Von Schweikert DB99 or Vandersteen 5A ??

I agree the set up on the vandies is tuff. I get it's the price you pay to adapt it to different envirnments. It is a laid back speaker more so than the other 2 above. Depends if you like that. As for efficiency maybe I should reword that. They do suck some power you are not going to run them off a 100W tube amp but the amount of sound you got per whatt is much better than 80% of the speakers out there. The watts puppies I also like. I think they are a bit bassy and not nearly as a refined sound as the vandies but if I had to buy a pair of speakers to rock a house I would pick the whatts easy set up and good sound. Depends on what you like to listen to.

Before I go into this I'd like to say I have not heard the Vandies- So I only share my personal experience, and I suppose taste, with the 99's.

As an owner of the 99's I can say they are an amazing speaker and VERY versatile with the amps which can be used. We hooked both SS and tube amp up to them and to our surprise both sounded very good. Since the 99's are 99db efficient (hence the name) you do have to watch the gain with high watt SS. With 16 watt tube amps the speakers get plenty loud for my room.

The separate bass amp volume for each speaker is very effective and helpful as I listen with kids upstairs at night and simply tame down the THUMP. The bass is tight, full and seamless through the mid range. In fact to me the speaker as a whole is very balanced across the frequencies. They also have a built in rear firing tweeter which helps add to the sound stage and lifelike feel. The ambient tweeter is also adjustable with it's own controller as is the bass

If I could summarize their sound in one word I would use "alive."

As I said I have not heard the Vandies but for a perspective I have heard B&W 800 series so I will contrast with the 802. The 99's seem to give a more personal feel to the music space to me-it's the old analogy but one that fits "it's as if they are in the room." I think this is due to the front row/with the band sense I get from the 99's where as with the 802 I felt mid row back. The 802's are smoother and definitely more laid back with a "grander" feel to the sound.

The 99's to me are more fun. With the pop of the drums, the brass of the horns- The sax seems to vibrate me in the way a live sax can but with no fatigue. The guitar, piano, drum, all are in the room with appropriate dimensions for each instrument AND for the style of music being presented. With some speakers the song seems to have only one rhythm based off the drum or guitar. I think because the 99's are so dynamic I can both hear and feel multiple rhythms in the music which is why I just can't keep still when listening to these babies.

But make no mistake, "in the room" is not all this speaker can do. This is what I struggled with with other speakers. Hearing a "grand" speaker with classical is wonderful but hearing this same grand smooth sense with rock, acoustic, solo voice etc. becomes repetitive and tires me. I don't know how they do it but the 99's seem to work well with every style. Do a search on the 99's and you will see I am not the first to say this.

Listening to Cincinnati Orchestra via the 99's gave me the feel of the hall, the space, the black, the energy as well as the texture of the woodwinds, the vibration of the strings and the presence of the orchestra. I was appropriately placed back in the experience and it did feel both spacious grand and alive. With a switch of the CD I was intimately in a smokey hide away bar listening to Miles Davis. The 99's take me to different venues with every new album.

Anyway- enough eh? Just like to end to say that I am not a dealer and I don't mean to imply to any that the 800 series is not a great speaker also- just the 99's are more attune to my ears.

Best luck

I own the DB99 with the ribbon tweeter and have spent quite a bit of time with the 5A. The two speakers are similar in design in that they both have powered adjustable woofers and adjustable rear fining tweeters.

The 5A design integrates the sub by allowing you to adjust not only volume, but also Q, and lots of other settings. This will allow you to match the sub amp signature to your power amp as well as flatten out in room bass response. The DB99 only has volume control because their design is to boost the woofer output, but keep the signature of you existing amps. I have found the DB99 approach to be better. I own Lamm ML2 SET amps and Tenor 75 OTL amps and I can easily tell the difference in the bass signature of these two amps. Yes that means I need to move the speakers around to get flat bass response, but this is a much better scenario. The 5A's I've heard were driven by BAT tube amps and even though the bass could be made flat in any location, the integration of SS bass with tube mid/top never really worked.

As for the rest of the speaker, the DB99 is fantastic. Prior to the DB99's I had a pair of Kharma Midi Exquisite speakers in my system. I spent much time comparing the two with both Lamm and Tenor amps and 3 other audiophiles. I can say that all 4 of us agreed that the DB99 was the better speaker. This may have been the amps or my room or my front end, but in this case a 15K speaker out did a 85K one. Nothing against Kharma as I owned the CRM3.2 Enigma and thought it was an execpetional speaker.

The DB99 is a must audition if you are spending that kind of money. Also, I would suggest being weary of people who say they have "heard" this speaker because many have it confused with the other VS items as evidenced here. Finally, since the speaker is 99DB efficinet, it is very sensitive to upstream problems ranging from components, resonance control to AC line noise. However, if you get all the details right this thing is a giant killer. Best money I have ever saved to get better sound.

Hi Delancey- As an owner of the 5As, I would argue that if the integration of the subwoofer/ main amplifier did not create a seamless blend, the dealer did not have them set up properly. The amplifier input impedance needs to be set correctly on the external high pass filters for the correct -3dB rolloff at 100Hz for a truly seamless transition. Also, the signature of the main amplifiers is absolutely passed on to the sub amp on the 5A. I used three different amplifiers on the 5A- Rowland 201s, McCormack DNA-500, and best of all- the VAC Phi 220 monos. All three amps had different characteristics in their bass.

I'm not sure why moving the speakers around to get flat bass is the best choice either. What if the best spot for flat bass response creates terrible soundstaging or imaging? The 5As allow for optimal room placement with respect to imaging and soundstage among other things. This is done with the subwoofers unplugged. When the best location is found in the room, the sub can then be adjusted to help reduce any problematic bass peaks caused by any room modes due to that specific location. The 11 band eq is very helpful in that regard. Final adjustments on the sub level and Q allow for truly spectacular bass when set correctly.

The rear tweeter of the 5A is normally not activated unless the room is overly dead or extremely large. It is out of phase with the rest of the speaker and goes against Vandy's design philosphy of maintaining time and phase coherence.

I'm sure the DB99 is truly a special speaker and one I would love to hear. I really like Von Scweikert designs and have been duly impressed with the VR4jrs, the VR4srs, and the VR9SE. Another VS speaker I really want to hear in the VR7SE.

It sounds like you are extremely happy with the DB99s which is all that counts- happy listening.

The 5As were run at HE 2005 in a very large room with Pathos InPower 80 watt Class A hybrid monoblocks and the sound was plenty loud. Vandy also paired with the Tenor 75w OTLs at a past CES show with great sound. Another great match are the Quicksilver V4s which are 120 w/ch.
So yes, they are relatively inefficient at 87 dB, but I think you can get great sound with 100 tube watts.