Follow up report:
Overall SQ is great. There is still a significant difference between these and the Phil3s... but c'mon. That's not a fair comparison.
Of note:
Joe Lovano's Sax work on Evolution sounds great, detail in the Cymbals, Upright Bass hits clean.
Tori Amos voice on Northern Lad is detailed and smooth. Can get a little harsh in the range she sings in during the chorus, but I didn't feel my ears twitching with these; Piano was strong and sounded pretty natural. Mohamed My Friend and Talula were both equally delightful and the Harpsichord sounded pretty much spot on.
Twelve Jewelz from Gravediggaz second album was borderline shocking with the bass hits coming out of those boxes. Rza's vocals were clean and detailed, perfectly understandable.
Steve Wynn's Blue Drifter revealed some of the hollowness in this Speaker. Hard to describe other than perhaps leaning on some lack of midrange richness(?). That same quality remained in Anthem, especially at the beginning of the cut, but the dynamic hit in the second part of the song was handled well and made up for the lack heard in the first part.
Dexter Gordon's rendition of Darn That Dream from One Flight Up sounded pretty right. I don't know how many times I've played this cut... But for the sound of a '60s Blue Note recording, it was All Dexter!
Black Peter from Workingman's Dead... just couldn't help start singing along with Jerry. If anything, that hollowness in the mids came out a little here, too.
Walk On the Wild Side. Yup. Went there. Lou's voice, that bass line... everything was there but for that rich midrange. I had to wrap and get on to other things, so I paused 1/3 way through the song, powered down the Amps, switched the cables back to the 3s, powered back up and hit play. Just, Wow.
The differences and the similarities were fully on display in those brief moments. By Similarities, you've got very nice top end, and impressive bottom end out of these AA+s. But the devil is in the Mids.
This is not to say that I heard anything wrong. I want to be very clear about that. When your mains are what mine are, and your reference point is a very neutral and revealing 3-way speaker, a budget friendly 2-way shouldn't have the same resolution and depth of SQ: I don't care who designed it!
Regardless, I promised myself that I would learn to do some measurements with these once I finished. So now it's on me to see what I've done by getting my OmniMic out and learning how to do a good measurement.
NOTE: Left Speaker, as seen above, has an occasional vibration that I have to chase down. Might be a hook up wire that's just positioned weird. (If I shake the speaker, I can hear the wire hit the side of the cabinet.
)
Would I ever do this again? Hellz-Yeah!
Would I recommend somebody try
this project as a pure DIY endeavor like I did. ...Now that Dennis has the kit available? NO.
Don't misunderstand. For me, the educational experience was everything, but the cost and time spent learning how to do this doesn't add up to the ease of what Dennis' 30-minute quick kit promises.
Is the AA+ worth its salt? Absolutely. At $350 per pair, this is a
winner of a speaker.
I'll revisit this when I learn how do do some speaker sweeps.
Lastly, and as I have done routinely throughout this thread:
THANK YOU! To everyone that has participated and offered their assistance, who has helped me learn!
Cheers!
