ALRIGHT, THE DAY HAd COME.....
Today was my Inaugural SPEAKER DAY chock full of speaker delight!!
First, I went drop of the WOOFIES from my pair of 1988 Cerwin Vega D-9s for reconditioning (My secondary mini Vintage Project) at Orange County Speaker Repair in Garden Grove. Then from there it was off to HSU Research in Anaheim to see about a sub, and finally to Ascend in San Clemente to pick up 4 340s plus the Center. The following is a report of my experiences with Hsu and Ascend and I will attempt to be as succinct and informative as I can on each. But they each deserve their own review so I will do it in 2 posts (The HSU post is much longer and has little tech info---more the visit itself)
Preface: I just will first have to say that I'm 42 and I was so geeked today that my Dad/Boss demanded to go with me to these places to see what all my fuss is about. So the adventure was a little more interesting (and I got to blow off work---Good Deal!!).
HSU Research product purchased: VTF-15H MK2
http://www.hsuresearch.com/products/vtf-15hmk2.html
I decided on purchasing this model instead of the VTF-3 MK5HP based on the recommendations of the Hsu techs. They requested I provide them different measurements in order to try to calculate the cubic feet of space and the different room openings etc. and based on what they thought of the room and going with one sub, they recommended the MK2.
This Item is BACKORDERED but expected in the next 2 weeks so I'm cool with waiting some.
Hsu is located in an industrial park with mostly small to medium sized businesses. The place is nice and modernly classy inside and they have a reception counter (great right??!!!!!
) a showroom, and a HT Demo room (along with offices, warehousing, small call center etc). They require a little bit of notice because I imagine walk in clientele isn't the norm so we called ahead and then crashed in there way before our scheduled time.
We rang the bell at the front desk and a stern Vietnamese lady eventually emerged and told us that we were a half hour early, and they would NOT HELP US until the time we told them we would be there!!!! Then she just busts out laughing and says "Just kidding you!!!!!!" and she keeps laughing.....After talking with her and joking with her she was very very good natured and friendly and well before we got to speak to any tech guys there, my Dad was trying to use what bits of Vietnamese he THINKS he picked up in NAM in the ARMY during the war to see if she understood any of it. I thought she was going to be insulted but she laughed and laughed and she was just very welcoming and we talked about Vietnam.
I asked her where the best Bahn Mi Vietnamese sandwich place was (Little Saigon is not too far from Anaheim in Westminster) and she INSISTED....UTTERLY INSISTED, that we eat the BBQ Pork sandwich she had just bought herself for lunch. We told her NO THANK YOU, but she insisted because I showed interest, that we take it and she disappeared into the back. She returned with a Sandwich wrapped in paper, a knife and a bag of fresh baked baquettes and, she cut the sandwich in half, handed it to us each of us and then gave us some bread and then she called to the back office. A tech appeared with 2 7UPs..... All of this as we are REFUSING to eat the poor woman's food. Just odd, friendly and cool.
There we are, to buy a sub, instead, we are eating one!! It was a great sandwich but it was just soooooooo, NOT what happens when you go into most electronic businesses!!! You really get the small family company type of vibe. We wondered if this lady might be Dr. Hsu's wife?? I can't say enough about how friendly they were. I'm not blowing smoke.....
SO after eating a light late lunch in the lobby area dropping crumbs all over that we were ASSURED were OKAY....I began asking about placement. One of the techs was giving his advice and then he called "Doc Hsu" out to join the questions and Dr. Hsu came out. Older Asian man, really chill in a t-shirt and kinda messyish gray balding hair....Actually--Just like you'd expect a sound genius type of guy from MIT to look
. I met him and he was a nice soft spoken man. Briefly, we all talked about my placement questions and then another tech named Kevin who had seen all of my numbers and knew I was coming in today took us to the showroom to check out the models--All side by side everything they sell as far as subs.
Kevin said that he'd really recommend the MK2 and he went into alot of specifics as far as my room layout and where the bass would seep out to and where he would place it for different effects as a front firing sub and why he thought it was a better fit even at $100 more and he said it is their flagship model and would be better even though some of the MK5 specs are the same on paper. He said its not night and day between the two, but it is very noticeable and the VOLUME OF BASS is different, its ported different etc. He said if my budget allowed, he'd say go MK2. I was NOT able to demo the MK5 but did the MK2 and was sold (true--no comparison was made I admit).
This MK2 thing is 110lbs and pretty damn big!!! I didn't want to put too much into the DEMO because it was in a perfectly calibrated HT demo room much unlike what I will have. But I moved around some and I was sitting 2 feet away at one point, from the MK2 and this thing felt like it was blowing the heck outta my pant legs with a bass bombardment!!!!! It was especially booming in film clips, (the Haunting, Master and Commander, and different Star Wars Movie clips). I was very impressed and then my Dad pulls the,
"Can't you maybe put on something like Schindler's List, or As Good As it Gets or Shawshank?? I want to see how those would sound...." Kevin awkwardly responded, "Uhhhhhhh well let's see......We have 'HULK'????"
I sheepishly asked Kevin to just switch up and demo some music.
We listened to some decent but not crazy dominant bass tracks from various artists and we ran some jazz and then my Dad asked if they had any "Oldies".
CMON MAN!!!! We ended up listening to Hotel California. Kevin was very understanding and accommodating under the circumstances. We were there for about an hour total. At my insistence, I prepaid for the MK2 and will be awaiting a call to roll over and grab it. Its MACHO GRANDE for sure!!
Overall, just a very very friendly small familyish (I don't know if anyone here is actually related or married!! Just felt like it...) business vibe that was at the same time professional and authoritatively informative. ALSO, Very down to earth dealing with us California Okies
I will tell you guys how everything goes on my return trip to grab that beast. But as my Dad so rightly put it, "Weeeellllll, if that big ol' freakin' speaker is as good as that lady's sandwich, it's gonna be an ass-kicker."
Thanks for comin' Dad.
Part 2 --- The Ascend experience--to follow in another post. Thanks for reading
