"Digital Audio 2000 Denmark Image 600SL" White van scam floorstanding speakers (pics)
I have a friend who used to live in Atlanta and he called me one day and said he was putting together a surround sound system again.... I asked him why he wanted to get back into HT when he had quit messing with it for a good while... He said, " I got this badass pair of tower speakers that are worth like $1500 for dirt cheap". So I'm thinking "damn, lucky SOB" while I sit here wishing I never sold my old Infinity bookshelfs and wasn't stuck with garbage KLH floorstanders.
Then a month later he needed cash, he got kicked out of his apartment in ATL and was moving back here to FL, he asked me if I was still into HT, ofcourse I replied "YES"... So I agree to help him get back to FL by purchasing his system for a couple hundred bucks...
When he got back and brought me my "system" I find that my front speakers, the $1500 "killer deal" speakers were... "DigiTal AuDio Denmark Image 600SL" white van scam junkers.... WOW these things bring new meaning to the word SUCKS! So I figure I'll give them a good honest review (albeit laced with sarcasm) to let unknowing folks know just how cheap these junkers are.
Build quality and design:
*Please forgive the poor quality images as my camera sucks just as bad as these speakers do so I feel it will express thier quality accurately.*
Note the sweet crossover design with high end "crappy brand" components and 22GA wire leads 8 ohm listed impedance and set up for 16 ohm due to single woofer section of the crossover and dual woofers, the 10 inch "subwoofer" is not even filtered and just has a jumper wire run to it from the input.
Also please take note of the simple yet elegant marred and wrinkled "real wood" black vynil vaneer with built in scratches, and solid 1/2 inch clapboard construction with lightwieght screws and no bracing to save wieght and not interfere with sweet sounding standing waves. Take notice to the superb surface mounted woofers as not to take away from detailed and translucent diffraction, and the "SOLID STAINLESS STEEL"
plated grille bars sturdily attached by four small screws as not to take away from ear pleasing ringing and vibration. Also, the sealed portion of the enclosure housing the 8" woofers is not sealed so this is a very inefficient speaker capable of making even the best amplifiers burn up and sound like trash.
Feast your eyes upon the MASSIVE sidefiring 10" ported "Subwoofer" that mostly provides midrange enforcement and alot of various banging noises and vibration at high volumes. But provides no actual bass output as not to disturb the nieghbors. When the awesome boxy sounding midbass is too much for you just pull out the convienient thin wall plastic removable bass port to radiate those chest thumping vibrations elsewhere.
Here are the awesome bi-ampable binding posts that are "Solid Fake Gold" plated and come pre-tarnished as not to get the owner's expectations up in terms of durability. Also, a cutting edge feature not part of most of most available loudspeakers yet, the bottom post for the "subwoofer" is non functional and you actually hook a second amp to that terminal but you leave it unplugged from the wall to save power, the "subwoofer" is wired in to the top terminal anyways. Also notice the friend impressing ambiguously over rated fake power figure of 350 watts nominal input.
Don't fret if you hate these speakers, you can just throw them away or use them as boat anchors as they have no return policy.
Listening session results:
These are quite possibly the worst sounding set of floorstanding speakers I have owned, and I have had some real piles of crap.
Dave Matthews Band - Gravedigger: I think this song is appropriate for these speakers since the title says it all when it comes to what you are doing with your disposable income if you buy these hunks of junk. The song starts out with an acoustic guitar and usually it is supposed to sound clear and crisp, on good systems you can even hear Dave's fingers on the strings as he moves them along the frets of the guitar, these speakers faithfully reproduced none of that, and during the louder portions of this section of the song there was a nasty vibration from inside the box somewhere. There are some excellent parts of this song to hear a speakers dynamic capabilities in the upper ranges, the vocal's go from loud to soft and fast to slow and the instrumentals do as well several times during the song, all I hear is muffled muddy guitar and squeeky male vocals, hell I can't even hear the violin... All in all after listening to this song you know what to do with these speakers.... Dig thier grave... or else you will want to dig your own to get away from them.
Brad Paisley Ft. Allison Krauss - Whiskey Lullaby: I think during my time listening to this song on these that I wanted to have a bottle of whiskey... to crack myself over the head with and put myself out of the misery of the murder of the bass drum and Allison's high but mellow voice. I can't think of another system that made her sound more shrill and make Brad sound more nasal. From what was left of a very cool drum hit every once in a while in the song, it sounded like the person not singing kept dropping the microphone or bumping it into their face.
Kodo - Taiko Drumming: Please, lets not even go there, wow I never thought bass down to below human hearing levels could sound so shallow!
So to sum it all up, don't buy these speakers. Heck, don't listen to these or even LOOK at these speakers, or you will just end up with an empty wallet and a head ache the size of the Taiko drum.
-Mike
