First observations.....
So far I have been running through some different types of music that I am extremely familiar with here, Nora Jones (Come Away With Me, Don't know Why), Ray Charles Duets (Fever - Natalie Cole, Here We Go Again - Nora Jones, You Don't Know Me - Diana Krall) Extremely Smooth, Transparent, just neutral... The imaging is out of this world, which I lend to the tweeters, I have never heard speakers this smooth before... Mid range and mid bass are just clean and clear, non accentuated or punchy in one or the other. I think there is magic in these tweeters, soft dome is smooth, missing nothing here... I can't tell you how many soft dome tweeters I have come across that it felt like someone put cotton in my ears.... The Scan Speak Air Circ's are balanced and true to their source. Turning my head from one side to another I get no differenciation in sound... My room is small here but the sound is just everywhere. The speakers are not placed optimally in my room right now (too close together), but I feel it will make little difference here. They don't seem to be effected by placement thus far. I'm waiting on a new dresser and my equipment will be moving to the basement to be hidden late this week or early next week, waiting on my 25ft HDMI chord.
These speakers are extremely heavy, the Center Channel is a bit to lug around and it is 3/4's the width of my 42" plasma. The towers are awkward, soft smooth sides everywhere make it hard to grab onto anything. Wrapping on the sides on any of the speakers gives one a dead thunk, its seems almost deader then the sub boxes. The bookshelves are bigger then my Paradigm Studio 20's and much heavier. Build quality is amazing, from the solid cabinets, to the magnetic front grills, sweet... The Rosenut is beautiful, really stands out, not glossy or distracting, but just right. I am pairing my new MTS system in my 1700^3 bedroom with a SVS PB-12 Plus. It is clear that everything on SVS's mid level speaker system is very well built. These speakers will not be leaving my house....
I am running them off of a Pioneer Elite 91, which serves as my temp Pre-Amp, and I have yet to figure out what amp I will be going with, Emotiva XPA-5 is due out soon, but obviously there are endless products out there. My Rotel 1095 is working with my Studio .v4 system. I bring this up because I believe that I am under powering them even in 2 channel mode, I measured between 105 - 110 db before they started to compress/break up a bit. That hurt my ears, very very loud, but they still delivered, for a 2 way speaker I think they really held their composure with grace. I can only imagine that the proper amp would really make them sing, loud enough to be completly unbarable, but still hold it together.
Packaging was great, double boxed wrapped in a thin silky plastic mylar, and surrounded by foam padding all around, heavy thick foam on top and bottom, obviously they will not endure a high falling drop like UPS let them have... grrr but the speakers boxed weigh 70lbs. They would have had needed 4-6" of foam to protect against that drop...
So far, I love them... I have yet to put them through the paces of movies. But with transient impactful spikes like in Constantine - 2:00 mark when Manual finds the dagger, and walks into the road and the car gets totaled by hitting Manual - 0 to 110db measured instantaniuosly -Whoa they truly deliver !!!! Not one hesitation... WOW !!
