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

Thanks, Johnny. Richard says the same thing. The digital reconstruction filter is the key ingredient. I use a Meridian G68XXD which uses their patented apodizing filter and 24 bit / 96 kHz digital processing of all inputs. I honestly can't hear a difference between an analog signal from my Pass XP-15 phono stage going direct to my amps (through an ALPS Black Beauty pot), vs. through the Meridian, except that the Meridian has much more coherent bass due to the Meridian Room Correction (MRC). I have also fooled all the golden ears in the St. Louis Gateway Audio Society, who simply don't believe they are listening to digital when I play vinyl.

This may be unique to Meridian's latest software however, because I couldn't stand digital before I got this setup. The only other system that I am aware of that sounds this good is the dcs stuff the pros use. I got to spend a half day in the DTS mastering center in Calabasas, CA listening to their DTS Neo X software playing digital tracks through an 11.2 speaker setup. Most incredible sound I've ever heard. It was all based on proprietary DTS software and custom dcs digital DSP's and ADC/DAC's. I asked how they did it and they just smiled, but commented that the computing throughput and the reconstruction filters were critical.

The point is, you have to go digital for the best room correction, for multi-channel and for any recording that's not vinyl. (Even for most remastered vinyl, the signal has been digitized in the recording process.). For me that means using Meridian processing - nothing else a consumer can buy compares.

Added footnote - I've had the Meridian DSP speakers in my room and compared them to the Vandersteens. They are pretty good - especially the big ones (7000 and 9000 series), but not as good as the Vandersteens. Even the Meridian techs who have calibrated my room admit that. What Richard has accomplished with his four driver architecture and crossovers is magically. The only way to match what he has is a single full-range, phase coherent driver, but I've never heard one big enough to reproduce an orchestra.

Second added footnote - if you read Meridian's White Paper on Room Correction, the target function they are optimizing (with up to 60 digital filters) is the room's reverberant field - in essence the famous waterfall chart.  Below 250 Hz, the reverberant field is much more important than the direct response.  You can only really adjust the direct response with an 11-band analog equalizer to correct gross errors.

Correcting the reverberant field can make the room disappear.  Richard has always said your ear-brain can do this correction itself, because you can recognize your spouse's voice in whatever room you are in.  He's right, but I'm not sure it applies as well for a complete orchestra in a BIG hall.  A crucial difference is the sound source - the Vandersteen approach works well for point sources, but an orchestra can consist of over 100 instruments, spread out over a "field of view" of up to 90 degrees, (sitting in the 20th row).  In addition, the back wall reflection in a concert hall is 40-100 ms after the direct sound.  In your room, the sound bounces off your walls many, many times in this interval.  As a result, the room modes can completely mask the hall ambience in the recording.  This, I think, is where the Meridian approach, along with multiple, asymmetrically distributed subwoofers (4-7) has a big advantage.  

One final note on where both Bob Stuart and Richard Vandersteen completely agree - room correction above 250 hz is deleterious to the sound.  The Meridian MRC approach makes no "edits" above this frequency.