Very nice. Once you've had time to form an opinion on these, would you mind commenting on the difference in sound quality you are hearing vs the 5As?
I've been thinking about replacing the Vandy's in my main listening room, and these are one of the speakers I've been considering.
When Glowacki recommended the S-7s to me, one term he used to describe the sound was 'polite'. I wasn't confident I knew what that meant until I got the 7s home. The 5As had rather uneven frequency response in the MR and treble, and sometimes they sounded a bit harsh. After a couple days listening to the 7s, it dawned on me that they never sounded harsh...detailed, very clean, yes, but never harsh. I then measured the frequency response with my third-octave RTA, a Phonic Personal Audio Assistant II, and noticed that they have the smoothest, that is, the least-peaky/notchy, FR in the MR/treble I've ever seen on that display. (I got the bass, too, tuned quickly to have a very smooth response.) I figured that the 7s were never 'shouting' at me over narrow frequency bands--perhaps single musical notes--the way the 5As did. I believe that's why the 5As sounded harsh sometimes and why the 7s sound 'polite'.
So...the 7s sound:
1. 'Polite', that is, they never shout at me;
2. A bit more spacious than the 5As. I thought they would sound that way to a greater degree, but they don't. They certainly don't 'wallow' in their dipole character the way some I've heard do. Careful tweaking of front and rear directivity?
3. A bit warmer balanced. That is, they can easily be adjusted to have a tad more energy from about 200Hz down, which makes the lower-frequency instruments of the orchestra--cellos, basses, tubas, tympani, bassdrums, etc.--sound a little more powerful and NEVER lean and wimpy--and I HATE such leanness in big-orchestra recorded music.
4. Very transparent, a little more so than the 5As.*
5. Smoother--less peaky--in the bass than the 5as, in spite of careful adjustment of the 5As' bass-level pots.
6. A tad less energy in the bottom half of the bottom octave.
7. Very coherent top to bottom, a product of Danny's magic wand he waves over that servo-corrected bass system and that batch of mag-planar drivers--which are fed with allegedly less-coherent 2nd-order filters.
FWIW, after e-mailing with Danny about the right high-pass filter point for the MR/treble of the 7s, I'm temporarily driving them full-range, that is, with NO HP filter before the poweramps. IIRC, Danny decided that with only 8 Watts driving them, the MR drivers can't be overdriven. I'll have Sonic Craft install a 0.01uF coupling cap in the Frankensteins; that'll create a 48Hz HP filter due to their 330K load resistor. I imagine the 7s will sound better for it.
I
REALLY like the sounds of these 7s.
Hmm...I just calculated that I'm driving the 7s with NINETEEN dB less power than I was the 5As. Three cheers for 300B-based SET monoamps!
* and my 5As had better bypass caps--SoniCap Platinums--in the MR and treble filters than the original red TRT DynamiCaps.
