I was finally able to sit down and do some serious listening to my Abbeys. I've been holding off on this review, hoping my center channel Nathan would get here, but decided not to wait any longer. I'll just do a 2
channel review for now, and come back later to add in my comments on the center and theater experience later. So for now, I'll limit myself to music and 2 channel listening. Here is a shot of my dedicated home theater:
First lets start with where I'm comming from. I've always enjoyed a neutral, uncolored speaker. In the 90's and early 2000's, I was a staunch Paradigm fan. I've never liked bright speakers, and horns have in the
past really turned me off. About 4 years ago, I was looking to upgrade and found the AV123 products, and bought into the RS1000's. After lots of reseach, they seemed to compete well with the upper end of the paradigm line, for a fraction of the cost.
As is always the case with us Audio junkies, good was still not good enough. I loved the midbass slam of the Rockets, and they did have decent imaging, but I wanted more. I've always been a imaging slut, and while I loved some of the open baffle designs, I also love home theater. I'm probably 60/40 HT to 2 channel mix and I wanted the best of both worlds. Incredible imaging, and the ability to kick me in the chest in movies and certain kinds of music. I wanted my cake, and to be able to eat it too as they say.
So, I started out on my quest. I looked at a lot of the OB designs as well as the Line Source arrays. I was ready to spend up to 8k on a set of speakers that would hopefully last me a good 10+ years. After a lot of research, I kept hearing about these speakers Earl Geddes was making, and read through all his research. Needless to say, I had to listen to them. I found a local guy who had the Summas near me and gave a listen.
They were very good, but the space and setup was horrible. I took a leap of faith really, thinking if they could sound that good in those conditions, they'd be great in mine. So I plunked down my deposit and settled in for the wait. About 3 months later, they were ready. I picked the Red option, because my theater is Red. Hindsight, I should have done black, but oh well. They are unique. The new Abbey pic on Gedlee.com is actually one of my Abbeys.
When I finally got home from a 5 week trip overseas, I tore into the boxes. Sadly, the Nathan's driver came loose in shipping and had to be returned to be repaired. Still waiting for that to come back 2 months later.
Anyhow, that's the preable, here is the review.
I'm no reviewer, so I'm not going to try to use all the fancy adjectives some folks use. Instead, I'll try to explain what I mean through the tracks I've listen to and what I think I hear. I've got about a 150 hours on them all now.
Gear wise, I'm using the Marantz 7002,and an Acurus 200x3 to drive the abbeys. I'm using an old crumby Sony 300 disk changer as the deck, but using the dacs in the Marantz. Nothing fancy really.
I do have the Abbeys integrated with a Chase Home Theater 18.2 Sub. The Abbeys and sub integated very well. Here is a shot of the FR I took with XTZ:
So, as I settled into listening, I wanted to listen to a wide variety of music to see where these speakers shine.
First up, Manheim Steamroller Classical Gas. Great accoustic / instrumentals, and lots of subtle detail, plus well recorded. Wow! Amazing soundstage, I've never heard it this wide before. Probably triple the width of the Rockets. It feels like the players are about 5-6 feet in front of me. I almost want to reach out to touch them like you do in a good 3d movie.
Next I put on Classics of the Silver Screen by the Cininati Pops Orchestra. I figured I'd see how an orchestra sounds. What struck me immediately was how I could tell appart the various instruments. I could hear the violins off to the left, the cellos to the right. I've never been able to really do that before. While my previous speakers presented a nice image in the center, this went well beyond that by precisely locating where the various instruments were located. Very cool.
Ok, let's try some Jazz. Quincy Jones, back on the block. Very well recorded disk, great for testing out suble detail in speakers. Again, very wide and deep sounds stage. The vocals really surprised me at how some reverberant some of them were. Vibrate your chest kind of feeling. Did I mention these guys like to play loud? Of course, as a pro design with high efficency, I expected that, but it was fun to turn in us and not loose any detail. The midbass was really punchy, with excellent attack and decay. My room is well treated behind the speakers, and in all the corners, and that certainly helps, but the Abbeys blow the rockets away here. I'm sure it has to do with the CD design. Bottom line, Jazz sounds awesome, and with the dynamics of these speakers you can hear Quincy wispering while the trupets are screaming, and nothing is lost.
Let's move on to folk music. I picked Indigo Girls, Strange Fire. Lots of accoustic guitar, and harmony. I wanted to see how these guys did with female vocals. I had never realized the singer wasn't in the center of the sound stage before. She's actually just to the right of center, and the harmony singer is just to the left. It was fun to hear their harmony blend back and forth. Never had heard that before. I'm hearing lots of subtle designs, sighs, intakes of breath that were lost to me before. Again, pretty neat.
Now for some good old rock and roll. I'm a child of the 80's, so I like to listen to some good, if not well recorded tunes pretty often. I threw in Heart's Greatest hits. I wasn't expecting much, since most of these mainstream CD's were poorly recorded. Sure enough, I notice in the Intro to Crazy on You, there are actually 2 different accoustical guitars in there, not just one...sneaky.
Then I threw in Bon Jovi (I know, guilty pleasure) and listen to some of his greatest hits. It had that rock concert, first row, kick you in the chest kind of feeling. I could hear some of the weaknesses in the recording studio, but not so much that it distracted me from my enjoyment. On a few songs like Wanted Dead of Alive, you could even hear where they mixed it right to give you some spacial presence.
I popped in Seal because I love that guy's Baritone vocals,but the recording was really bad, and I could hear it. One issue you could find is that it makes your poor recordings unlistenable.
I also tried Roger Waters Pro's and Cons of Hitchhiking. They did a lot of spacial mixing to give you an enhanced sense of soundstage depth and width. I was pretty phenomenal. It's also laced with a tremendous amount of wispers and comments I hadn't actually heard before.
So, overall, from a 2 channel persepctive, I think these are incredibly revealing speakers. They paint a sonic picture that makes me feel like I'm really a part of the music, and that I could almost reach out and touch the musicians. The sound stage is both very wide, and very deep, and provides a level of separation that I've never heard before. To say I'm happy with my purchase is an understantment at best. I do want to point out thought that it's important to realize Earl is a small operation. It's either just him by himself of he has some parttime help. You'll likely be waiting some time to get your speakers (mine took 3 months) and if there are issues, it could be a while before they are addressed (still waiting 2 months later for my Nathan to be returned). Earl is responsive to questions, and such, but his bandwidth is limited. Better to be aware, and go into it eye wide open. The speakers are well worth the wait, but instant gratification types should look elsewhere.
Here a few more shots of the Abbbeys up close.
Edit: Trying to get rid of weird line breaks
