A local Denverite (Gary) has a pair of the Excelarray's from Selah Audio, and was gracious enough to allow a total stranger (me) to come over and have a listen to them. Thanks to Brad V for hooking us up, I'm very glad I went.
Gary has the one thing I lust after, a dedicated listening room. Man I'm jealous of you guys that have this. One day I will. But back to Gary's system. It is very nice, and very simple - an Accuphase DP-65 CD player feeding directly in to a Spectron Musician amp, which powers the 2 excelarrays. Quality stuff. Cabling was XLO speaker wire, and a braided silver interconnect with XLR connectors.
So, I'm sure everyone is dying to know what I thought of them. I thought they were excellent. I mean, really excellent. With 2 reservations, I thought they were among the top 5 speakers I've heard, ever. Let me describe what I found imressive about them before getting to my couple of reservations. I though they were amazingly dynamic. Incredibly dynamic. Their level of detail was stupendous. Their recreation of ambiance and "space" was among the very best I've ever heard. Soundstage was likewise extremely impressive. But, the most impressive was the blend between the woofers and the ribbon driver. It was absolutely seamless. This absolutely the most coherent speaker I've heard that uses a ribbon tweeter and cone mids. Kudos to the designer, he did a perfect job on this.
These are not laid back, lush, rounded, seductive speakers, they are get up and boogie, grab you by the seat of your pants, get you immediately involved in the music type of speakers. Which leads me to one of my reservations about their sound - they were bright. I'm not sure if it was the speakers themselves, the associated equipment, or the room (which had a bit of slap echo), but they definitely were agressive sounding at tipped up toward the upper mids/lower treble area. They might have sounded a little more balanced if they played deeper in the bass (which leads me to my second reservation). They play upper bass extremely well, and some midbass, but the midbass is not as powerful as the upper bass. The low bass was MIA, but I gather that is by design. I think a pair of subs might balance out his sound a bit, and some room treatment could go a long way to getting rid of the brightness I heard.
So, I know the next question everyone is going to ask is "how do they compare to the RM40's". A valid question, but one I will answer only with the caveats that his system and setup are very different than mine, and that the following are only my IMPRESSIONS. To really, truly evaluate both speakers fairly, a side-by-side comparison would have to be done, and done over an extended period, so that there wasn't a bias toward whichever speaker the listner was "used to".
Given those caveats, I would say it's a tie. The Excelerray's did some things better than the 40's, and the 40's did some things better than the Excelerrays. The area that the Excelarray's were better is in the lower mids area, they tracked dynamics better than the 40's do, so that the lower strings of a plucked guitar really pop out at you, and male vocals like Johnny Cash sound even more grizzled than via the 40's. The area I think the 40's are better is the ribbon mids and tweeters are sweeter and smoother sounding, and they play down to low bass with power. I also thought the Excelarrays created "space" and soundstage depth better while the 40's have better width on the soundstage, but I'm almost certain that this is a room issue, less that a speaker issue, since his speakers were about 5 feet from the back wall, and mine are 1 foot from the back wall, while I have more open area to the sides (see why I lust after a dedicated listening room
) Areas that I thought both speakers were even - detail is amazing through both speakers, easily 2 of the most transparent speakers I've listened to. Overall dynamics are amazing on both speakers, but then again, that's what you get when you have a lot of drivers working together. Cohesiveness is just about perfect on both speakers, you really don't hear seperate drivers playing, it's a seamless integrated sound.
So, as you can tell, I really enjoyed listening to his system. That snap and pop it had to the lower mids coupled with it's already impressive dynamic capabilities everywhere else, made it all (the music) sound very impressive!
Other fun stuff - I brought over some of my gear to give a listen to, and boy am I glad I did. Gary asked me to bring over my AVA Transcendance 7 preamp, and I also took along my Mensa DIO, the Scott Nixon DAC, 2 runs of Bybee'd Nitro's, and the Bolder bybee'd Power Bar.
We hook up the AVA and the Mensa at the same time, and I have to say the sound was noticably better, more relaxed, fuller bodied, and more dynamic. I was shocked. We thought it might be because we made 2 changes at once, so we hooked up the Accuphase to one input of the AVA and the Mensa to the other, so we could do some real time switching while playing music. With the Accuphase hooked up to the AVA, the sound was better than without the AVA in the system, that is certain. More body to the sound, deeper soundstage, but without giving up any transparency or detail. Very nice. Then we switched back and forth between the Mensa and the Accuphase a few times, and it became apparent that the Mensa was a bit more full bodied, slightly more dynamic, greater soundstage depth, and a more natural sound. We were BOTH shocked by this. I mean, the Accuphase is a damn fine player, and I never, ever expected the Mensa to even equal it, let alone surpass it in a few areas. I would have been perfectly content if the Mensa was "close" to the Accuphase. Needless to say I'm ecstatic now.
And the AVA was the other big eye opener. I know it is a good pre compared to other pre's I've heard, but for it to not give up any transparency, to lose no details at all, when compared to NO preamp, that is truly amazing. I think Gary was mighty impressed with this little pre too.
Next, we added in the Scott Nixon DAC, which is a PITA since we have to reverse the speaker leads to do it. After a couple of songs, it was obvious it did the "liquid midrange" tube thing very well, but it quashed dynamics, rounded transients, vieled detail, and was a bit opaque compared to both the Mensa and the Accuphase. It is a "nice" sounding unit, but it is certainly colored and less than fully transparent. Plus, there was a slight band of brightness to the sound that wasn't present w/the Mensa or the Accuphase.
Then we played with serveral combinations and permutations of the M80's and the bybee'd nitro's to various gear, and came up with the conclusion that the nitro was smoother and sweeter, and the M80 was more forward and had stronger bass.
Then we tried the Bolder Power Strip hooked up to his Accuphase directly driving the Spectron amp, but in his system it did not make much of a difference in sound - his power must be pretty good/clean, while in my system the power bar makes a nice difference in sound w/my very crappy AC.
That pretty much sums it up, if we're very lucky maybe Gary will happen by to offer his thoughts (but I'm not sure if he knows the address for AC). All in all it was a very fun afternoon. I invited Gary to come over to my place next Saturday, so maybe we'll have a Spectron vs FetVALVE amp comparison to post. . .
