[John Casler]

Many of you have taken advantage of the 626jr and LRCjr speakers B has offered to celebrate his 30th Anniversary in the business.

Well with some recent posts about the "less prominent" RM2, I convinced Brian to offer an RM2jr.

If there is a better speaker for the money on the planet, I don't know about it.

As a "starter" 2 channel AudioPhile System, or an Unbelievable 5.0 (yes you can use these "WITHOUT" a sub) HT system it is performance beyond the price.

Here is how it looks:

RM2jr = $1999 pr!!!

This is with the "spiral" tweeter and the Polycone 12" Woofer.

Upgradable to the Woven Carbon Fiber 12" for $200

It is currently available in Lite and Dark Oak cabinets.

Four of these and an LRCjr for $4550!!!!! would equip a HT for the cost of a good "pair of mains". 

Merry Christmas!! Early.

I have also put together some BCSE Speaker Packages, including the Fantasy RMv60 based Systems, called VMPS System INVICTA and VMPS STONEHENGE which I will post soon.

[John Casler]

The RM2jr looks much like the speaker below, but with dual spiral ribbon tweeters, rather than a single FST tweeter.

These are the Classic Clean Lines of the Floorstanders of the past.

This is one truly remarkable speaker which will play down to around 20-22Hz



$1999!!!
Cain't touch this

[warnerwh]

John: You should post a link to the review in Listener magazine where they compared 5 different speakers in the same class.  If I recall the reviewer thought the VMPS RM 2 was in a class of it's own!  The other 4 speaker makes came in way behind and the beauty is they're all similarly priced. Come to think of it for only 2,000 I'd be hard pressed to find anything close to the performance of this RM 2 being as even the bass goes truly low with power and is accurate. This price range rarely includes any honest bass to speak of. 

I may have to take a pair of the 626jr for our HT setup as that's a killer bargain too. I will need someone who'd like a pair of Legacy Classics in Cherry on the super dirt cheap first though.  These Legacys were bought originally by our own professional opera star John Del Carlo as he bought RM 40's. He gave me a great deal and I will pass it on . They are in good condition cosmetically and work perfectly.  Even though they cost a couple grand or more. The new the 626jr I know will perform better, actually way better, at least in my opinion especially as we don't need the low bass from them. The 626Rs I had still haunt my mind how good those little things were.

Having not been around much I don't know why someone would call the RM 2 less prominent. I had 2 customers who liked the RM 2 over the RM 30s the other guy had. The guy with the RM 30's liked the RM 2's at his friends better than his RM 30's. In other words properly set up there's little difference in performance but a huge difference in price.

[Early B.]

Having not been around much I don't know why someone would call the RM 2 less prominent. I had 2 customers who liked the RM 2 over the RM 30s the other guy had. The guy with the RM 30's liked the RM 2's at his friends better than his RM 30's. In other words properly set up there's little difference in performance but a huge difference in price.

Interesting.

What's the difference in performance between the RM2 and its predecessor, the Tower II's?

[warnerwh]

You'd be comparing apples to oranges. However I owned the Tower II SE's and loved them.  They were the first pair of speakers I had that could do quality bass and power down low.  Both the midrange and treble are very good. My brother has them now. They used a Focal T120 tweeter like the Wilson at the time in their 8,000 speaker which is a very good dome tweeter.

The RM 2 is far superior due to the fact of the planar midranges which cover from 280hz to nearly 7khz. The realism these drivers produce is outstanding and much better than the cone of the earlier iteration. I'm convinced that a superior transient response is responsible for how real instruments and voices sound.

 Bass is equal to the Tower II but the treble with a ribbon tweeter is superior to my ears. Some people though prefer domes over ribbon tweeters. That is weird to me because all of the tweeters I've ever heard sound sluggish. Same with cones compared to the planar midranges,  the midrange is fast, articulate and smooth as a babies butt.

These planars have to be heard to understand. The first time I heard them I knew in 2 nano seconds I've got to have this quality. I mean I was shocked at how much better they sounded than any cone mids I've ever heard. Any of this new line of speakers is good enough to be your last speakers. My RM 40's are truly as good as I've ever heard or better. No other speaker I remember hearing have I been so impressed with.

