Jon,
I didn't, but in a way that's good, because now I've had my Calibres 9 months, and my Studio HD's for about 11 months or so. You have to take my reviews/comparison's for what they're worth though, as I'm not a typical "audiophile". As I write this comparison, my head is flanked by my Calibres as I listen to Benediction's Killing Music album.
(I don't think it would make much sense to describe the "detail" and "accuracy" of ultra-low tuned heavily distorted guitars and basses, or guttural T-rex vocals, as most won't be able to relate) Granted there's only maybe 5-10watts going into them as my ears are only 18" from the speakers when I'm at the laptop. Might just be the world's most expensive "computer speakers", LOL.
I never got around to making speaker stands for these 50lb mini-monsters. So for the most part, I'll be comparing some technical aspects as I see them.
Speaker stands should be coming soon, as I'm now on vacation from the school I work at (for most of the summer).
An interesting point to consider is that the speaker as a whole is rather unique. Both the front 8" midbass and the top-firing 8" woofer share the internal air space inside the enclosure(!). Never would I have guessed that this would be the case. If you would have asked me before I owned them, I would have said for sure the midbass must be in it's own [small] sub-enclosure to isolate it from the bass driver. It must have taken some
serious R&D by Legacy (Bill D.) to make it all work in harmony as it does. Surely he has the most sophisticated simulation software at his disposal for evaluating choices like this. The top bass driver operates from 200Hz and downward, the front midbass is bandpassed from 55Hz-2.5kHz. The AMT tweeter handles the ride from 2.5 kHz and upwards. So it's kinda like a 2.75-way speaker if there ever was such a beast, lol.
How do the Studio HD's compare? The Studio's are a bit more sensitive, but not across the entire rated bandwidth. The 41Hz low-end rating of the Studio is a room-gain designated low-point that would be very sensitive to speaker placement and listener location. The speaker itself exhibits a bass roll-off much higher [in frequency] than that, but owes it's 41Hz rating to a low-tuned port that is designed (IMO) to take advantage of the walls behind the speaker, and probably to the sides as well. Even if you do careful placement to take advantage of room gain to get the most low-end out of it, it's more an EBS alignment as there is literally only about 1/3 ft³ inside the enclosure. Don't think you're gonna get 91-93 dB/2.83V/1m @ 41 Hz un-assisted with a speaker enclosure this small. The good news though, is that even considering the design constraints, the Studio HD's still sound very full on their own. If you're knowledgeable with EQ, you can boost just the right frequency to get fuller bass out of them (right around 43-45 Hz),and the port does all the work with little penalty in the midbass cone excursion (so long as you don't go crazy with the volume). Better with a subwoofer? You bet. They can get stupid loud in small-to-medium sized rooms and can fill large rooms decently. I let our music teacher borrow them for a singing recital rehearsal in our small cafeteria (capacity 240 students),and it filled it rather well with plenty of volume, just not at concert-levels. They can resolve detail as well as the Calibres in the 100Hz+ range as far as I can tell. They can image just as well. All the mid- to upper-end clarity and air is there in spades, as you would expect from an AMT tweeter.
How do the Calibres compare? Simply put, they are Studio HD's on massive amounts of PED's, HGH's, and steriods, all at once. The added low-end and beefier drivers makes all the difference in the world added to the already world-class clarity and imaging of the Studio HD's. They are not as sensitive, but that is IMO simply a consequence of design constraints, not any kind of inherent flaw. You can only get so much out of the ~0.5 ft³ internal volume inside the Calibres. That's why I believe the power rating for the passive Calibre is listed with a minimum of 45W compared to the 15W of the Studio HD's. But then on the other side, the upper power rating of 400W; well let's just say that is conservative if you use solid state amplification. The crossover as a whole [I believe] absorbs some of the power by necessity to create a flat-response from the speaker as a whole. So if you plan to play them loud, you need POWER. But rest assured, they can take it. The AMT is literally twice the size [of the Studio HD's]. The 8" midbass has a 2.5" VC compared to the ~1.5" (I think) of the Studio HD. The 8" bass driver also has a 2.5" VC. All that amounts to
massive power handling for a speaker this size. As I mentioned in a previous post, I am tri-amp'ing them (sorta, albeit through the stock crossovers) and it's taken this much to find their limits. While tweaking them (as I'm sure you saw in my previous post),it turns out that the low resonance of the dual 8" passive radiators allows one to boost up the bass well below it's rated limit of 38Hz with little penalty (unless you play sine-wave music). That, I found rather amazing since I wasn't aware that was possible with a passive radiator setup. The speaker, un-assisted, will reach down to the low-40Hz range if you don't use the side-walls for room-gain, as in the way I have them. Using the side-walls and walls behind them you can get closer to the rated 38Hz low-end limit (as dictated by room gain). You can boost up the ultra-low end and the passive radiators really start moving, but it also eats up a ton amplifier power/headroom rather quickly, as 8" bass drivers are not going to be very efficient at pumping out sub-40Hz tones in such a small enclosure. The tricky part is only if you want to boost up the bass between ~50-100Hz, as this is the overlap region where both the midbass and the bass driver operate. For me this was critical to get that more "live concert" sound where the ultra-fast double-bass drum whacks live. The front midbass driver can get loud, but it
can be driven to it's limits if you play death metal stupid loud like me with all the solid state power headroom available. I'm pretty sure for sane people it is a non-issue. All in all, it amounts to an amazing speaker that gets crazy loud if you have the power. I'm confident there is no real music that it can't handle at stupid loud levels in most normal sized rooms. It easily sounds like it should be 2x the size that it really is. Of course it is not going to sound like a speaker system that has a 10-12" woofer, but it gets close! Once you pour on the power and EQ to taste, you don't want to stop listening to them, ever. Just like the Studio HD's, vocals and solo instruments are solidly located on the soundstage, low-level details are resolved easily in the background, but the bass is now truly full, solid, and deep. They are no replacement for a .1 channel of a HT system though. These are music speakers. You can get some really good bass out of them but they're not gonna replace a quality 10"+ dedicated subwoofer for HT level playback of subsonics.
At this point, a couple things I'm looking at: adding some capacitors (as per Bill D's suggestion) to the midbass driver to bring up it's high-pass point to relieve it from handing the sustained double-bass drum blast beats prevalent in my music. The null can then be taken up with with top-firing bass driver [via DSP EQ] that has much more excursion available for this task, to round out the sound again. If this doesn't work out as expected then I may just fully turn it into a fully active system and bypass the crossover altogether.
I think I have enough amplification so I could run each midbass and bass driver individually from their own amps in bridge mode, and the tweeters from a single stereo amp:
