[ed_robyn]

I haven't yet had the honor of getting a VMPS's yet, but I was wondering those of you that have them what music you use as a standard to audition with.  When you listen to other brands of speakers what can you hear with the VMPS that you can not hear with a different speaker.  An instrument in the background perhaps? What was that speaker and what was the music passage.

[RGordonpf]

The only real way to evaluate a pair of speakers is to hear them in your home being played with your equipment with your own recordings.  That is usually not possible.  The usual situation is that you get to hear your recordings played on someone else's equipment that is nothing like yours, in a specially treated room.  So what do you do?

I attend the CES in Las Vegas every year.  During my 4 days there I try to visit every exhibition room at the Alexis Park and T.H.E. Show.  In the rooms that I think might potentially have good sound I ask if they will play tracks off of my own CDs.  I have 5 CDs that I use for evaluation.  All are exceptionally well recorded, mastered and manufactured.  Also, all are made with acoustical instruments or real human voices -  no synthsizers or electric instruments.  The first track I ask them to play is of a female vocalist singing a capella or with minimal background sound.  What I listen for is clarity.  Does her voice come thru clearly?  Is the timbre correct?  Is the tone correct?  I have 15 different albums by this woman and have heard her recordings on hundreds of different audio systems so I know what her voice should sound like.   Does the voice coming from the test system sound like her?  At a certain point in the music do the hairs rise on the back of my neck and a chill run down my spine?

I then ask for a second track to be played off of another CD.  This second track is a full orchestra playing a very complex passage at full volume.  Do the speakers choke up?  Can you hear all of the individual lines of music within the complex mix?  Do you hear the changes in dynamics as the orchestra goes from playing soft to very loud?  Do you hear the micro dynamics as solo instruments shape a phrase and change the shading of a single note? Can the system play loud without distorting, particular on heavy, deep bass passages?

The track off of the 3rd CD that I asked to be played is of a small ensemble with woodwinds and percussion.  Do the wind instruments sound like real instruments; i.e. proper tone and timbre?  Do the percussion instruments sound real?  Is the leading edge transient of the percussion instruments sharp (square wave) or is it rounded off (sine wave).  Are the micro dynamics readily apparent?  Is there slam, pace and rhythm; i.e. this music should make you want to get up and dance - do you want to dance or play your air drums?

The track off of the 4th CD is a male bass/baritone vocalist singing a capella or with minimal background.  Does the voice sound like a real human voice?  Is the tone and timbre correct?  This is a voice I have heard hundreds of times over the years on many systems.  Does the voice sound like him?  Can you hear the sound arising from his chest?  Can you hear the slight nasal quality as he inhales?

If the test system has passed the first 4 tracks and is capable of deep bass, I have a track off of my 5th CD played.  This is usually a movie sound track with synthesized bass.  Can the system handle the bass without bottoming the bass drivers or switching the amps into protection mode?  Are you getting monotone bass, like the low-rider car stopped next to you at the traffic light, or can you hear the individual bass notes, clearly and distinctly?  Does the loud bass cause problems in the midrange?  Does the bass overpower the mids and highs?  Pay attention to room nodes as this can be a real problem in small rooms without proper sound treatment and don't let the nodes or anti-nodes affect your judgment.

The above is my way to quickly get an opinion on a particular audio system.  However, it is still no substitute for hearing equipment in your own home, with your own equipment and recordings.  YMMV.

[ed_robyn]

Thanks for the info.  I have some music that I audition with also.  I guess what I am trying to get at is, for example, John Casler in another thread, was talking about a certain reference cut he was listening to where he could hear a triangle in the background.  What I would like to know is there music by which you can hear something in VMPS's that you could not hear with a "typical" speaker.    Does that make sense?

[AVB]

In all of the CD demos I've burned the one thing that has always been there is Steely Dan.  Production is always first rate and very clean, some of the best ever for a major act IMHO.

[Redbone]

I was in Bethesda the other day for dinner and stopped in at JS Audio, which carries some of the Jeff Rowland line.  They hooked up a pair of 201s for me to audition.  It was an extremely nice setup, with a Macintosh preamp and custom cables etc.  The room was well treated but I have forgotten the name of the speakers, they were two-way.  They had one or two hundred cds to choose from, not one Rock n' Roll.  The best I could come up with was Mary Chapin Carpenter.  This was an impromptu visit, so I didn't bring any of my own software.