[John Casler]

John: You should post a link to the review in Listener magazine where they compared 5 different speakers in the same class.  If I recall the reviewer thought the VMPS RM 2 was in a class of it's own!  The other 4 speaker makes came in way behind and the beauty is they're all similarly priced. Come to think of it for only 2,000 I'd be hard pressed to find anything close to the performance of this RM 2 being as even the bass goes truly low with power and is accurate. This price range rarely includes any honest bass to speak of. 

Good call Warner,

Below is the link, and a copy and paste of the RM2 portion of the review.

Keep in mind, there are a couple improvements in the RM2jr over the reviewed speaker (@ $2690) and that is the crossover from woofer to neopanel has been raised slightly (I think in the RM2 it is closer to 220hz, but B could fill that in) and the Passive Radiator has been vitrified.

These while seemingly small changes are large on sonic improvement.

Here is the link: http://www.vmpsaudio.com/r-listRM2.htm

And below is the portion regarding the RM2:

From Listener $3000 Loudspeaker Pairs

Five of them, in fact (or ten, if you think in mono) Survey by Steve Lefkowicz (RM2 portionof the article)

4. VMPS RM 2 neo: $2690/pair

Type: 3-way, slot-loaded, passive radiator-box
Tweeter: dual spiral ribbons
Midrange: dual 7-inch neodymium ribbons
Woofer: 12-inch woven carbon fiber cone, 12-inch passive radiator, variable damping
Crossover: 167Hz and 6kHz, 6 and 12dB
Nominal impedance: 4 Ohms/3.2 Ohms mm.
Sensitivity: 92dB/2.83 volts at I meter
Frequency response: 22-30,00OHz +/- 3dB
Termination: single wiring or bi-amp, switchable
Dimensions: 45 by 15 by 16 inches (HxWxD)
Weight: 130 pounds
Cabinet: I -inch MDF with I -inch oak outer shell

I have a feeling the VMPS RM 2 neo will be the "controversial" speaker in this group. There are already people, vocal as it were, on various Internet discussion groups who like to bag on VMPS and Brian Cheney. I think "colored boom boxes" is the term they use. These people are basically wrong though I can understand how they might have come to that opinion. I'll explain in a bit.

First of all, these speakers are very different from all the others in this group in several ways. They are very large and heavy (130 pounds each). They use ribbon midrange drivers for most of their output (167Hz to 6kHz I, coupled to a pair of small ribbon tweeters (that look very much like, but not identical to, the tweeters in the Neat Elites). There is a front-facing, 12-inch woofer and a slot-loaded, down-firing, 12inch passive radiator. My review pair had the $140 Megawoofer option, which is a very high quality carbon-fiber driver. My pair also came with the $150 Soundcoat optionan internal borosilicate coating that reduces resonance and further damps the cabinet. I don't know how much these improve the sound over the base ($2400) RM2, but even with these options, the RM2 is still the lowest-priced speaker in the group. (I did not get the $80 Satin Black finish option, which looks really nice in the brochure.)

The biggest difference, and the one that makes all the difference, is the "tuning" and setup necessary to make speakers work properly. It doesn't sound like much-adjustable woofer damping and separate level pots for the midrange ribbon and the tweeters-but in the end, the only way to get optimum performance from these speakers is to be patient and willing to spend hours, maybe even days, tweaking the setup until it sounds just right. Brian Cheney flew to sunny Southern California to show me how the setup process works, and it took us about four hours to get the system singing happily. Having re-tuned them several times since, I'm confident that careful and patient listeners can do this themselves, but I'm also pretty sure it will take most non-Brian Cheney people a lot longer.

Also, these were the only speakers in this review that I feel really need to be bi-amped. I used my B & K amp to drive the woofers and mostly the Antique Sound Labs or Audion amps to drive the ribbons and tweeters. I briefly tried the Antique Sound Labs new little AV-8 10-watt mono amps, but they weren't a good match. The ribbons are simply too demanding and revealing. Remember, every amp change requires testing the bass damping (if you swap the bass amp) or the mid and tweeter pots (to integrate the bass properly with the new midrange amp).

