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@ Sunday Niagara,Not every VSA Customer wants to share his experience on the web.Lucky for us most do.Cor
Thats really a Freudian slip there in the subject.
Regarding the VS100XS shipping status, I placed my order (the first order of a VR100XS system) while it was still in the development phase. I’ve had enough experience with VSA speakers, having owned the VR6, VR4SR, and VR5-Anniversary, to have placed an order based on the design goals that Albert detailed. My speakers were on track to be finished the 1st quarter of this year with all the heavy lifting of design and development having been completed. Drivers were finalized with customized magnesium woofers and midranges and with new ultra-light, wide range ribbon tweeters. Crossover design work included the evaluation of dozens of vendor submitted candidate parts with many dozens of integration tests. A key component was the implementation of the one piece tower to hold all the drivers. This 500 pound, one piece tower design was chosen to maximize rigidity and prevent the smallest compliance in the driver mountings. A one piece cabinet also permitted the drivers to be more closely spaced providing coherence of the drivers at a closer listening position than in the VR11 and fitting in a wider range of rooms. However, this also required a dense maze of internal bracing which, along with the requirement for installation of the VSA triple layer internal damping, gave the cabinet manufacturer a huge CNC design and manufacturing challenge with a complexity beyond that of the VR9 and VR11 cabinets built by the same manufacturer.All of the above work was completed by the end of 2012 with final tweaking (e.g. positioning of crossover parts to avoid interactions) done in January of 2013. The plan was for this first pair of speakers (my pair) to be shipped to Axpona in March of this year and to ship them from there to my house for installation. Shortly before the show, I became concerned whether the floor of my listening room (positioned over my garage) might not be up to the three quarter ton weight of a pair of VR100 speakers with their XS subwoofers. Based on this and my desire to improve the AC supply, I asked Albert to hold off delivery until I vetted my site.I did attend Axpona in March and got to hear the finished system at its premier which confirmed my high expectations. It was blazingly fast with seamless integration of the drivers and had an enveloping sound stage (like VSA's previous VR10 and VR11 tower designs). At the end of the show, one of the members of the Delphi Aerospace design team (the designers and manufacturers of the Masterbuilt product line) asked Albert to evaluate a prototype of an interconnect that they had developed using a new ultra low loss wire developed for the CERN LHC. Albert asked if I would do the evaluation, so I returned home with the Delphi "Ultra" cable in tow (lucky me!). The impact of that cable was amazing. I'll direct you to my review posted on AudioCircle: http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=116987.0Such were the Ultra's improvements in the realism of my system, that I asked Albert if it would be in any way possible to use the Ultra wire in my VR100XS towers. This lead to numerous exchanges between Albert and the Delphi folks, design work on potential wiring implementations, and tests. As it stands, a solution appears possible. The cost will be substantial, but I believe will be worth it. Meanwhile, the first pair of speakers are on their way to the California Audio Show this month (August) and then to RMAF (October). I will be getting another set of the VR100XS speakers whose cabinets, drivers, and crossover parts are all on site at VSA (and have been for some time) while an implementation of the Ultra technology is being finalized.My request to delay the delivery of my speakers has proved fortuitous since it looks like I'll be able end up with a VR100XS system that includes Ultra-based internal wiring which will take the performance to another level.
Just spoke to someone at VS. They will NOT be bringing anything to show except for the 100's. Its a bummer, but good to know beforehand.
