, they both need equally long leads. You can see this in the pic, his single leads are stretched about as far as they can go. Why was a speaker designed this way? I apologize for being a jerk about this.

marvda1 · « **Reply #15 on:** 6 Mar 2012, 04:57 am »

they had to go vertical because of the narrowness of the rear of the speaker.
guess he could connected the bottom positive to the top negative, don't know how it would affect the sound.

Ericus Rex · « **Reply #16 on:** 6 Mar 2012, 05:41 pm »

Quote from: marvda1 on 6 Mar 2012, 04:57 am

they had to go vertical because of the narrowness of the rear of the speaker.
guess he could connected the bottom positive to the top negative, don't know how it would affect the sound.

I doubt you'd hear a difference if you tested blindly. Now, knowing it's 'mis'-connected might reveal a world of sonic differences.

Letitroll98 · « **Reply #17 on:** 7 Mar 2012, 04:17 am »

Quote from: marvda1 on 6 Mar 2012, 04:57 am

they had to go vertical because of the narrowness of the rear of the speaker.
guess he could connected the bottom positive to the top negative, don't know how it would affect the sound.

Ha! That's how Sean from Zu Audio told me to hook up biwire terminals with single run wire to imitate the benefits of using biwired cables. Not sure of the theory of why this would work, but they stopped making biwire runs of speaker cables because he couldn't hear any differences, and he's a cable manufacturer, go figure. (They may have started again, this was some years ago)

And even if vertical, one could still have the tweeter terminals on the top (+ & -) and the bass terminals on the bottom. I still can't fathom the logic from Usher. But what I'm sure of is that I should stop beating this poor departed horse.

KCI-JohnP · « **Reply #18 on:** 8 Mar 2012, 10:26 pm »

Hey I see an ACI Titan II sub back there behind Capt's Mini-2's! I've got one of those babies, excellent sub!

Captain Humble · « **Reply #19 on:** 9 Mar 2012, 01:34 pm »

Quote from: KCI-JohnP on 8 Mar 2012, 10:26 pm

Hey I see an ACI Titan II sub back there behind Capt's Mini-2's! I've got one of those babies, excellent sub!

Hi John,
I use the Titan II LE exclusively for 5.1.
The Usher Mini Dancer Two's are on there own in two channel mode.
What you can't see in the picture are your Silk Worm interconnects.

Still very happy with them, thanks John.