I have a little time to spend on a post now so a follow-up to my little day trip to go listening.
It was a two hour highway road trip to go heaf the Founder 100Fs. In the end, I spent about three hours in the shop listening. Although part of that was due to the DVD player source being a slow, clunky and somewhat frustrating interface for playing flac tracks from USB. They were connected to an Anthem MRX 740 in a fairly basic, untreated room with little furniture and somewhere around the 15' size (not sure if it was square, but not far off).
They sounded noteworthy right off the bat, but also a little off. Definitley a bit hot up top. After a few tracks, I checked the tone controls and found them set to bass & treble +3.0. Setting them back to flat tamed things down a bit. I do think that these are a litlte forward/bright, or at least I could see why I've seen some say that, but not so much that it was problematic (sibilance, etc). I suspect it plays into the feeling of clarity and detail that they offer, with pretty much no noise I could detect (I'd liken it to watching an OLED where you have that pure black to provide that contrast). Classical music in particular stood out, taking full advantage of the clarity and detail. Not every track impressed as much as others, but I don't recall anything not being handled competently.
On the bass end, I didn't play a lot of really bass heavy stuff but they did not seem to be lacking much if any. I did make sure to play the track I quite often use for judging and tuning my systems bass level - Peter Gabriel's Secret World (SACD Remaster version). What I heard was clean, able to articulate the rumbles and variations of the grinding base line and was digging down fairly deep. There was enough of a similarity to what I'm used to hearing that I think they'll integrate well with my REL in a similar way the Studio 100s currently do (they are both rated to the mid 20s DIN and are front and bottom ported rather instead of rear, so I think odds are good as a swap in).
At 42" they're only three inches shorter than shorter than my Studio 100s but they looked a lot smaller in the room. I'm curious to see if they still feel "small" in my own space. The sound was not small at all. The presense in the demo room was huge and easily more than I could handle if I got a little carried away with the volume for a track. The seating position was slightly off-center (It was a theatre style dual seater) but on tracks that would highlight soundstage and imaging, it seemed pretty clear that they do pretty well in that arena too.
They happened to be just finalizing a large seasonal order from Paradigm on the day I was there and offered me just shy of 20% off, but needed an answer that day for that price. This may have been just a sales tactic, but I think it was a fair discount and I probably wouldn't find a better one (Paradigm's seasonal sales are just 15% off around XMas). I hadn't planned on buying now, but I'm also expecting that my disposable income situation is going to change within the next six months and I may not be able to afford something in this price range again down the road. So I opted to take advantage of the offer now rather than holding off a bit longer and maybe ending up spending a bit more. I have a nagging feeling that maybe I should have gotten the walnut finish as the satin finish is more flexible but the midnight cherry just looks so good when I see it in pics or videos, so I went with that. Waiting to see how long until the shipment comes in and then make arrangements to get them here.
