BackgroundI have 2 systems, and the second one is really a function of my divorce a couple of years ago. Before that, I only had 1 system, in my dedicated room downstairs, a 2 channel setup where I also incorporate a projector and screen to also do HT down there. It’s actually a great room, if a touch on the small side. I have been happily running the GR Research Super 7’s down there for several years.
After the clusterfck that was the divorce, I decided that I deserved a decent quality audio system in my main living area, because I work from home and listening to the downstairs system through a concrete wall was no fun at all. So I put together a nice system using a pair of Klipsch Forte III’s, which I then hotrodded to an extreme level of performance thanks to Danny at GR Research. Details of my trip and the really incredible heights we were able to get that speaker to are detailed here.
I lived with that system for 2 years and I realize now that the Forte III’s we birthed might just actually be the best performing Klipsch speakers ever! But I eventually became dis-satisfied with them. Why? Because of the ROOM. My room is a closed off corner on one side and an open wall on the other side. Any box based speaker is going to struggle in an imperfect room like mine. Even though I built out a ton of room treatment and I was able to use quite sophisticated EQ on the bass (thanks Roon!), it just never could overcome the lumpy bass loading. So, when I got a nice tax return check one year due to being out of work for several months AND being able to claim my daughter as a dependent for once, I was like “Screw this, I’m getting some high performance OB speakers”. Shout out to Mike Galusha and to Steve Stone, where I got to hear at their places some speakers that were similar enough to the X3’s that I was relatively certain the X3’s would be a winner sound quality wise.
Systems UsedDownstairs:GR Research Super 7’s ($20k retail with stock parts, but I upgraded the wiring and all crossover parts to the tune of an additional $4k)
Nimak Pure Silver speaker wire
Dennis Had Inspire SEP Monoblocks
Hapa Audio RCA Quiescence Silver cables
Custom Tube preamp using 6SN7 splitter and 6BL7 driver tubes
iFi iDSD Pro (rewired with pure silver wire and pure silver RCA connectors; also using an overbuilt aftermarket linear power supply)
Hapa Aero USB cable
Roon ROCK server built by me (also way overbuilt, including an even more over the top power supply than the iFi DAC uses)
Custom Counterwoven braided power cables
PS Audio P5
Bybee AC Power Strip
Upstairs:Spatial Audio X3’s (replacing the hotrodded Klipsch Forte III’s)
Nimak Pure Silver speaker wire
Amps used were - TAL Type 45 SET (2 watts); Elekit 2a3 (4 watts); Elekit 300b (8 watts); Almaro A318b (18 watts); custom EL84 PP (12 watts); custom KT66/EL34/6L6GC amp (40 watts); First Watt BA3 (solid state, 25 watts)
Custom Counterwoven braided power cables
PS Audio P5
Bybee AC Power Strip
Music PreferencesI’m about 80% classical, and the rest evenly distributed between pop, blues, jazz, world music and electronica.
PositioningThe X3’s will sound good no matter where you put them. They have a wonderfully even off-axis power response. I’ve even run them very close to the front wall (about 18 inches) and they sounded fine.
But what about optimal position, you ask? Well, in my room it was about 5 feet out into the room, a bit closer together than I’ve run most of my other speakers, and pointed straight ahead. This is different than my usual setup. Usually I have the speakers farther apart and then toed in to that the tweeters point at my shoulders. And the X3’s sounded fine like that in my space too. But on a lark I tried them pointed strait out and the soundstage really expanded in my room. Then I tried them a bit closer together (again, on a lark) and the soundstage ‘fill’ improved quite a bit in my space. I suspect a lot of this is a result of my VERY imperfect room. If I had a room with regular dimensions and even loading (and no giant dining room table between them), my old way of position might still be best. But really, no matter WHERE you put them, they always sounded great. These are the least fussy speakers I've owned in a while.
OB’s and BassOK, quick lesson on why OB speakers RULE in the real world. If you have a dedicate room with excellent dimensions and the ability to do aggressive treatments (including giant bass traps), then an OB speaker is probably not necessary. I’ve heard several systems where box speakers absolutely crush it in a dedicated room like that. But my space is NOT a perfect space like that. Haha, not even close! And I found out with my last speakers, even very very good box speakers will struggle in a space like mine.
Why? Mostly it’s due to uneven room loading, particularly in the BASS. If you don’t have a truly full range speaker, then it’s not quite as bad. But if you want full range sound, then OB is by far the best solution, IME. Because a box speaker produces bass like it’s a pulsing sphere. Which means that it creates lumpy room modes in all 3 dimensions. And it pressurizes the room in an unpleasant way. OB speakers (because they are dipole speakers) fire acoustic energy forward (in phase) and backward (out of phase) which results in bass cancellation to the sides. In a real world (imperfect) room like mine, this is a BLESSING. It not only removes the unpleasant bass pressurization, it also removes one of the major room modes by never exciting it in the first place. Very elegant solution to a normally intractable problem!
