I await your review with interest.
The speaker looks impressive, but the designers have made choices that I would have rejected flat out. This is a design that absolutely needs to be active. A passive crossover at 140 Hz, between woofers and mids just does not work. The audible difference between an active crossover and a passive one in these ranges is like night and day. Driving 5" mids down to 140 Hz is pushing your luck. There is a lot of power down there.
So this has led to a cross to the tweeter right in the middle of the speech discrimination band. That latter is not an insurmountable problem, but best avoided. This for one good reason alone, it puts a lot of power on the tweeter, and so that raises the prospect of tweeter burn out at power.
In addition that 140 Hz crossover makes sub integration problematic to say the least.
So, not the design choices I would have made, but to each his own.
I’m currently testing out the tower version of this line (smaller). I’m finding them quite a bit of fun. Definitely more lively than the PSB T2 I’m comparing against. They throw a really nice sound stage, and a bit more spice into the base without it being overwhelming. The tweaters are really smooth as well. For two channel listening, I’m not sure that a sub is necessary. I think the 30hz rating sounds pretty accurate in my space.
To paraphrase another reviewer, if you value strictly linear speakers, you won’t want these, but I’m finding them an awful lot of fun across a broad range of musical genres, ranging from rock, to pop, to classical. They are not THAT far from linear, but I find the departures more positive than negative.
Are they a massive step up from the PSB t2? No, but they do sound “different” in a way I find appealing. I’ll likely be keeping them and selling (or repurposing) the PSBs after my 45 day trial. At $3k for the pair, they are really competitive. I’d probably be trialing other things at $5k+, but that model of SVS would overwhelm my space and have a low WAF.
