[choffman]

The weekend before last I took a trip out to LA to meet with Albert and his sales manager Manny.  I won?t bore you with the whole saga, but I sent my VR-4SR MKIIs back to Albert convinced that something had gone wrong with my speakers.  Despite my efforts to eliminate other equipment as the cause before shipping them back to VSA, I turned out to be dead wrong in thinking it was the speakers.  But, when I was making arrangements to send them back, Albert was never defensive, never suggested that there was no way it could be his speakers, but instead, was helpful, courteous and anxious to get to the bottom of the problem.  After Albert got the speakers he sent me a lengthy e-mail explaining all of the testing they did as well as thoroughly listening to them and finally concluding there was nothing wrong.  He was again completely gracious about the entire situation and even invited me to come out and hear them myself.  So I made arrangements to take my preamp to LA where Albert and Manny had my speakers and an identical Spectron amp to what I use. 

Albert, Manny, and I spent the day (and I mean the whole day) hanging out at Sounds of Excellence, trying things out and concluding that my preamp was the problem.  We listened to a lot of music, tried various combinations of equipment and speakers and had a generally good time.  Albert and I had a wonderful conversation about how he got into the business and a lot of the technical aspects behind his designs.  His passion for what he does comes across in spades.  It is obvious from talking to him that he truly loves music (he is a classically trained pianist, has a recording studio and plays in a band) and figuring out how to reproduce it in the most accurate way.  Manny was equally down to earth and enjoyable to hang out with.  It?s obvious that he has spent a lot of time figuring out what works and what doesn?t.  He had some great combinations of gear and a great room in which to show it off.

But while I was there, I made the fatal error of listening to the VR-5 Anniversaries.  I won?t be seeing my VR-4s again as they have been traded in.   Thankfully, we didn?t listen to the 9s. 

[JackD201]

Congratulations! As a former VR-5 owner I can attest that for the buck, be they lots of them, they offer performance and flexibility that's off the charts. Albert could have stopped at 5s as the range topper and been like most other designers but Albert is Albert. The guy is always out to push back the boundaries of what's possible. The Uni 3, VR-5, VR-9 and VR-11 are all products which are not constrained by production cost considerations but rather by the size of the intended listening space. That makes each of these top of the line products in my book.

You are a wise man in opting not to listen to the 9s. There are times that I'm so busy and tired from my day job that I don't get to fire up my 9s for weeks at a time. After these long spells of drought though and I finally find that window, I always end up with a HOLY COW feeling sometimes with accompanying expletives when the first few bars of music physically slam into me 

[mikel51]

I recently purchased a pair of VR5 Anniversaries from Manny.  I would have to say that I have been very impressed with the level of personal response from Albert to my questions about the speakers via email.