I'll weigh in a bit too.
I agree with Jon and his report. There is just something about speakers with the letter V in them that I like.
VMPS, Von Scheikert, and Vandersteen are 1,2, and 3 on my list most of the time. (even A-"V"-123)
I also have to say the Griphon Mikado CDP was the equal of the best player I have heard todate (the Linn Unidisc) but at $12 Large it should be.
The surprise (to me) was how well the McCormack UDP-1 universal player (at $2999) held up against such high priced competition.
No contest however in the "coolness" and "looks" dept. The Griphon was drop dead gorgeous!!!
And I concur with Jon's assessment of the VR-2. It had plenty of good tight bass on its own. Adding the subs caused the bass to "blur" a bit and it lost much of the clean articulation it had on it's own. This may not be the fault of the speaker/sub combo as much as setting it up in a strange Hotel room (shades of CES).
The VR2s did have some shortcomings from my seat (front row beside Jon L). I heard some very "icyness" in the sounds of some of the piano recordings. They were quite evident on Diana Krall's "Case of You" which has been one of my reference tracks for some time. As well the leading edge of Krall's voice was "over the top" in attack, in some places on that cut.
Now keep in mind that this cut is a torture test for systems and is "engineered" "HOT" in those areas. My home system just barely makes them listenable, but this set up did not (again from my seating position, which was more nearfield)
But on the track that I spun up, (BlackLight Syndrome's "Duende") the VR2s did an admirable job of maintaining the cohesive delicacy of the sound mix. Even the very difficult "fuzz tone bass" passage was well reproduced.
They also shoed themselves to be good instrument to "evaluate" and certainly allowed one to hear the differences in some of the components.
When we switched from the Electrocompaniet ECD-1 DAC and used the "onboard" DAC of the Griphon it was quite apparent to me that the Griphon sounded best using it's own DAC.
And I might add over the last 3 meetings we have heard a speaker that cost $13,000, one that cost $7900 and these VR-2's that cost $2500.
While there are a couple speakers I might select over the VR2 in the $2500 price range, let me assure your they (to my ears) sounded much better than the two "over priced" speakers we had heard in the previous meets.
In any event, the only real gripe was MD and I missed the FOOOOOOD!
I was starved, and ended up with a toothpick fruit kabob, and three little postage stamp sized triangle shaped turkey canapes.
Must have been a lot of "HUNGRY" audiophiles on hand (and it did appear that there were around 50-70 people there)
A good time was had by all and another of our "lurking audiophile buddies" (Marvin) also put in an appearance.
Hope more from the Circle make it the next time.
Great bunch of guys, and even just the sharing of music and hearing "new reference cuts" is worth attending.
