Over the past few months, there have been quite a few comments made about the Bella loudspeakers. Most of them have obviously come from their owners but on more than one occasion, professional recording engineers have had the chance to hear these speakers.
The comments have been uplifting coming from such highly regarded sources. The one area that impressed them the most was the
design. As owners of SP Technology MR series know better than anybody, the dispersion of the Waveguide it breathtaking. With the Bellas, it was also the smoothness and realism in the midrange that enlightened them as well as the level of dynamics coming from a single eight inch driver in a sealed cabinet. You must keep in mind that ALL the feedback I have received was based on auditions with 20-40 watt tube amplifiers.
Throughout all the evaluations, it has been concluded that the bellas do require a lenghty break-in, longer than I originally predicted or expected. One customer now has about 600 hours on his speakers and mentioned that he found 300+/- hours to be the magical number. I now have about 600 hours on my demo prototype pair as well (the same pair audiojerry wrote about) and find them now greatly improved over what I experienced when I received them back from Jerry (after first going to Jam'n Joe at Jam'n Audio).
I have maybe 200 hours or so on my Bella II's and find them still in need of a few more hours. I have been pumping the hell out of them on a daily basis using a pair of EXtreme Hurricanes. I have also been tweaking the crossovers a little. I will let them burn-in for another week or so before critically evaluating them but with the number of people that have heard and commented on them so far, I don't think they will require much more refinement!!
Obviously Bob's MR series takes all these aspects up several notches but at the price point of the Bellas, I am very happy with the feedback. The Bellas were designed to offer something a bit different and have met the "signature" sound I was after from the start. I am happy with the outcome and hope that all current and forthcoming owners can say the same.
More news forthcoming!! Stay tuned.
