Fedex called me this morning and asked if someone could be home to take delivery of a couple of packages at about 2:00PM. I said absolutely!
I left work around 1:15 and anxiously awaited the expected arrival. The speakers arrived about 3:00 and the delivery man even apologized for being late! He also was kind enough to set them inside the door for me.
When I have more time and can figure out how, I will probably post some pictures, but I wanted to take a moment and post some initial thoughts while they are fresh in my mind.
As many others have stated, the qualtiy of the workmanship is outstanding, and the speakers are beautiful pieces of furniture. The only thing that is really kind of disappointing is that the goal was to match the oak entertainment center and tables we bought earlier this year to make it look like the speakers were built at the same time. But, they really don't match. They are darker and redder. They will probably work fine as contrasting pieces of furniture; they just were not what we were expecting.
We sent Jim a shelf from the entertainment center to use as a guide and I know he really had a dickens of a time matching the finish because he told me what should have been an easy job turned out not to be. He even had to start over on a new set of speakers because he really did not like the results at all the first time around. These babies took a little over four months from start to finish.
Enough of that. Now to the initial listening impressions. These SongTowers replaced a pair of 15-20 year old Boston Acoustics T-830 3 way speakers that we have enjoyed over the years.
First we played parts of Jim's demo CD on the old speakers. Then I set up the SongTowers and played the demo CD again. Two things were immediately apparent.
1. The bass on the SongTowers is very impressive. Clean, crisp, and pretty powerful. The T-830s sounded bloated and tubby in comparison.
2. The sound seems to be clearer from the SongTowers. We noticed this within the first couple of tracks from Jim's CD when we could hear a percussion instrument much more clearly.
The T830s are labeled as 8 ohm speakers that are 90 or 91 db efficient but I did not have to turn up the volume at all when I hooked up the SongTowers. If anything, they seemed to be a little louder than the Bostons.
We also played around with the Large and Small settings on our Yamaha RX-V863 receiver. (I have two 15" Rythmik subwoofers). The Bostons sounded better in small mode but with my current settings, the SongTowers sound better set up as large.
My college age daughter was very impressed with the sound from the SongTowers, and my wife asked if the voices always came from the center channel. She was surprised when I told her that nothing was coming from the center channel. The imaging from the SongTowers clearly beat the Bostons hands down.
I've been listening (casually really), for about the last 4 or 5 hours now. At one time I wondered if the higher frequencies sounded just a tad bright or harsh but I think now that was probably in the recording. Also, we like Ronan Tynan but on one song on one of his albums he sounds a bit sharp, and the SongTowers made this even more apparent.
Although these are very early impressions at a time when I want to hear a significant difference in order to justify my purchase, the SongTowers do appear to be winners.
Tony
