It's been a while since I bought speakers, I had Bastanis Prometheus speakers built from a kit that I used for almost 20 years. The last half of that with a Decware Zen amp and the combo was magic but I moved to Switzerland this year and they could not come with me. So it was time for a new purchase.
After a crazy amount of deliberation I decided to go with Buchardt speakers, initially I was going to get A10LE bookshelves but by the time I was in my apartment and could place the order the A700LE were announced. I stretched the budget and decided to go for it because of how the improved tweeter was described... these definitely sounded more like my cup of tea. Anyway I got them last week and have now spent quite a bit of time rearranging the room to best accommodate them.
Here are my thoughts...
These speakers look absolutely amazing in person, pics do them no justice. The way they slope back, the matte finish and texture of the wood veneer, the wave guide for the tweeters all combine for an understated but elegant look that is hard to beat.
They have a dark and seductive sense about them, it's hard to characterize because while on one hand it does seem colored they are incredibly detailed and resolving. Not the typical analytical sound I would go for, but there's something about these speakers that draws you into the music. And not something that I would at all call "warm" or "recessed". Dynamics are fantastic, maybe transients are the weak point though as symbols really lack a little shimmer and decay. But this could be my room? We'll see how things change as I get some treatments in place. I'm also just using the cheapest AC cables since that's all that I have at the moment, so things may improve with a filter and better shielded cables.
The music has amazing texture, with a soundstage that puts every instrument right in its place on a field that's pretty much as wide as the full room in front of me. PRAT is just about as good as it gets in my opinion, these things pull you in and I find it's impossible not to tap my foot and lose myself to a good song.
Bass is kind of ridiculous on these things. Unlike any speaker I've owned for sure, they extend super low and the sound is tight and articulate. They play so clean at loud volumes, it makes me wish I lived out in the country or something because these things could easily get me evicted.
I got the Primare SC15 Prisma MK2 streamer and Zen microphone so this opens up the chance to play with the DSP DQ. Room correction is kind of neat, seems to provide a benefit for me but I'm still playing around with it.
These speakers offer many different master tunings that can be loaded with a usb drive, the process is simple and I've tried a couple but neither sounded better than the standard flat one. I'll probably play around with them again now that I've got my room set up the way I think is best, with the speakers on the long wall, but for the moment I don't expect I'll prefer any of the others to this one.
These speakers sound astoundingly good at low levels. I simply can't get over it. This is a huge plus for me since I'm in an apartment, scratch that in an apartment in Switzerland where you are warned at the immigration office never to do laundry after 8pm. I'm pretty happy that I will be able to listen into the late evenings without my neighbors being able to hear anything.
- Comparison to the Bastanis
Of course I don't have my old speakers to compare them to directly, but I have pretty good memory of how they sounded with all my reference tracks. Midrange clarity was the strength with those, with no crossover and no enclosure there was a certain unmuffled realism that's unmatched in just about any other speakers that I've ever heard. For a boxed speaker, the Buchardt's do get pretty close though. When it comes to detail on the high end the two are actually pretty similar, and the Buchardt's have the clear advantage when it comes to slam and bass extension. Of course they look vastly better than the Bastanis, and take up much less space. But I heard a lot of $250k+ systems in showrooms and shows that I would say could not equal what I heard from them, let alone exceed it, and probably the best compliment I have for these Buchardts is that they fully satisfy me with what I hoped to hear when I shelled out this kind of money.
Still have not been able to get a European motor for my Clearaudio emotion, so I have only been able to listen to streamed digital music to this point. Hopefully that'll change soon, and I'll see how they sound with analog. I'll probably get some XLR cables too so I can plug my Naim Uniti Atom HE directly into the speakers and see how that compares to the wireless Primare. But honestly the simplicity of the wireless setup is so awesome it would be hard to really think about going back.
