A Little "Pre-ramble""Sepang", is my customized VR-9 SE named so after the BMW color (Sepang Bronze) in which she is clad. She's the pair seen in VSA's website AC link. Sepang came into service on Labor Day of 2008. In that time she has served up countless hours of enjoyment for me, my friends and family. As her time comes to a close, I can think of no better way to thank her for her faithful, flawless service than to send her off with a review three years overdue.
Let me get the requisite boring part out of the way. The VR-9 SE is VSA's second model from the top. It is a 6 way loudspeaker consisting of two modules per side. The top module consists of two ribbon super tweeters, one in front and one rear, a Ring Radiator tweeter and a 7'5" Aerogel midrange driver. Also in the module are the XOs for mids, highs and ambience using V-Cap teflons. The rear panel also sports the individual controls for all three tweeters per side and the WBT Platinum binding post. The lower module has a pair of 8.5" Magnesium mid-woofers acoustically suspended and behind sports a 15" Subwoofer driver, it's 1kW plate amp, and the binding posts. The configuration makes for a loudspeaker that is 94dB sensitive with a nominal impedance of 6ohms and a frequency response of 16Hz to 100kHz +/- 3dB without boost settings. At full boost sensitivity climbs to 96dB most of the gains being in the bass.
Semi-active loudspeakers were not in Vogue 3 years ago, neither was having level controls. The prevailing wisdom at the time was that controls were a bad thing. Fast forward a few years and almost all of the big guns now come with controls either in the form of attenuators or resistor patch bays. The last couple of years we also finally saw the acceptance of subwoofers. Both are features the VR-9s had when they were launched in 2006. Billed as gadgety or gimmicky by many at the time, the design has not just stood the test of time but appears to have made the time irrelevant.
So what makes for a loudspeaker stand the test of time aside from unimpeachable specs? Mainly two things, two opposite things. One would be if a loudspeaker had a particular "voice" or color that is so likable and the other if a loudspeaker has so little of a voice of its own. The VR-9s are the latter. It makes them maddeningly difficult to review and that's the reason I'm only doing it now. The impressions are consistent however for all that have come by the old and new Lairs and have witnessed the component variations I often employ. Pretty much all things being constant, I like to play with different cartridges and different amplifiers. Depending on what's in front of it the VR-9s might appear gorgeously colored or downright Wagnerian and violent. The joy of having such a chameleon is that you can choose anything in between the two extremes. The loudspeaker, especially with this kind of extension and resolution is never really the limiting factor.
"Transported"This is a term that seems to pop up when VRs are mentioned. VR is short for virtual reality so taking on a "you are there" as opposed to the "musicians are in my room" perspective was one decided by Albert from the get go. The realistic recreation of space in VR speakers, while not a coloration, is a huge part of what would be a "house sound". So, it is no surprise that that too is the reaction of many non-audiophiles upon exposure to a VR system that is firing on all cylinders. The soundstage is not the stereotypical wide and deep with performers laid out behind the speaker plane. It can be when that's what is on the recording like playing Allison Krauss and Union Station singing Baby, Now That I've Found You (Live). What's eerie is when the applause comes in and then suddenly the applause seems to be coming from everywhere. From track to track the stage will morph to what's on the recording. Personally this is something very satisfying for me since coming from a media family, appreciation of production values comes very high on my list of priorities. Albert goes to great lengths to explain how he achieves this through his G.A.I.N. white paper available on the Von Schweikert website for those interested in the "how" you can go to the site, click on ABOUT and then read of on the loudspeaker design. You'll also catch a pic of Keith's room and his DB-99s.
Maybe it's a Gen X thing. For all our purported angst in our younger years, we live to work and work to party. That escapist thing must have spilled over to the aesthetic, echoing the same escapist tendencies of our older bros who had their share of angst growing up in the culturally tumultuous late 60s and early 70s while we got ours from the straight jacketed 80s and early 90s. In any case there is this intense pleasure only being transported can bring that a more voyeuristic view simply can't. It's that feeling of immersion. While localization is extremely stable in origin the musical events pulsate and deliver the vibrations in a way that is not just audible but is tactile not just in the bass but in the midrange as well. While a voyeuristic system makes it easy to visualize the goings on in one's mind, an immersive one does that and more. It lets you FEEL it. The way events pulsates is what makes the music seem to take a life of its own with notes spontaneously appearing in three dimensional space. The expanded stage, sometimes referred to as a walk in soundstage, and the way it evenly pressurizes a room via phase coherence vis a vis amplitude that spells the difference between being "transported" as opposed to being outside looking in. As anything, this is a matter of taste. The loads of sensory inputs can be overwhelming for some at first and take a few minutes to get accustomed to. I remember my first exposure vividly. My reaction was involuntary giggling. Not very manly I know!
