Vienna Acoustics Bach Grand

The Vienna line has a great sound if properly set up. One of the previous posts talks about using a receiver which is your first mistake..... you should be using a pre amp and amp of the same caliber as the Vienna speakers.... not a receiver. 

I have owned a pair of Bach Grand for about 3 years. I am VERY hard to please and these please me very much. I have bought and sold a lot of gear in the last few years to try to perfect my system. The Bach grands have remained in my system whilst I have seen many brand names come and go..

With the correct gear, cables, placement etc, these are a beautiful sounding speaker. superb bass for their size. Vocals are amazingly natural and the highs are never shrill, even though they can be a little bit understated sometimes.

this is not a speaker that jumps out at you, but with the right equipment it will ooze sound into your environment. They are more seductive than pushy.

I stress, use warm amplification , warm sources, and warm cables and you’ll have a beautifully organic sound that is VERY hard to achieve with other brands of speakers.

My setup.. Dynavector HX1.2 power amp. I think this is really where a lot of the warmth comes from as I’ve had several other amps that just don’t come near this.
Cambridge Audio preamp , Marantz DV9500 SACD player. Audioquest interconnects, and Dunlavey speaker cables. Power cables are so important too. Stay away from silver unless you want to destroy atmosphere in your sound.

In essence the speaker has the capacity to give extremely natural, open, warm analogue type reproduction. If you’re into vocals, these can be amazing. They have the capacity to create an atmosphere that the music sits in, but it really is a VERY fine balance of equipment and cabling.

I haven’t needed a sub in 3 years, and only in the last 24 hours have I plugged one back in. They don’t go super low but do go down to around 35hz I would believe. There is an octave missing for certain, but so few recordings have this anyways. the bass is very natural. Double bass sounds like double bass. Ride cymbal sounds like the real deal. etc etc. I think you get the picture. Imaging is very good and can be quite deep, wide and high.

To me this is one of the most balanced, organic and natural sounds I’ve heard in 45 years, and I’ve been either playing with , or selling audio gear professionally in that time. I’m also a musician with expensive taste in my musical instruments. Bach Grand reproduce all instruments extremely naturally and honestly.

I have pairs of the bach grand and mozart grands that I bought when Best Buy dropped the line back in 2011.  In my experience these are very setup dependent speakers.  The small drivers mean there isn't a lot of punch and the surprisingly deep bass they produce is coming from the ports.  I'm currently using the Mozarts as computer speakers with an old Creek 5350SE and Cambridge dac magic.  This is a great combination and I find the bass very satisfying nearfield. 

When I had these same speakers set up in a much larger living room that was fairly reflective I thought they sounded downright bad.  No punch and they sounded overly colored and just weird in there.  My Thiel 2 2s sounded a million times better. 

I've been told that these are designed with the European market in mind and that in Europe, rooms tend to be smaller and construction tends to be more solid so the bass reinforcement of the room can be made to work with these speakers rather than against them.  I had them set up in a small bedroom at one time and I thought they sounded great in there as well. 

In my opinion these speakers are fine in smaller rooms or nearfield and they are probably fine in some larger rooms if you aren't listening to music where punch and bass resolution are very important.  They're nice with vocals, maybe classical where what bass there is tends to be slow to build and slow to decay. 

The differences between the Bach grand and mozart grand are mainly that the mozart uses a little bit better tweeter so it's a bit more resolving and the mozart goes a little lower before the bass starts to sound mushy and slow.  That seems to be the most noticeable difference with this line.  They all go surprisingly deep in the bass for their size but as you move up the line the quality of the bass remains higher to progressively lower frequencies. 

This is a very interesting fact. :)
I bought a used pair of VA Bach grand...in good condition. I still have the boxes in the attic this day. Different batch with no close serial number... well not that would matter but some people go crazy in having consecutive serial numbers!
Anyhow. Was my first big investment... and from the beginning those Bach Grand sounded sooo good. I couldn’t believe it how clean and with a such beautiful stage ... perfectly balanced. It is hard to explain how clean ...I was leaving in an apartment at the time. So, end up moving at the house and... the moment Best Buy ended the contract with Vienna Acoustics and signed with B&W ...I had the chance to buy new Mozart Grand! And I said well...I’ll use the Mozart in front for audio listenings and have the Bach as rear speakers. Well fast forward after tests and tests and tests... I was puzzled and did not want to accept there is not a big improvement in having Mozart !
so I ended up buying monoblocks expensive amplifiers with a nice preamp... because everybody mentioned Mozart are power hungry etc. and have Mozart Grand installed just for music audition. 
Long story short... till this day! No matter the amplifier used I am amazed how well and clean the Bach sounds. It’s unbilivible. Bach is such well designed. It sounded excellent in apartment...in house ...in different rooms... Mozart has indeed a bigger stage I don’t want to say they are not good... they definetly sound bigger... have a more of the extension ...but that’s about it... sometimes I believe Bach Grand has the perfect 2 drivers... very simple end effective... clean accurate sound. Mozart sounds large but till this day I am not convinced the upgrade for music auditions was worth it. I have Mozart placed in different room driven by a way more expensive amplifier and preamp... and than find myself in front of the Bach where the tv is... and play some audio cds, close my eyes and smiling and amazed how good they are, better than Mozart!?! It’s unbelieveble. 

Helloi'm using an old VA Joker, an ancestor of the VA Mozart, i think they are 20 years old. They sound in my little music room (13sqm) and it is fantastic, very fine bass, a vey good stage and exciting music.