The sound was incredibly clear, the imaging was actually startling, the voice really came right out of thin air, very tightly focused.  The music was analytical.  The piano sounded like a very good reproduction of a piano.  I didn't like it at all, except for the imaging, which only seemed to work for the voice, not the instruments, i.e. no soundstage.

To contrast, I have my 40s set up now so that in a recording like Elton John, Tumbleweed Connection, the piano sounds exactly like a real piano.  If you close your eyes, it is hard to tell that there isn't a piano in the room.  The first few cuts on this recording are good for evaluating speakers, IMHO, because they are reasonably well mastered and have a lot of very difficult instruments to get right.  There is a piano, of course, and also acoustic, steel and base guitars.  There are violins and some wooden wind instrument, vocals and drums.

I have yet to get the 40s to reproduce all of the instruments as well as the piano and violins, but I believe that I have nailed the string instruments.  Next I will try to tune for vocals and symbols.  Hopefully I will not degrade the string sound when I make further changes.

Now to actually try to answer your question.  There are a LOT of very good stereo systems out there so I'd be suprised if the VMPS Speakers actually revealed some basic sound that other stereos were missing.  But they do provide a higher resolution and greater "realness" than a lot of systems that I have heard.  Take the second cut on Tumbleweed Connection for instance.  The piano should sound real, not amplified.  There is some distortion in the recording, it should be obvious.  Also there is an "edge" or quiver or vibration to both the voice and reed instrument that is not normally resolved with clarity.  I can only hear this for a split second when the instrument begins to play, but I have never heard it before on other systems.  The violins should sound clear and engaging.  Tastes are different, YMMV.

[SWG255]

When I went to Dynamic Sound Audio in Washington D.C. to audition the VMPS RM40s and the Von Schweikert VR-4s last autumn I took 3 CD "samplers" that I made, each with a selection of tracks to highlight one or more aspects of the music I listen to. One disc was "rock/pop", one was jazz and 1 was "classical". I deliberately chose non-audiophile recordings (with one or two exceptions) because I don't listen to state-of-the-art audiophile recordings most of the time and i wanted to zero in on what the speakers did with fairly standard recordings, the kind of stuff I listen to most often.

The VMPS speakers did three things for me that other speakers I've auditioned did not:

1.  Human voices had a "in the room" quality that other speakers didn't provide. By this I mean that the voices sounded like real singers in the room or in front of the microphone, with nothing added or removed. This naturalness of tone and timbre for both female and male voices was striking on the RM40s. In contrast, the VR-4s seemed to add some vividness to the voices, particularly female voices like Rosa Passos' on her Chessky recording. Witht he RM40s her voice was "right there" between the speakers with a very natural and neutral presentation. The VR-4s added a little extra upper-midrange which made her voice breathier and even a little "sexier" audibly speaking, but less realistic.

2.  The RM40s presented the highest frequencies, even in very dynamic and complex musical passages with more precision and detail than any other speakers I've heard. There seemed to be more "colors" in the high-frequency "palatte" than with other speakers. By this I mean that all kinds of high-frequency instruments were presented with distinct timbres and harmonic overtones. A classic demonstration of this could be heard with Ambrosia's "Time Waits for No One" from their compilation CD. The sound of the ringing and then smashing alarm clock was presented with both more clarity and more complexity on the RM40s than on any other speaker I've auditioned, including the Wilson Puppies. The Von Schweikert speakers weren't bad in this regard, but they just didn't seem to resolve the high-frequency harmonic information as clearly as the VMPS ribbons.

3.  With full symphonic orchestral recordings, the VMPS speakers presented the full dynamics and breadth of the orchestra more convincingly than the competition. It was more of a timbral and harmonic thing than it was imaging, and I also think it had to do with the resolution of micro-dynamic details even when the music was loud. It just sounded both "bigger" and more natural than the same track played on the other speakers.

So, I bought the VMPS RM40s and I've no regrets.

The goal of the three CDs I made was to take music I was VERY familiar with to the listening room. This more than anyghing else will help you hear what you need to in an environment where almost everything else is beyond your control. Of course, if you can get an in-home audition, you can dispense with making CD samplers, unless of course you enjoy putting your music into custom compilations as I do.

[ed_robyn]

Thanks guys, you're on the right track.  Until I can arrange an audition, your descriptions are the next best thing to being there.