Thought I would post my impressions of the get together this afternoon.
First let me say it was very nice to meet Phil and Al. I believe I am a good judge of people and these two guys were great.
I'll try to keep this post as brief as possible. I'll say right upfront that living with large fullrange speakers with dynamics and transparency like the RM40's has probably ruined me for life when it comes to bookshelf sized speakers. I say that because I've heard a LOT of bookshelf speakers in my time and the 3 we had there today were all quite good. But I couldn't live with any of them. I'm simply too used to the effortless sound I get from my 40's.
I say all of the above as a means of providing context to my comments and also to make it perfectly clear they all 3 were very good for their size and price class. Each speaker had it's own character and strenghts and weaknesses, and I'll try to elucidate each in turn.
BESL Series 2 MTWe started listening to the BESL Series 2 MT. I had actually had them at my home for about a week before the meet. I had them setup on some impromptu stands at my home with the tweeters on the outer edge (the tweeters are off center, and can be positioned either to the inside, or the outside, edge of the speakers). I don't have a sub in my 2 channel system, and to be honest the 2 MT's did not sound very good this way. Since they are sealed they have pretty serious bass roll off in my acoustically very large living area. This made them sound thin on the midrange, too emphasized on the lower treble and rolled off on the very top end.
So, I came in to the listening session a bit biased against them because of how they sounded at my place. But after getting them on some good speaker stands and integrating a pair of good subs with them, the sounded MUCH better. From below average to quite a bit above average. But I still thought they sounded somewhat diffuse and with too much empahsis on sibilants. But they were now souding like high end monitors and were a lot more satisfying. They were a little rolled off at the very top of the frequency range, in that room ambiance came through only up to a point, and cymbals sounded more metalic and zingy than shimmering. And ultimate transparency in the midrange was good, but not the best I've heard. Integration with the sub was good, but not the best.
It pretty much stayed that way through several people's audition of their own CD's and music. That is, until Phil switched the speakers so that the tweeters were now located on the inner edge of the speakers. Whoa, that was a huge improvement!! The diffuse sound was now almost completely gone and the imaging and presence of the music was a lot more solid. Even the integration with the subs was a bit better because the speakers sounded a lot fuller and warmer in the lower mids/upper bass. These now went from "good" speakers to "quite good" in my opinion. I was really shocked at how much better they sounded now than when I had them. Just goes to show you that room, setup, and synergy with your equipment is so, so, so important.
Aurum CantusNext up was the Aurum Cantus that Brad brought over. Overall I thought these had an advantage in that the tweeter gave a lot more air and detail to the highs, and the woofer was nicely integrated with it. In fact they were very coherent, which is pretty rare to hear in a woofer and ribbon tweeter based speaker. Unfortunately I also thought they were too bright and fairly nasal sounding. This might have been caused by the fact that we plugged the ports on these speakers in order to integrate them with the subs, so perhaps un-plugged they would have sounded fuller and more pleasing. But we didn't try them that way so I can only report on what I actually heard.
VMPS 626RLast up was the VMPS 626R's w/FST and (I believe) auricaps. We also ran them without bybees at first, then with bybees much later. Honestly I liked them the best of the 3 speakers there, but remember that I have the RM40's at home, so this is the "type" of sound that I'm accustomed to, so take this all with a grain of salt.
I did think they were the smoothest and most transparent speaker we heard today, and the most coherent (listening to "My Love" by Diana Krall, I thought her vocal inflections were tracked much more closely by the bassist when the 626R's were used).
On the downside the sweetspot for best imaging is truly only 1 person wide (although tonal balance, dynamics, and transparency stay remarkably good even off axis). I actually tuned the 626R's to my preferences, and they sounded good by the very end, but that wasn't until the very end of their demo that they sounded best. Most of the demo I had the tweeter a bit too hot, which gave them a bit of a nasal balance and gave cymbals too much presence in the musical mix. On the very last cut we listened to, they finally had a good balance, but I think it was probably too late and everyone had already formed their opinion of them.
BESL again...Finally we hooked up the 2 MT's again to listen to them with the Bybees inline. I thought it was again a marked improvement. With the tweeters in the inside I actually thought they were a bit too warm sounding, a tiny bit "fat" in the mids, and overall a slight bit grainy sounding in absolute terms. With the Bybees inline I thought the lower mids tightened up nicely, the upper mids and lower highs smoothed out nicely, and as a result the very high frequencies were a bit more audible. I thought they had a much tighter "focus" to the sound, and the slight amorphous quality I mentioned before completely disappeared. But that view was certainly not unanamous and I hope others post their viewpoints to the contrary. Overall with the Bybees I thought the 2MT's were a lot closer in overall quality to the 626R's, only missing out on the higher level of transparency and coherence that the 626R's showed. By this time both speakers had really distanced themselves from what we hear of the Aurum Cantus speakers.
Back HomeSo, coming back home I put on my test track on my RM40's just to get a contrast to what I'd been hearing all afternoon. Ah, there was the incredible transparency, effortless dynamics, perfectly integrated bass, and incredibly nuanced presentation that I've become spoiled by. I'm not saying all this to "brag" about my speakers, but only to point out that my criticisms of the speakers above are only from within this context. If I'd been living with other speakers (like a Dynaudio bookshelf, or B&W, or several others I won't bother naming), then those criticisms would not exist for me. Even as it is, I thought that the 2 MT and the 626R's both did far, far more right than they did wrong. In other words their strengths far outweight their weaknesses.
As a final note about the speakers, what I heard today from the Series 2 MT makes me very curious about the Series 5 MTM because the woofer in the 5 MTM I know is very, very transparent, and having dual woofers by itself will tend to increase transparency and dynamics, which were 2 of the main areas I thought the 2 MT could be improved upon.
As a final note about the meeting, thanks to Mike for hosting it, but the rest of you bozos have seriously questionable taste in music (except for Brad)!
