Just today I replied to a PM from a mastering engineer on a pro recording site who asked what I thought of the Timepiece 2.1s so far, since he was considering them along with Lipinskis.
I told him it was a little early to be definitive, given my amplifier situation, but sent him my impressions to date. I thought some of you might be interested in what I had to say, so here's a copy:
Russell,
I was wondering how those SP Timepiece Monitors are working out for you. With only a couple reviews and a little word of mouth, my research shows that these are the best.
What do you think?
Thank you,
XXXXXX
They are really fine speakers, as far as I can tell so far, and do everything I was looking for except one thing, and that is not their fault.
They need much more power than I currently have and so am in the mode of searching for a high power amp that has huge reserves of power. This is a limitation, but one I feel worth the trouble. I bought a pair of Nuforce ref 9SEs and they don't quite have it in the cojones department.
Make no mistake, if you want that sensation of effortlessness at moderately high levels you need a genuine, solid 300 WPC into 8 ohms.
From that perspective there could be an argument made that the Continuum would be a better choice since its impedance is 4 ohms and that would open up the field more for amp selection, since high power into 4 ohms is much more easy to come by and may be arrived at cheaper than same power into 8 ohms.
As they are, though, they are easily the most accurate tonally of any speaker I have heard (haven't heard the Lipinskis, but they have significantly less bass extension).
This accuracy doesn't mean they are not capable of sounding beautiful on worthy material, which is exactly what I was looking for.
Bass is truly superb, too, and mating with my subwoofers was extremely easy to get perfect. Never has it been so instantly obvious when the subs are in correct polarity. I am crossing the subs in at 35 Hz and this has a mostly inaudible, sometimes subtle and occasionally significant effect. Never a detriment. Sweet!
Even without the subs, the bass was the best I have had in this room (which is somewhat optimized for the bass range by design). With the subs (Hsu 10 inch in sonotubes circa 1994) the bass is about perfect. Easy to make mixing and mastering decisions in that area. I find articulate and believable bass extremely elusive and rare (and essential to me) and this was the focus of my speaker selection process and the clincher.
When I asked Bill Roberts (who reviewed them) what he remembers most about the TPs he said "the quality of the bass"
To that I would add "the dynamic articulation". This is revealed in such things as that oh-so-subtle sound of the piano hammer felts just touching the strings in pianissimo sections on solo piano recordings. I have a recording I made 6 years ago where I was trying to capture that, when I played in on the TPs - even with my old amp, a Musical Fidelity A3 CR, one of my first impressions was that now I could clearly hear that I had, in fact, captured it.
Hope this helps.
Russell