In any case, that's what VRs do and as you go up the ladder you get that little bit more of everything. Going up the totem pole thankfully is not so much about quality as all models are engineered without any intentional dumbing down to meet a price point but rather, even more true today, about having the proper scale for differently sized rooms.
TransparencyThis is a term I like a whole lot more than neutral but only because of semantics. Neutral has taken on a negative connotation in audio land and has become synonymous with analytical or bleached. No loudspeaker is truly neutral or transparent. All things are relative. Like I said earlier getting a handle on just how transparent a loudspeaker or any other piece of equipment is is not about how they sound at the moment but how different they sound with every change upstream. Not so easy with sources since all you can really change is the recordings but still tough for loudspeakers despite the fact that everything except the room interactions comes before it. Some self discipline is required here because one must change only one variable at a time lest something random pollute the evaluation. It also takes a lot of time because one needs to seriously get to know what each brings to the table. Here we are three years, two rooms, countless system configurations and 10lbs more later. So given the proper room for them just how sensitive to change is the VR-9 SE?
The wildest I've swung the pendulum using in-house gear is from using one pair of Lamm's ML1.1 tubed push pull monoblocks (90 wpc) to it's current default of using one pair of M1.2 Reference Hybrids (110 wpc Pure Class A Zero NFB) for the Mids and Treble and one pair of M2.2 Hybrid (220 wpc Class A/AB Zero NFB). In between I've tried each amp on its own as well as the tubed one on top and the class A below. In every configuration you wouldn't guess that they were the same speakers. In terms of tonality, transient response, extension and ultimately presentation, as said earlier I've gone from achingly pretty to balls to the wall crazy. I have since throttled back quite a bit and found my flavor of choice thanks to some tweakage in the noise and vibration control departments.
To a lesser but no less profound degree comes the differences between cartridges. While the amp rolling deals with macro dynamics for the most part, the carts show the micro. I'm talking about nuances at this point and what each cart in the arsenal (whose own thread needs some serious updating by the way, I'll make a mental note of that) brings to the table. Pun intended. In a system set up to be transparent (lots of gain matching required folks) changes between carts can be quite subtle but in ways musically significant. Throw away the notion that Koetsus are rolled off for example. The Jade Platinum is extended and has great drive but what is striking is the emphasis on middle register harmonics. It's intoxicating for Cellos and vocals for sure but also for electric bass guitars. The XV-1t has it's penchant for emphasizing violins and air. The Ortofon A90 it's unflappable balance that even I mistook for boring at first until serious set up time would reveal just how much it's own sound can be manipulated.
Transparency can be a curse or a gift. In a quiet room you will hear a lot more than you thought possible. Unfortunately that means the good and the bad. For one year I struggled before I finally got things right. The final piece aside from taking a few days recovering from dental surgery with nothing to do but put 120% effort into tuning the heck out of my system? Power Cords. Who would have thunk it?
HappinessSo it has come to pass. 20 years of dreaming and for the first time I can say I really am satisfied in every respect with my system, I feel I have done all I humanly could to make the 9s reach her full potential. How Ironic as by the end of the month this pair of VR-9 SEs will be no more.
The VR-9 SE meets her makerThe VR-9 SE is no more. Von Schweikert Audio has come out with the VR-9 SE Mk.2. While the PHL models were modded and became the basis of the first Mk.2 iteration, availability of better parts, drivers, internal wiring and internal damping construction methods have made a more extreme makeover possible.
On Aug.24, 2011, Sepang will literally meet her maker when Alber Von Schweikert arrives in Manila with his son Damon for a brief roadshow but more importantly to upgrade her and her Manila based siblings (her twin VR-9s and a pair of 11s). After which she and her kin will emerge with capabilities that once again will test my commitment. I get to keep her old pieces for keep sakes of three happy years of music listening and system fiddling.
The Queen is dead. God save the Queen!
