First real effort to tune the Alphas after breaking them in with music 24/7 for the past 12 days ( the electric bill ought to look like the GNP for Beliz). As usual my good friend Mike G. showed up with all his equipment. While I am sure most folks believe this, I can't stress enough the value of waiting until your speakers are broken in both elecrtically and mechanically. Also, if you are not a believer in the huge improvements realized when you take time to work with speaker placement, get religion, it is more of an improvement when done correctly than adding a SOTA component and it's free.
First the Mike meaured the listening position and the speakers so the listening position was dead center. Mike then took a 3 foot piece of masking tape and placed it about 4ft. of the floor horizontaly on the wall behind the listening position. He then meaured and marked dead center on the tape to reflect dead center between the speakers. He then measured and made 3 marks on each side of the center mark about 3" apart. You can make as many as you like depending upon your desire for perfection and whether you were properly potty trained.
Using a laser level and the inside surface of the speaker, Mike could perfectly adjust toe-in by pointing the laser to the correct mark on either side of dead center. Beauty of this is one person can move each speaker perfectly and replicate the results without the usual crude, time consuming tape measurement approach that we have all tried. It was short work to find that in my room the Alphas sounded best with the woofers crossing slightly behind the listening position. Soundstaging and tonal balance improved dramatically as did the smoothness of the response. The speakers did not benefit from firing directly at you as do the VMPS RM40s. I don't know what other Alpha owners have found, but in my room they do not need a lot of toe-in.
Next, Mike switched out the resister values and we found that best results were gained by reducing the value down to 15 to 20. It warmed things up nicely and added body to vocals and instruments. Seems the multiple drivers are tight and crisp in the bass without needing too much electronic control. Pay particular attention to male vocals and wooden instruments for correctness. The bass tuning will not adequately correct room modes....equalization or room treatment will. Use the GR tunning approach with an ear towards getting the tonal balance right. It is excellent in that respect.
With a few room measurements it became clear that my room has a pretty strong 100 to 160hz bump and a 40 to 63hz suck out. On to ASC or Real Traps for additional help. Now on to speaker sound.
Once the above adjustments were made, and my outboard X/O bypassed, the Alphas became the most transparent speakers I have ever owned. The soudstage is remarkable, better than any large speaker I have owned. and unlike other large speakers, once they were properly set up, images did not have the tendency to get bigger as the speaker went louder. Those of you with big line arrays and big panels know what I am talking about.
Dynamics are unrestrained. How loud will these speakers play? I was afraid to go any louder, but the Parasound JC-1s put out aboud 1000 peak watts into 4ohms and at 3/4 throttle the sound was crystal clear
Cymbols are reproduced with clarity and sound like metal, with wonderful attack and decay. Depth is very good if not the equal of the bigger Vandersteen's. Detail is reproduced like a world class monitor and without being etched or giving you the fingers on the chalkboard effect. Beware, you will hear everything on the recording. However, the Alphas for all their ability to reveal are not as nasty as ,say, my JM Lab mini Utopias or Theil 3.6s. Since this is not per se a review, I'll wait and post in Critic's Circle.
Please note that transistor components leaning toward bright will not mate well with these speakers as will edgy cable.
As it stands, this is a wold class product, supported by an individual who knows it and treats the customer right. I have owned 25 pairs of speakers since 1970. Fromk Klipschhorns to DQ10s to Apogees to Theils to ML Prodigys to JM Lab to the RM 40s. These are the best.
