I spent a morning listening to some Soundscapes at Jim’s in an untreated room and powered by AVA gear before giving him an order for a pair. Since nobody has a pair yet, I thought I would post a few of my impressions.
I played several demo disks and without exception, each song sounded incredible. The same songs on my HT1’s sound fantastic too, except for the Beatle song on my Salk demo disk. The Beatle’s song sounded glorious and that was the first time I realized why Jim put the song on his demo disk. I didn’t like the Beatle song on a pair of SongTowers either. The songs in almost all cases sounded better than my HT1’s and a few at least as good. I was listening to the music with the back midrange baffle off. The Soundscapes are a definite step up.
I put on some of my disks that were not well recorded that sounded thin on my HT1’s. They sounded much better on the Soundscapes. I put the rear midrange baffle on and the songs sounded more like they did with my HT1’s. Those made me think that the songs were probably recorded in a studio with no ambiance and needed the open baffle to add some life to the music. This is probably the reason that speakers that add warmth to the songs make them sound better.
I put on Willie Nelson’s Super Hits on with the rear baffle off and it sounded much thinner than my HT1’s did. That was the only disk that showed that issue. I was very confused. I played it with the back baffle on and all of a sudden they sounded as good, or better. as my HT1’s did. What was going on? This is just the reverse situation of the other disks. I don’t know why that is so, but I remembered that there was a sticker on the cellophane when I bought that disk ten years ago that said that the disk had some special digital audio processing to “improve” the sound. Maybe that had something to do with it.
