To be honest, I've never heard the VR4JRs Demoed at a dealer or show that sound anywhere near as good at the do in my home; and, I have some compromising acoustic problems in my listening room. Nevertheless, I started out driving my JRs with a 300 W/Ch Bryston 4BST and they sounded very, very good; as I said, better that any dealer Demo I'd heard. However, when I switched to the new Mcintosh MC270 75 W/Ch tube amp they really came alive, especially with tube upgrades from the stock Chinese-manufactured tubes. So much so, that I no longer feel the need to upgrade my amp anymore.
My JRs are setup with the front baffles about 38" from the wall behind them and the rear ambience tweeter set at 2. Setting the rear tweeter higher will get you more a sense of spaciousness but will blurr the sound somewhat. Lower settings with give you significantly better imaging. You really need to experiment to determine what setting is best for your room. For me, that took quite a bit of time. I'd replay certain music, resetting the rear setting, and do this back-and-forth for a while. But found that once I found a setting I liked to leave it that way for a few days of listening. Then change it + or - a few days later and decide if I liked the difference. I needed a few days to get use to the sound at one setting before I could determine how the + or - change affected the sound.
The JRs didn't reach their peak until they had at least 500 hours on them; after the break-in they sound SIGNIFICANTLY better - hard to believe. Also, be certain to load the bottom chambers with 40-50 lbs (@) of lead shot for the tightest bass and most dynamic impact. Also, I'd strongly suggest replacing the stock speaker spikes with some decent brass spikes for greater clarity from the speakers. Also, set aside the cable connector between the upper and lower units and bi-wire the speakers for absolute best results. Finally, if you're willing to do some very simple tweaking, remove each driver unit and coat the speaker/driver contacts with Walker SST (or the SST Extreme) silver contact enhancer (as well as all the other contacts in your system) and the JRs become amazingly fast and dynamic. This is really easier than it sounds and well worth the moderate expense and effort.
My JRs are setup with the front baffles about 38" from the wall behind them and the rear ambience tweeter set at 2. Setting the rear tweeter higher will get you more a sense of spaciousness but will blurr the sound somewhat. Lower settings with give you significantly better imaging. You really need to experiment to determine what setting is best for your room. For me, that took quite a bit of time. I'd replay certain music, resetting the rear setting, and do this back-and-forth for a while. But found that once I found a setting I liked to leave it that way for a few days of listening. Then change it + or - a few days later and decide if I liked the difference. I needed a few days to get use to the sound at one setting before I could determine how the + or - change affected the sound.
The JRs didn't reach their peak until they had at least 500 hours on them; after the break-in they sound SIGNIFICANTLY better - hard to believe. Also, be certain to load the bottom chambers with 40-50 lbs (@) of lead shot for the tightest bass and most dynamic impact. Also, I'd strongly suggest replacing the stock speaker spikes with some decent brass spikes for greater clarity from the speakers. Also, set aside the cable connector between the upper and lower units and bi-wire the speakers for absolute best results. Finally, if you're willing to do some very simple tweaking, remove each driver unit and coat the speaker/driver contacts with Walker SST (or the SST Extreme) silver contact enhancer (as well as all the other contacts in your system) and the JRs become amazingly fast and dynamic. This is really easier than it sounds and well worth the moderate expense and effort.