Part 2:
On to the next track. For fun, I put on Portishead’s Dummy. This song has so much bass it can blow some cheapo speakers. The song also has some interesting strings and the first female voice I would hear from these speakers (though not too high in the register). It produced this song really well because the bass was there. The STs don’t convey that bass. It added a dimension to the song that I would not have absent my subwoofer in the room (if I chose to use a mode that enabled it to be used). The song was otherwise produced masterfully. I could not really fault the speakers for anything on this track. It was great.
The next thing I listened to was basically a plethora of Kathleen Edward’s tunes. She’s an alt-country artist from Ottawa area. I love her sound (and she is pretty nice to look at as well). Again the bass was there, but her voice was a little bit rolled off compared to what I am used to with my current speakers. Was it bad? No. But, I did feel I was missing something when I listened to her sing. I will point out that these speakers did really shine at the beginning of the song “Buffalo” off of Asking for Flowers. If you pay attention, you hear the hammers on the piano falling back into place. Most poor speakers completely miss that detail (in my previous experience). The Spirit-1s nailed that sound.
I then moved on to Damien Rice “Finger Prints Warts and All”. This is a Live EP I discovered because of my intense like of Damien Rice’s sound from 4-5 years ago and Lisa Hannigan’s (his then sidekick) voice. The track Cannonball is a favorite of mine. Rice is an OK guitar player, and hearing him in the opening reveals he has some issues. The Spirit-1s picked this up well. However, “I Remember” exposed some of the detail the speakers miss compared to the ribbon tweeter speakers I have. Hannigan’s voice was good, but I think I lost some of the detail at the top end in her voice. Subtle changes in the voice, not huge issues, but the detail was missing. That being said, I can tell you that they were, far and away, the best sounding non-floor standing speakers I have ever listened to.
I listened to a bunch of other stuff for a few days and then I switched rooms. I want to point out that the Spirit-1s had a HUGE room to fill with bass and it did it admirably. I forgot to mention, I have a 15” Rythmik sub, so I am used to clean accurate bass when I want it.
My wife and I have a small office for us to relax in. I have:
AVA Ultimate 70 (tube amp)
AVA T-8 Tube Preamp
Arcam CD72T
setup in there to listen, but no speakers as of yet. Thus why I jumped on the Spirit-1 trial list. The initial problem wit the speakers was that they are just too big for the space we have there. They are big. Not huge, but big. Until you see speakers in a space, you ar never sure how they will look. Once we got them in the room, we realized they won’t really fit in the places we envisioned. It was going to be tough to use them in the office. Also, the wife didn’t really want those veneer cabinets in that room as she had issues with the cabinet look. Regardless, I hooked them up in the office and listened to the same mix of music. After a little tweaking, pretty much the same sound that I had in the other room.
So what is next you ask? Aimee Mann. I wanted to listen to female voices more (being higher in register). Aimee Mann was the same experience I had with Lisa Hannigan, there was something missing I felt.
At that point, my friend brought over my old pair of Paradigm Studio 20s v.2s that I had sold him 2 years back. Well, that was kind of an eye opening experience. I played a bunch of the stuff that I had listened to previously and determined that the Studio 20s were just not in the same league. They had bass, but they were not even close to as deep, and they had high end, but they were no where near as accurate. Ribbon tweeters had clearly spoiled me. I had forgotten what it was like to listen to speakers without them. This prompted me to hookup my Salk Surrounds and compare them to the Spirit-1s. Again, there was no comparison. I would say that the mid-range and high-end performance was similar, the low end was not even close. The bass of the Spirit-1s made the bass of the Salk Surrounds look like a pair of speakers some guys sold you out of the back of the truck because they “accidently” had too many pairs shipped to them. The bass is just that much better.
I moved on to play Josh Ritter after that, another person I really like. He is an acoustic singer songwriter that has drawn Dylan comparisons for years. His music was reproduced exceedingly well. The prior comparisons really re-centered my expectations and my thoughts. I lost some of my overt ribbon prejuidice there. These speakers just flat out performed well.
We rifled through some jazz and other songs.
Final Impressions
I really grew to enjoy the Spirit-1s. They don’t have the detailed high end of a ribbon tweeter, but they do have bass that I cannot imagine getting out of any other monitor speakers I have listened to, and cannot get out of my SongTowers. They just blew the doors off any other speaker thrown at them.
Bottom line: Great speakers at a great price. The cost isn’t an issue for me, the space is. These speakers produce much better sound than any bookshelf should. I lament a loss of some detail in the top end on these, but the bass increase from these speakers is amazing and resolves one of the issues that I always thought I would have with a monitor speaker. I would buy these for the office if they were smaller. Sigh. What can you do? Please feel free to contact me with questions.
Shawn
