I am the proud owner of a set of the first production ERR (Extended Range Radial) speakers out of the Decware shop. I believe these would be serial number 003 with Steve Deckert and Bob Z (Steve's speaker builder) owning 001 and 002. I ordered them in November of 08 in a custom black finish and they arrived two days ago.
First of all the speakers are beautiful. The finish is so deep and shiny they look like black plastic. The top covers haven't arrived yet but they would have been in a separate box anyway. Speaking of boxes, the speakers were packed so well they could have been thrown off the truck and kicked to my doorstep with no damage. The packing material probably cost as much as my first pair of stereo speakers. Inside were the speakers and a bag of stuff, this was my only gripe when I later called Steve about the speakers. Each bag had 4 spike feet, 1 large can capacitor and 4 resistors of different values. On the rear of the speaker are three sets of binding posts. The bottom pair are for the speaker wires, that I got from Bob earlier, the right pair gets a resistor (one was already installed) and the left pair gets the capacitor (I didn't know this). I plugged them in with only the resistor and got a horrible sound plus my deepest fear was realized, I was getting low volume with the knobs cranked all the way up. I was feeling a bit sick to my stomach at this point but at the same time knew something was wrong and could probably be fixed, Steve is good at fixing things.
After a good night sleep I first called Bob Z who told me I had to install the capacitor for the high frequency driver to work but was scratching his head about the volume issue. With the capacitor installed the speakers sounded better but still not much oomph coming from them. The next call went to Steve Deckert, owner, chief engineer, head cook and bottle washer of High Fidelity Engineering aka Decware Inc. I started off saying how beautiful the speakers are then went into my problems. Steve fixed the problem over the phone in under five minutes, he had me adjust some pots on the CSP2 preamp and there was the lost volume. Steve wanted me to send pictures of the speakers to him as payment.
I spent the rest of the day and night playing all kinds of music. Equipment is Decware Taboo amp, CSP2 preamp & ZP3 RIAA phono stage, Decware DSR II Reference Silver interconnects, PS Audio Plus SC power cords, Pro-Ject RM 10 TT, Grado Reference Master cartridge, Adcom 700 CD, Kimber 8TC and Mapleshade Golden Helix speaker wires. VTI, Herbies Audio and Mapleshade products are used for isolation and vibration. Room is treated with rigid fiberglass panels on walls and ceiling. 2 passive bass traps, corner traps and 2 diffuser panels.
All genre of music was played, Rock, Blues, Metal, Country, Bluegrass, Gospel, Classical and Jazz. The ERRs are a different experience from the normal speaker. One can actually roam about the room and not lose the stereo image. Is there a sweet spot? Yes but it's larger than you would expect. The Radials actually leave the room and you are left listening to a hologram. At times I thought I was listening to the wall and at other times I could picture musicians sitting on my equipment racks. I heard a few new notes and heard some differently than I remembered and this is straight out of the box from a pair of speakers that need around 100 hours of break in. No matter where you sit you will only be hearing about 30% of what the radial speaker is producing and speaker placement isn't as critical as normal speakers. The radials can be placed near a wall and actually like some reflective surface. Steve said I may have too much room treatment and suggested removing some.
Using the 6 watt Taboo tube amp I could reach over 100 db using a Cen-Tech hand held meter. I don't listen to music louder than I was measuring and I could have gone louder and the amp was still not clipping. Lon Armstrong is probably the world authority on Decware Radials as he owns every revision of the speaker (except the ERR, I beat him out of the gate on this one), he has a pair of the ERR and the IT Retail on order, Lon listens strictly to digital jazz and says he will not change his preference of radial loudspeakers. I must say the CD source does sound nice but when I put vinyl on my smile was much bigger. I have listened to many fine speaker systems from JMR to Quads to Beveridge to Mark Levinson HQD to Lowther and so on but these fit right in there somewhere and for the price $1395 plus shipping are a steal. The custom finish was extra and I am glad I went that extra mile. I had to feel a little sorry for Bob Z as he refinished them 3 times before he was happy with them. It's nice to know there are still craftsmen out there who truly care about their product and a company you can call, talk to a real person as a friend and get instant results.
Is there anything they need to change? Yes, put a little piece of paper in the bag with the cap and resistors telling you what to do with them.
