First impressions
These are, of course, highly subjective. Even more in my case as I have no decent point of reference.
Having said that, these speakers are really amazing.
I didn’t get the feeling they were metallic and thin, which is supposed to happen if they are coming straight out of the box (according to some). Perhaps in order to hear this, you have to unpack dozens of brand new boxes.
With these speakers I discovered that the music I like to listen to (or at least use to think I’m listening) has A LOT more to it. You find all those minute percussion and the sound of dragging ones fingers over the guitar neck and the singer’s breathing and a lot of instruments you simply didn’t know were there.
But!! Revealing goes both ways and boy do your ears bleed if you want it loud and the recording is bad. (I don’t see this as a drawback) As expected I fled work earlier (as one should in cases of life and death situations) and was playing my speakers long before my GF came home. I wanted to surprise her and played Faith by George Michael, but the recording was awful and she immediately went all pale; is this it?! This sounds awful!! And I was saying; no, no, wait, it was the other rip… And it really sounded bad.
I was hitting them with everything I know; Paul Simon’s Graceland for details and good production, unplugged Eric Clapton for nice strings, more recent Sade for those killing bass guitars and beats… While playing Soldier of Love I could swear there was dead silence in between those beats at the beginning of the song. Same as in Beverly Hills Cop theme, dead silence. And a lot of contemporary electro-pop production for heavy bass.
My laptop has Dolby and other then filtering it has a lot of different effects and a manual equalizer and some recommended presets by the manufacturer. One by one I was turning them of and found what I like the best is to stick with clean Dolby filter with no other effects. Although when I listen to them very quiet I turn on the recommended equalizer preset for extra lows as this seems to help in the way loudness does (not quite as good) - lows don’t disappear first.
For now I have them on the counter top and I’m using the provided rubber stickers on the bottom for some feet. Without these my counter top was playing as well
Stands will follow shortly. I found that the sound they make doesn’t travel far. Perhaps this is the thing with mini-monitors and small membranes; very loud in the living room and almost quiet in the kitchen.
They have a lot of space from side walls (4.5 feet), but this may reduce in time as I intend to have them further away from one another. They are close to the back wall so I followed instructions and placed a sponge cork in the port. I must say I didn’t notice any difference in sound.
I think the counter top is not wide enough, there’s strong ‘center’ feeling; everything is coming right from the middle in between speakers. I didn’t find any use of toeing in; perhaps this will be useful when they’re further apart.
When you turn the volume way up you get the feeling that nothing other than music gets amplified. I couldn’t detect any noise (one song got me worried and then I saw it was a vinyl rip
) Speakers seem like good all-rounders. No style of music sounded out of place when played with these.
I have a feeling they are here to stay and I have you guys to thank to.
We can close this thread
speakers down - amp to go!!