EfficiencyHigh efficiency (HE) speakers suck. They sound screechy and in your face and are just fatiguing to listen to. After all, all the pro speakers and stadium speakers and sound reinforcement speakers are all HE and that’s how they sound, so HE must suck across the board, right? RIGHT?????
Nope. HE speakers get a bad rap because of these common experiences we all have. But my Super 7 speakers down stairs are very HE (97db efficient) and they sound absolutely beautiful. I discovered the same thing when listening to my buddy Mike’s system (Customer speakers using the AMT tweeter, 98db efficient) and also my Forte’s (after hotrodding) had a beautiful midrange and highs and they were 99db efficient.
In fact, once you have an HE speaker designed and built to audiophile standards, they do certain things that lower efficiency speakers just can’t replicate. There’s a liveness to the sound that gets you MUCH closer to what actual live music sounds like. And not just rock music. I mostly go to the symphony, solo piano recitals and chamber music recitals, so I have a very good working knowledge of what live, acoustic, unamplified music sounds like. HE speakers (when done well) get me much closer to the type of subtle micro dynamics that are embedded in a live performance. Not to mention the big dynamic swings. I mean, you haven’t LIVED until you’ve heard a full orchestra blasting out Mahler at full cry on a high performance HE speaker. Just insane. Low efficiency speakers round this off and smooth it over, even with very powerful amps driving them.
Active BassActive bass is another thing I have learned that I will never want to live without. My Super 7’s downstairs have active bass and that’s what originally got me hooked on lower powered amps. I was able to run a bunch of really beautiful single ended designs down there because of that. Amps that I would have NEVER been able to run with prior speakers (most of which were based around Scandinavian drivers like Scan-Speak, Dynaudio, etc…). I liked tubes, but a 40 watt amp was as low as I could go in power with prior speakers because small amps just didn’t have enough grunt or power to drive a full range speaker properly.
And the X3’s have active bass, so that means my lower powered amps only have to drive the signal from 90hz and up, leaving the really difficult bass part to the dedicated 300 watt digital amp. Perfect!
Burn In I’ve burned in a LOT of new gear during my time being an audiophile. And NOTHING has taken as long as the X3’s. Most gear (even the very high end stuff) takes between 100 and 250 hours to fully burn in, IME. But not the X3’s. Noooooo, they are much worse. I noticed major changes in sound at 100 hours, then again at 200 hours and then finally (and thankfully) a final major shift at 500 hours. 500 hours! That’s insane. And believe me, for some of that time during burn in I was VERY unhappy with the sound. It just sounded muffled and dull. I thought I’d made a big mistake buying these speakers blind. But at 500 hours they bloomed and now I love their sound. So, my advice - if you’re underwhelmed when you first get them, be patient. They will open up (and smooth out) over time.
Listening Notes:Pass designed First Watt BA3The amp I did most of the burn in with because it’s solid state and I won’t burn through any tubes using it 24/7 for burn in duties. It also happens to be a really excellent sound solid state amp, in fact it’s my favorite SS amp ever. Probably because it sounds closer to a tube amp than anything else I’ve heard. One cool feature is you have the ability to open up the amp and dial up or dial down the amount of even order harmonics from the P3 pot that Nelson helpfully designed in to the amp. I’ve got mine dialed all the way up and this is how it sounds best with most systems.
With the X3 I hooked everything up on that first day (after removing the Klipsch Forte III’s from the system) and it was like a miracle, all the bass problems that had been driving me absolutely crazy with the box speakers was absolutely GONE with the X3. And that type of elevation in performance was true in every other category I listen for. The X3’s weren’t just a small step up, it was clear right off the bat that the X3’s were in a different class all-together.
Type 45 amp (2 watt SET)Moving on to the Tube Audio Labs (TAL) Type 45 SET amp. 2 watts. Yes, you read that right - 2 watts. How would the X3 do with a truly ‘flea watt” amp? Short answer is that it sounded great. It did NOT sound like a 2 watt amp. In fact it sounded even better on the X3’s (at 97db efficient) than it sounded on the Forte’s (at 99db efficient). My theory is that it’s the powered bass section of the X3’s that let them pull ahead with this amp. It’s like you get the creamy goodness of the midrange beauty of the SET amp, while at the same time having a punishing bass response due to the 300 watt self-powered bass section. For volume, I could push it to low 80’s continuous and low 90’s peak (which is actually quite loud for me), but if I pushed it any higher than that the amp just ran out of steam.
2a3 Elekit (4 watt SET)And moving up to 4 watts with the X3’s means you do NOT run out of steam anymore. Man this amp is a great match with the X3’s. Clear, punchy, dynamic and way more powerful sounding than it’s measly 4 watts would indicate.