Before I get into describing how music sounds through these speakers, let me tell a little story. I had been swapping speakers in and out for almost six months while working on this article. Although my wife enjoys the system and listens to music and all that, she rarely talks about any of this stuff. Usually if she's working around the house the TV, rather than the stereo, will be on. I asked her to take five minutes to listen to the RM2 speakers. She played "Ese Momento" from Luis Miguels' CD Amarte es un Placer, which is usually her first pick for getting to know something new in the system. As soon as that ended, it was Ricky Martin's Sound Loaded-then more Ricky Martin, then Groupo Mania, then the Gypsy Kings, then a little bit of Lou Bega, then more Ricky Martin. And we're talking complete CDs for the most part, not just one or two songs. All day with the TV off! And at pretty respectable volume, too. No audio talk, just listening to music.

"We should have a party before these have to go back," she finally tells me.

That more than anything else I'll say here describes the VMPS RM2 neo. But in case you want more, here goes.

In music and audio terms? These are the most extended, full-range speakers I have ever had in my home in over 20 years of playing this game. I have to start with bass response, because that's largely what makes these speakers so special on first listen. Using Stereophile's Test CD2 and an SPL meter, I was actually up 2dB at 25Hz, and only down 4dB at 20Hz! But far more important was the weight and impact these speakers imparted on bass lines. Without any "boominess" or obfuscation of bass lines, these speakers simply handled all the low notes with a clarity, tunefulness, and ease I have not heard from other speakers. This isn't "subwoofer bass," as the bass integrates into the music as coherently and seamlessly as I could hope for-and in a way I haven't heard from systems using separate add-on subs.

But you have to work really hard to get this bass response. Adjusting bass damping consists of getting on your knees and reaching into the slot at the bottom of the cabinet to remove itty little bits of putty to reduce the damping until it sounds right. Of course, you have to overshoot and take too much out to realize when you've reached that magic damping mass-and then you reach in and put a little bit back. We're talking scraping just a pinch with your fingernail here, a tenth of a gram or less, to really fine-tune it. Make any changes in your system (positioning or bass amp), and you have to do it again. Seriously.

This is a lot of work, but well worth it in the end. Otherwise these speakers can turn into "highly colored boom boxes."

Of course, once you're done with all that, you have to adjust the midrange and tweeter levels again. Figure another bit of time to do it right. And if you change anything in the system-yap, you know what's coming.

In spite of the emphasis put on generating really top-drawer bass, I think the heart of these speakers really lies with the ribbon midrange drivers. Though only 7 inches tall (each), the pair of ribbons (per speaker) operates from 167Hz all the way to 6000Hz. They are efficient enough that with the 15 watts of the ASL amp, my ears will give out long before the speakers or the amp, but even when played louder than I would normally listen, there is no compression or restriction of the dynamic contrasts in the music. Even then, when something goes "pop" it is a big-ass pop! And if it's all the subtle dynamic shadings that add so much to the emotional impact of music you're concerned about, these get that right, too. All told, from a standpoint of reproducing the dynamics of music (all types), these are simply the best speakers I have auditioned at home, and among the best I have heard anywhere else.

In fact, over the whole range covered by the ribbons, these speakers are as open, transparent, uncolored, detailed, and dynamic as anything I have heard. The coherency of using a single driver over such a wide range is evidence of the RM2's ability to sound "right" regardless of the type of music being played. I even dug out my 10 inch RCA LP release of the Hollywood String Quartet's premier recording of Schoenberg's Verklarte Nacht from 1950; in spite of 50 years of abuse, it sounded wonderful over the VMPSs. I was able to listen around all the snaps, crackles, and pops and really enjoy the piece. (I listened to several other recordings of Verklarte Nacht, both string sextet and fall orchestral versions. Pelleas and Melisande, too. just on an early-Schoenberg kick, I guess.)

I've given these speakers an unfair bit of extra copy here, but I think they deserve it. In spite of all their qualities and complexities, they are both tremendously good speakers and a tremendous value.

[John Casler]

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