I finally had a little more time to play with these this afternoon, and I did some listening to check out dynamic range and power handling. (Yes, that means I got to play them loud).
The speakers are still crowded into my living room and I’m still doing nearfield listening, because there’s nothing else I can do, given the speaker position. So I’m not going to talk about imaging. I still don’t know how well they will image (except that’s it’s going to be pretty damned well, I can tell that much already.) Nor have I gone through the frequency response drill with them. All that’s going to wait another month, when (in theory) the Soundroom From Hell will be complete enough to take in speakers.
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There are plenty of high end speakers that have delicacy and precision, but no real power. I’m not just talking about volume – almost anything can get loud. I’m talking about that annoyingly overused word, Authority. The ability to get the gut involved in the music, to pull you in, using precision and strength.
Maggies (ahem. that's
Magneplans, darling) and a variety of electrostatics come to mind as beautiful speakers which don’t quite do this. It’s not just a feature of thin panel designs, either – I’ve heard a set of Krell speakers, machined out of a chunk of aluminum, that had no power to grab the soul, no matter how much you played with the volume.
I already know the RM/x has precision in spades, from my last test. You only have to try well recorded piano and human voice on them once to know that aspect is covered. But how about some overwrought, emotional music? What about something that demands both precision and power?
I considered putting on Scheherazde (Rimsky-Korsakov), but that takes a certain mood and I didn’t think I was going to enjoy an orchestra, under volume, planted in the nearfield. I’ll save that for the finished stereo room, with a few more feet between the speakers and myself.
So I put on Polia’hu, from Winter Solstice 5. I wish this album were better recorded, but it’s a collection of artists, which means a collection of engineers, which means you get what you get. The Polia’hu cut is a mixture of echo-treated nylon string guitar and plucked piano. Winston delights in the left side of the keyboard, and I don’t know how the album was miked, but it sounds like a microphone was practically parked on the lowest piano string. The result is a deep, rich, rolling, space-filling sound, not very piano-like, that sounds dull on weak speakers and earthshaking on good ones.
Especially at 100dbC @1.5m, which is more or less how I was listening.
And the RM/x were
absolutely up to this. Not being a professional reviewer (and not having much time for those folk), I’m not going to slather adjectives on with a trowel. But with the preamp dialed to 0db gain and the subwoofer off, the room filled with a rich, powerful, and yeah, authoritive rendition of a piano going where pianos rarely go. There was absolutely no sign of strain, no sloppiness, no bloat whatsoever. Every quivering harmonic came though, and at the same time the speakers flawlessly rendered the higher pitches, finger-squeaks and creaks of the guitar. Note that I have not bi-amped these speakers. Plenty of speakers would exhibit traces of confusion with this combination of sounds, and would lose their grip on some aspect of the music. The RM/x just stood there and asked for more. I stopped turning it up when the meter got to 110db – the speakers still weren’t straining, I was at the limit of what I could personally process, and I’d proved what I wanted to prove - and anyway, the radiators in my living room were starting to rattle, despite the cardboard I’d rammed in.
For grins I cut in the subwoofer, set the crossover to about 35Hz, and ran it again. The sound did not improve, and in fact I had to turn the sub almost all the way to zero to get close to the previous richness of sound. There is music in which I think a sub is an advantage, even with the RM/x, but in their particular piece, which is extremely open (just two instruments and a very simple arrangement of tones), the RM/x handled it cleaner, and much more emotionally intensely, alone. (I should note that the sub is an Earthquake Supernova, which I don’t consider real audiophile material. I have it mostly for movies. I’d planned to go with it until I saved up money, and then look into a Hsu or a VMPS sub – and now I’m not sure I’m going to need to.)
Any doubts I had about RM/x and power, or bass handling, are now put to rest. It’s all there, possibly not razor flat (I won’t know about that for another month), but it’s entirely capable of reaching as far as it needs to, to accurately reproduce any music you want to hear.
Dymanic range was also a treat. I know there are speakers out there that go to pieces if you play a deep powerful note and a complex series of quiet higher notes, even when the amp is providing plenty of clean power. Usually I suspect cabinet resonance or a flawed crossover in these cases, at least if I know the amp is entirely capable. I haven’t heard anything better than the RM/x in this area; Brian clearly understands cabinets and crossovers. If memory serves (and after 6 months it might not), these beasts managed this trick better than $40,000 Dali speakers – one of the few rich-man’s audiophile speakers I’ve heard that I think is worth the pricetag.
So. In theory, sometime around June 15th, I'll have my soundroom functioning – a 25x28x12’ space, with ceiling treatments, wall treatments, dedicated power, and all the soundproofing in the construction I could afford. (The finished floor won’t go in until December, unless I learn to install it myself, so it won’t be photograph-worthy, but I should be well on my way to having room nodes solved by then.) Party at my place (in Massachusetts)? Bring good music, your favorite better-than-thou interconnects, and your chosen amps and preamps. And especially a TacT room correction system, if anyone’s got one, because I’m curious. We’ll make a day of it.