300b Elekit (8 watt SET)Same amp as the 2a3 above, but it can also run 300b tubes, switching over you’d think the 300b would sound just like the 2a3 but just more power, since it’s 8 watts. Right? Right? Nope. VERY different sound. Very lower-midrange centric. Very rich and beautiful. This was my favorite amp with my Forte III’s, but the X3’s are already a pretty rich sounding speaker in my setup, so the 300b sound is a bit too much of a good thing.
Almarro A315B (18 watt SET)Ah, back to another amp that’s a really good match with the X3’s. Everything I liked about the 2a3 amp is here, but bigger, better and more powerful. Not as much clarity and see-through transparency, but it makes up for it with tone that is absolutely saturated with emotion. Definitely my favorite amp so far.
Custom EL84 (12 watts Push-pull)Oh boy, now we are cooking with gas! This amp is by far the best match of anything so far. You know how sometimes you drop in a new piece of gear and it just brings everything to the next level? Well here you go. Only 12 watts, but it’s super percussive and dynamic. Transparency is incredible and dynamics are off the charts. This amp really plays to the strengths of the X3’s - fast, open, dynamic sound with an incredible soundstage.
Custom KT66/6L6GC/EL34 (40 watts Push-pull)After the great sound from the EL84 amp I was expecting even better things from the KT66/EL34 amp I have. But alas it was a step down. Don’t get me wrong, it still sounded very good, great clarity and tons of detail. But also a bit bright and a touch of clattery sound, particularly on solo piano.
Edit to add - later on I swapped out the Psvane EL34’s for a quad of NOS Matsushita 6l6-GC black plates and these sounded MUCH better with the X3’s. So sometimes you don’t even need to swap amps, just trying out some different tubes will get you a great match to your speakers.
Overall Impressions of the X3’s SoundLet me say that the X3 with every amp never sounded like anything less than a world class speaker. Within that overall space of excellence, it’s pretty obvious that the speakers are something of chameleons. They took on (and clearly showed) the character of each amp. This is exactly what you want in a high end speaker - Utterly transparent and true to the signal being fed to them.
Tonally I’d say the speakers lean ever so slightly to the warm/beautiful side, instead of cold/analytic side that so many other very-transparent speakers do as a trick to make you think they are more resolving than they actually are. This is great, because it gives a very clear window into every recording, but without the icepick-to-the-ears I get with other high resolution speakers that lean toward cold/analytical. Very smart voicing on Clayton’s part.
Soundstage and imaging - god tier. Nuff said.
Bass is very percussive and ‘bouncy’. If you listen to something with standup bass it grooves and jams, there’s real swing to the presentation. If you listen to something like the opening to Die Walkure by Wagner, the throbbing cellos and double basses are downright menacing. And for modern pop like Billie Eilish, the bass literally vibrates every loose thing in my entire room. No sub. Very impressive.
Mids are the one area you MUST be patient with during burn in. Before they are fully burned in the mids sound quite muffled and closed off. I had some times of serious doubt about these speakers before full burn in. But after 500 hours, the mids blossom. And now they are a beautiful, rich, emotional dense experience every time I turn on the system. I was a bit skeptical that any cone driver could fully keep up with the AMT tweeter (which is spectacular), but Clayton managed to pull it off. Kudos.
Highs, well the Beyma AMT in OB configuration is the best tweeter in the world. Or at least the best I’ve ever heard. And I’m pretty sure I’ve heard all of them at this point
These tweeters are so open, so effortless, so completely free of distortion artifacts that soundstage images just float in space, and harmonics of instruments give everything tons more flavor because they are so true to life.
Overall driver integration is extremely well done. And the directivity is so well focused and so even that it really lessens the speaker/room interaction. I told my buddy Jason that it’s like listening to a giant pair of headphones, they have that level of transparency and intimacy. Well, it’s like headphones, only if headphones could have massively percussive bass and a gigantic soundstage that fills the entire room, haha.
Comparisons to Other Top SpeakersSo after the mountain of praise I’ve heaped on them, are they perfect speakers? Well no, there is no perfect speaker. For my own preferences here’s my top 5, if we limit it to current production speakers only:
GR Research NX-Otica (with dual OB servo subs)
Spatial Audio X3
GR Research NX-Treme
Pure Audio Project 15’s (with AMT driver)
Spatial Audio X2
If we expand the list to speakers no longer in production, I’d add the Line Force Line Arrays I heard at Danny’s a couple years ago, and also my Super 7’s that I run in my downstairs system.
Here’s the thing. With ALL these speakers you are splitting hears, because ALL of them are basically god-tier performance. So if I say something like “The NX-Otica image the best of the bunch”, or “The Super 7’s have the best, fastest, most resolving midrange driver”, or “The X3’s are the the most percussive, powerful and rhythmically propulsive”, those are all true statements, but those are more statements about the flavor and personality of the speaker, and not a statement about which one is ‘better’. They are all very tightly clustered together in overall performance.
Final ThoughtsThese speakers are a masterclass in speaker design. Bravo Clayton, Bravo.
