I had the pleasure of going over to Ryan's place last night and got my hands on the remote and the playlist for a few hours in the sweet spot listening Vapor Audio's new speaker The Nimbus. I must say, everything I read about from T.H.E. show was spot on! These things are fantastically beautiful, have breathtaking musicality, and the biggest sound-stage I have ever heard (not 12 foot tall guitar big, just open big; think wide and tall.) I think Ryan cutting his teeth building monitors for so long has really honed his skill in selecting drivers and designing crossovers with the idea of an intimate realistic musical experience. You can tell he really has an idea of the characteristics he is looking for in all of his designs, and even his larger more complex designs share that same refinement and intimacy that his first speaker The Cirrus does so well. Most large 3 way floor standers I have heard give you the vertical scale of the sound stage but no left to right cohesiveness; everything is either dead center/left/or right. With the Nimbus the sound-stage expands beyond the walls of the room and you can place: the strings of a guitar, the bellow of a stand up bass, and the rocking motions of a singer in a live performance in 3D space, really an amazing effect. I found myself often listening with my eyes closed to simply appreciate this quality to the sound.
I have heard many of Ryan's designs before, living just 40 minutes away, I bought a pair of his first speaker design (The Cirrus) but I have never heard bass like what the Nimbus delivers. It has the deep extension and tactile feel without feeling tubby or slow, not in the slightest, the Bass these deliver is tight and detailed. I told Ryan that it almost felt like I could hear the flex in the grains of wood in the guitar on certain Flamenco tracks. If you have heard one of Ryan's designs with the RAAL, the Nimbus does to the lowest octaves what I have come to expect from the top octaves. Where as the RAAL is, one of, if not the best, tweeter at delivering attack, decay, and resolution in the treble, this 15" woofer does nearly the same for the bass adding that realistic sounding bass attack and decay, sometimes even dipping into the sub-sonics. Shy of the Joule none of Vapor's other design dig deep enough or move enough air to flesh out this sort of detail.
I listened to everything but country music during my session, it was a real treat. The Nimbus really presents a great medium to display the best recordings you can find, everything from large scale classical to dubstep to intimate flamenco recordings. They really kept up from a dynamic perspective and never lacked in scale. No genre was ever really fatiguing and there were no frequency anomalies that really stuck out. They may have sounded a bit forward in the upper mid-range lower treble regions on some tracks but never "hot." It is possible that the mid-ranges in this first version of the Nimbus were simply outclassed by the Bass and treble. Ryan told me that he has other iterations of this speaker in mind that could even further improve the detail in the mid-range using higher end mid-range drivers from Accuton or Audiotech. It is pretty hard to imagine something outperforming these in that respect by any significant margin but if they had any "opportunities" that would be it.
I think these stack up with the best speakers in the world from a tonality and dynamics perspective. In the sound-stage arena the only thing that can run with these are its big brother the Joule as far as placing the band, and MBLs designs using the omni-directional tweeter but only for sheer scale and 3-Dimesionality (although their sound-stage is a completely different animal). For an intimate realistic experience of feeling like you are there in the room during the performance, there is no other truly full-range speaker that are their peer. The Nimbus delivers this effect on par with some of the best monitors. To my taste though, without being full range, some monitors in this price range could outperform The Nimbus in intimacy alone, but not by much, and you would be sacrificing a lot of other things to get there. The Nimbus is really in a league of its own. The only thing I could imagine even coming close would be The Joule with a capable sub-woofer picking up where the 8-inch Audiotech driver leaves off, or something ala the $200,000+ MBL Radiastraller setup we all know and love from various audio shows, and even then it would only be for the sheer fun factor. Pardon me for gushing a bit,I am not trying start any wars here, but if you haven't heard the Nimbus yet, you should! They are just that good.
Pros:Refined full range sound
Beautiful finish
Wide/Tall and precise sound-stage
Fast tactile high resolution bass/treble
Great value considering its competition
Intimate realistic experience
Cons: Quite a large cabinet (Damn does it look good though)
Not quite as resolving and refined in the mid-range as some of Vapor's other models
250lbs! (some people see this as a pro)
As always YMMV, but I highly recommend you sit down in front of these thing if you ever have an opportunity. In the interest of full disclosure, Ryan's wife did make a delicious dinner as well (review to come
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