Vandersteen 5Aa Carbon--any 5a owner's opinions?

I think if Richard gets around to a CARBON Quatro, that would be a killer speaker. Where the quatro needs some extra lift in the midrange is right where the carbon drivers are so good. Those carbon driver are really sweet sounding units, and sweet as in good. The 5a color in the midgrange is simply gone, replaced with an even open textured holographic sound that you just have to hear.

I'd definitely look at, and listen to, a Carbon Quatro verses the 5a carbon if it existed. As is, you need to jump to the 5a. The 5a needs a big room to work it's best, and does cost a pricely sum but not that it isn't a speaker that's WORTH it! But the 5a carbon cost stopped me at C4 signatures, which were much less, for the time being.

Still, the Quatro filled a good sized room when I owned them, so they are an under achiever speaker in that regard.

Any of the Vandersteens with powered subs and carbon drivers are going to be very listenable and detailed. Richard knows a thing or two about bass integration and how hard it is to do "passive". I'm convinced after owning the Quatro's that you just can't get here from there in the bass without extra powered subs systems. No powered bass always had me yelling to Scotty to give it you got, but he was...and it wasn't enough. Witness I had to ADD subs to my C4's to get full range bass. So, I did not get there with C4's and as good as the bass is it isn't flat deep enough. Sure, some will say I'm full of something other than bass, but my ears aren't letting me believe it. Some passive speakers are "good" but none are great that aren't bigger than a barn with an all passive system. There is a LOT of energy in music below 40 Hz.

I have possibly one more speaker upgrade to do, and the Carbon 5a's are on my list to listen to again, and again, and again (Speaking of passive...I wonder if the dealer will notice that I'm a passive owner?).

Oh, the carbon upgrade is much more than just a driver swap. Just call and ask Richard!

Well, I do know now that John has a pair of 7s in New Jersey. I'm going to try to set up an audition there this spring when I'm out that way anyway. I think it's the best place to hear them anyway. Many speak of John almost as highly as they do of Vandersteen himself. Probably one of the top Vandersteen dealers in the country.

My fear is I will be smitten with the 7s. Two speaker designers in history have really captured my allegiance, John Dunlavy and Richard Vandersteen. Sadly, we'll never know what else Dunlavy may have come up with. The 7s though embody all of Vandersteens innovations, fusion subwoofer, minimum baffle enclosures, 1st order crossovers, transmission lines, perfect piston drivers and carbon fiber layered enclosures. So much for early retirement. Work keeps us young (and out of trouble).

Bass - Richard's system is really good - maybe the best. However, technology moves on and no stereo pair of subwoofers can flatten out all the room modes encountered in a real world room. An eleven-band analog equalizer can't match the 100's of poles a DSP-based digital filter can provide, and can't alter the subwoofer phase across the passband.

The answer is a distributed subwoofer system like the 4-woofer Audiokinesis Swarm and digital room correction (250 hz down). Through proper (asymmetric) placement it can completely flatten the room response in combination with digital room correction like Meridian's MRC system. With this type of system, the Seven is overkill.

It would be nice if Richard put both the 5a tweeter AND the Carbon / Balsa 4.5" driver in the Quatro Wood CT, because with the Swarm you don't need anything bigger. Also the 7 tweeter is unique - no phase plug. The 5a and Quatro tweeters are carbon monolithic domes without the "C sandwich" construction of the 7's dome. Not sure if this makes a difference, but the 7 is unique in more ways than one.

overly flat at least w just eleven bands of EQ under 120 HZ sounds dull and lifeless....
so says the manual, Richard and for grins I tried it w 5 a..true enuf dialing it in the last .5 DB was lackluster....
no real urge to mess w 7. ' s yet..enjoying staying up most of the nite listening....

When I say flat, I mean with a smooth response over most of the room, such that the room's dominant nodes and anti- nodes ( i.e. suck out) do not dominate the "Rayleigh Region" where the wavelength of the sound and the room dimensions are of the same order. The problem with Richard's approach is that stereo speakers usually end up in symmetrical positions in the room, so the best you can do with the equalizers is to reduce the magnitude of the peaks at the principal listening position. Look at the settings of your left and right equalizers - unless you have a highly asymmetric room, they are probably set the same. This means that the sound may be pretty good in your favorite chair but it is very uneven everywhere else in the room. This causes another form of coloration, reverb, that tells your brain you are in your 16 ' x 22' x 8' sound room, and NOT really at the recording venue.

In addition you can't do much about suck-out, since Richard only puts a 400 watt amp in the 7's and a 250 watt amp in the Quatro's. You would need much more power than this to fill in the suck-out that plagues every normal size listening room I've ever been in, but is notably absent in a concert hall, because of its size.

The only answer is to spread the bass transducers around the room so that you normalize out the dominant room nodes, and then trim it with a really good DSP room correction software calibration with (ideally) individual settings for each woofer, and at the very least for the left, right and .1 channels, like Meridian's MRC. If you do this, (and I have with two Quatros and five distributed subwoofers), the room literally disappears, and you will swear you are at the recording venue.

This is fairly new technology, but the concept has been analyzed by Earl Geddes, Fred Toole, Bob Stuart of Meridian, and Duane LeJeune of Audiokinesis. REG reported on the Audiokinesis Swarm system in The Absolute Sound earlier this year, and stated that the Swarm produced the best, most accurate bass he had ever heard - and he did his audition without any equalization. With digital room correction, it gets even better, but the corrections are much smaller than they would be for 1, 2 or 3 woofers. (With my set-up I have seven woofers which all end up about seven feet apart and all around the room.)

I was so bowled over by this, I decided to upgrade my fabric Quatros to the carbon versions, but I am thinking that the Swarm may make the Treo's sound just as good, since they dominate below 80 hz.

BTW, if I blindfolded you and asked you to point to the subwoofers, you couldn't do it - the bass ambient sound is completely non-directional....as it should be. There is no suck-out and the only nodes appear right in the room corners, but at greatly reduced magnitude. The impression this gives is a much more natural acoustic environment and, with classical music, much like a good concert hall. It is spooky good.