I was there too, and spent a good bit of time in both Salk/Van Alstine Rooms. The new speakers did have a very open airy sound, that kind of reminded me of my old DCM Time Window 3s except with more detail and midrange clarity. Franks fully differential gear let the music accurately come forth from a totally black (silent) background, with basically 4 channels of amplification, each channel handling one half of each channnel's music wave. The new speakers do not go as deep as the HT3s as I discovered on an Eva Cassidy cut played on both systems, and I think the HT3s present a slight ly better image on some material. The room for the new speakers had more acoustical treatment than the other room to absorb some of the open baffle rear reflections since there was not enough room to pull the speakers out the distance Jim recommends.
The HT3s were very impressive and the Song Towers very clear and detailed, but a little less so than the HT3s. Out of all the other speakers I heard at the show, the only other ones that intrigued me were the Dali Helicon 400, MkIIs, (driven by Bel Canto electronics) but they had nothing on the HT3 speakers. Its a moot point for me as the Helicons and HT3s are out of my price range. Later that Saturday evening BigRed Machine (and Mrs. Machine) hosted an open house at their place with the Salks and Frank VA there along with other music lovers. I got to here the V3s that I am interested in and they are impressive too. As Big Red stated elsewhere, sonically, they are very close to the HT3s , falling slightly short of the HT3s in low freququency reach and dynamic volume output, although I must confess that the time difference between auditioning the V3s and HT3s made a detailed comparison hard to do.
All in all , a very pleasant experience for my first visit to Michigan. The wife and I are contemplating the V3 purchase and what options we want.
