A Speaker Odyssey, Part III
A week later I went back to Evolution AV to listen to the Revels some more. Instead of toeing in the speakers toward the listening position, this time I pointed them straight ahead. This seemed to open out the soundstage, but now I was having tone problems: they sounded too bright. Hmm. Just to check, I had Dennis set up the KEFs again for me. There’s a strong psychological component to listening to music, and I wanted to give these a fair trial. Nope – still shrill on the violins and vocals.
What to do now? At a party at a friend’s house I had noticed a new set of speakers from NHT, another company I had never heard of. I asked if I could give them a listen some time, and he offered me the run of the house one day when they were out – nice! His system was the Super Ones, with an NHT subwoofer. I liked the sound OK – I didn’t hear any of the shrillness I had heard with the supposedly more “accurate” speakers – but I was looking for something more refined than the Super Ones. After reading some glowing reviews, I decided to try out the Classic 3s: $900 from NHT direct. They offer a 30 day return policy, with return shipping paid for. Why not?
It took 2 weeks for them to arrive, so half my review period was already gone. I started playing music on them, trying not to pay too much attention to the sound, as most speaker require a break-in period before they really start to sound good. (At least, this is what some people say. Others think it’s all a myth. I’m sort of agnostic, but I didn’t want to make any snap judgments based on possibly faulty data.) My first impressions were pretty positive. My jazz CDs sounded good, with crisp percussion sounds and reasonable verisimilitude to the upright bass and the piano. After a week I figured they should be mostly broken in, so I started paying more attention. There is a definite over-emphasis in the bass, which you can see in the frequency plot in the Stereophile review (linked at the NHT page for the Classic 3. By the way, I never look at the graphs before I listen to speakers: I don’t want to be influenced by what I think I should be hearing, so that I don’t pay attention to what I’m actually hearing.) This wasn’t a big deal – I could always turn the bass knob down on my amp. I went back and forth for a few days, at times thinking they sounded pretty darn good, and then finding CDs where the sound was not so appealing. Finally, up against my 30 day return limit, I decided to send them back. A couple things tipped the scales.
· Watching Orphan Black, I found I had to turn the bass knob down almost to 7 o’clock in order not to overwhelmed by the bass in the soundtrack.
· On closer listening, I found the upright bass on jazz CDs sounded very loose and undefined, as though the bass was strung with rubber bands.
· My all-time favorite jazz CDs are Keith Jarrett’s solo piano works. On the NHTs, the upper registers of the piano had a sort of telephoney quality, and the bass notes were muddy and hard to hear.
That last one was a deal-killer: if Keith doesn’t sound good, there’s no point in having a stereo system at all. (The return process through NHT was very easy and painless.)
One more store to check out: Gramophone, in Columbia, Maryland, offered the B&W 686, the GoldenEar Aon 2 (I thought these deserved a try in a better listening environment), and something called Totem Rainmaker. Another attractive, friendly store, but it took a long time before the salesman was able to get any sound out of any of the speakers on display. Finally, we were getting sound – but only from one speaker. The salesman gave up and moved me to a different room. The Aon 2s still sounded muddy on second listening, and the Totems clearly outclassed the 686s. The salesman offered to let me take them home to give them a try, which I did. At home, however, I found them shrill on some CDs (Sting, for example). They also seemed somewhat uneven in the treble. At times certain notes would stick out from the rest. Not an improvement over the NHTs.
At this point I was feeling kind of stuck. Other well-reviewed brands, such as PSB, Focal, LSA, Monitor Audio, and Epos, just weren’t available at any of the local stores. I checked back at Evolution AV’s website to see what else they listed, as I thought I remembered Dennis saying they carried Focal. Checking the “Specials” page, I saw they were offering their floor model of the Paradigm Signature S1, with stands, for $1550. The S1s are tiny, only 10-1/2” high and 6-3/4” wide. I wondered whether these were really just desktop speakers, but the stands and the reviews seemed to indicate otherwise. The reviews were glowing, as usual. By this time I had noticed that all loudspeaker reviews are EXACTLY THE SAME. They all say “airy, extended highs, taut midrange, good bass extension.” They all say “sound as good as speakers costing thousands of dollars more!” They all say, “My new reference for small bookshelf speakers!” So I knew not to pay too much attention to the reviews. The question was, how would they sound?
Time to cut to the chase: I LOVE THESE SPEAKERS! If you want to know what they sound like, just go read a review. (Any review, of any loudspeaker. Like I said, they’re all the same.) Natural, lifelike sound, airy, extended highs, taut, well-defined midrange and bass, lots of space between the instruments, nothing muddy or shrill. And amazing imaging – a beautifully defined soundstage that easily rivaled the KEFs’, though I didn’t have the opportunity for a direct comparison. And one thing that reviews never mention: these speakers sound great even at low volume. You do the usual trick of tweaking both the bass and treble knobs to the right, and you have lovely full sound that's not too loud for conversation.
I have finally achieved stereo nirvana.
Finally, here at the end, I want to take a moment to marvel at my old Snells. For 20 years, through many changes of technology and across many different sources, they gave me wonderful, natural sound and terrific imaging. I’m amazed that I had to go to a pair of $2300 (list price) speakers to find something that clearly surpassed them. We miss you, Snell.
