A few months ago I went up to see the Salk Sound Veracity speakers, and last month I went over to Ridge Street Audio to listen to the Sasons.
The Sasons are a beautiful speaker and they sound as good or better than they look as near as I could tell from the room.
I had thought before I visited that they were just an expensive 2 way monitor...I was wrong. They are a medium size nearly full range speaker that plays loud and clean and had wonderful imaging.
I would have liked to have demo'd it in my system, but in talking to Steve Rothermel it seems that my room is not large enough to do them justice.
While I was looking at them, Robert showed me the Cardas Patented binding posts and how they work...it is very cool the way that Ridge Street did the internal to external speaker wire hookup.
This is a speaker where absolutely nothing was left to chance and every little detail was well thought out.
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When I listened to the Salksound Veracity Ht3's, I liked everything about them but the midrange. It was OK, but not as open as the VMPS I am used to.
Since Zybar liked his so well, I decided to give them a try in my system to see if it was the room/system interaction I objected to, or if it was the speaker.
Well, it seems that Jim is sold out of HT3's, but he was kind enough to let me demo a pair of HT1's, that have the same tweeter and midrange. I thought this might give me an idea if the HT3's would work for me, so I agreed.
For the first 2 days, I listened running the HT1's full range and brought my subs underneath at about 70 hz. This was OK, but the midrange was not as clear as I was used to ....to be honest the VMPS has the fastest, cleanest, most air around instruments midrange I have ever heard.
Then I decided to run the HT1's actively XO'd to my subs at 70 hz, freeing up the middriver from having to play the lowest bass. This really cleaned up the midrange..still not as good as the RM40's, but not bad.
IMO, the bass of both speakers, using my memory of the HT3's and the RM40's(since the midbass upgrade to the RM40's) is about the same. The midrange of the VMPS is a bit better, but I prefer vocals and piano's of the HT1/sub combo. HF of both speakers is about the same as well. Slight advantage to the RM40's as far as sonics are concerned.
Strange thing happened while listening to the Salks though. I no longer listened to the music...I got lost in it. It did not do as many things as spectacularly as the 40's, but I had a more emotional connection to the music. In fact after I actively XO'd them to my subs I don't remember a song where I wasn't bobbing my head, tapping my foot or both.
One of the very few things I don't like about the RM40's is that they really dominate a room visually, they are big. The HT1's and I hope by extension the HT3's should not be quite so visually overpowering.
Every HT3 is hand built and veneered a little differently so no two are the same. In addition Jim is more than willing to work with the most anal of us to get the things we want in our speakers...for example, it looks like Ridge Street audio might be doing the internal wiring, and I will use the same Cardas Patented binding posts that are used on the Sason (Thanks Robert). Jim will be using Sonicaps where it makes sense and bypass caps where it makes sense. In addition I have requested the high gloss laquer finish which should give it a tremendous look. I have also ordered the matching HTC center channel.
The veneer I ordered is Waterfall Bubinga with the baffle being a solid piece of plain bubinga as a contrast.
Anyway I thought you guys might be interested on the speakers I was going to.
