Just a quick update, I discovered a problem with the coax driver in my left speaker - it had a pretty large suckout between 900hz and 2.5khz. At first I thought it was a room effect, or maybe just a break in effect, but it persisted. So, out comes the Earthworks M23 microphone and the HOLM Impulse measurement software. Taking some gated response measurements, it's clearly not the room. I swapped the crossovers between the left and right speakers, and it definitely was not the crossover. The driver itself was the culprit. I contacted Danny and a replacement was sent post haste!
Now that both speakers are up and running well, I can say a few preliminary words on imaging and soundstaging. From a qualitative standpoint they image better and more precisely than any other speaker I've owned. There are a few areas that really stand out.
First, depth. In a setup like mine (speakers wide apart along a long wall), it's easy to get width but hard to get depth. While not the deepest soundstage I've ever heard anywhere, they are certainly the deepest (by far) I've been able to achieve in my room. Listening to Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto, the soloist is placed a couple of feet behind the speakers, while the rest of the orchestra is about another six to ten feet behind her (Kyung Wha Chung with the London Symphony Orchestra, with Andre Previn conducting on a 24/96 Decca Legends remaster).
Second, ambiance. There's a sense of being in a very large hall, which a lot of players assembled to fill out the different orchestral sections. I think this is a combination of a few things. First is the open baffle midrange. Second is the bass foundation that 4 subwoofers give you. Finally, there's the tonal separation that the P Audio driver is excellent at (especially when driven by an all-tube upstream setup). Add it all up, and you get a tremendous sense of open space in recordings done in a large venue.
Third, movement. When a soloist is playing (a violin, for example), you get a very nice sense of the physical movement of their bow/violin/arm/body. This is really quite cool and I've very, very rarely heard this with any speaker at all, and never in my own home. It creates a greater sense of the physicality of the musicians that are creating the music, so that the whole endeavor is more "human" and less like abstract notes floating in space. Very, very cool.
Fourth, Scale. Listening to a solo piano recording (such as Pollini playing Beethoven), you get a sense of a physically large instrument with a very large sounding board and jackhammer dynamics as well as excellent legato capabilities.
So, speaking from strictly an imaging standpoint, I've only heard 2 speakers that are equal or better than what I'm hearing now - the Gedlee Abbey's that Mike Galusha owns, and has set into an awesome dedicated listening room, and a pair of Excelarrays that Gary has also put into a very nice dedicated listening room. Of course, the tweeters alone on the Excelarray's are more expensive than the ENTIRE KIT for the V2's.
Of course, the speakers aren't even close to being fully broken in yet, so I'm very excited about what is still to come.
