I have had the Double Impact Monitors for over two years now and put some quality listening time on them. They are really fun speakers for sure.
Construction:
The cabinets are rock solid and clean, though with the flat dark grey paint are fairly plain looking. That said, I do most of my listening in the dark in a dedicated listening room, so it doesn’t bother me too much. The Cardas inputs are a nice touch. As my hobby budget increased I upgraded from a pair of GoldenEar Aon2 stand-mounters to the Impact Monitors – no contest it’s night and day and I am really happy.
The Good:
The sound from these is excellent when material is above 40Hz with rock (Grateful Dead, Rush, Pink Floyd, the Cure, etc.) and most jazz. The highs are clean and pronounced – not hinted at. The mid-range is as advertised, just excellent with any material really. The sound stage is deep enough, but wide and extends beyond the outer boundaries of the speaker. Some nights listening, it’s like you are there! Spooky! The thing that really gets me with these speakers that I think not enough people talk about, and that I feel the magic in these are, is the sense of scale that these produce.
The scale that comes from these, not just at high volume, but at soft night listening volume too is amazing. After two years of listening to these properly set up in a treated room other speakers (in the $1k - $5k price range) just sound thin. Even higher end speakers in the $5,000 range that may have a touch more definition at the very top end (mentioned below) cannot compete with the mid-range or scale produced by these in my set up. It has really changed how I approach systems now, because for me it’s about enjoying the music – not analyzing it. And I do thoroughly enjoy listening to these for hours on end!
Comparisons:
Like most who are interested in “audiophile” accoutrements, I have had the chance to listen to some very expensive systems in my time and plenty of cheap ones too. While I won’t claim that these $2,000 monitors can hang with the Nagra, VTL, Wilson XVX; or Audio Research, Sonus faber Il Cremonese; or McIntosh, Bowers and Wilkins $60k Nautilus “shells” systems I heard in demo rooms (because they can’t)… I will say they outright trounce the Wilson TuneTot, Sonus faber Sonetto II and Olympica Nova I, and any B&W stand-mounter (though I’ve only heard up to the 805 D3, not the new 805 D4). There is no contest here in terms of mid-range sound and scale of presentation. Where the Olympica Nova I and 805 D3 did pull ahead was in terms of bass definition (more on that below). The TuneTot was clean to perfect musically and tonally, but gets easily swallowed up even in a small listening room. If I had $10k for desktop speakers, those would be it – but they didn’t fit the bill for main-system speakers. While the others were prettier to look at (Olympica Nova I) and the Wilson build quality was insane for a small monitor, the overall sound of the Impact Monitors was just better in my opinion. I think this is again because of the scale presented by the Impact Monitors. In fact, the scale presented by the Impact Monitors is far better than any $2k - $4k slim tower I’ve heard. In a way the Impact Monitors have ruined other speakers (within their reasonable price range) for me because now even clean sounding or tonally perfect don’t do it for me if the scale isn’t there. I also think that’s why those super-expensive systems mentioned above are so amazing – they do perfect tone and musicality at massive scale… if you can afford it, which unfortunately I can’t.
Critique:
The only place where I feel the Impact Monitors do fall down a bit in my experience is in the lower bass. Note, I am not a “bass head”. When I play albums (vinyl guy here) such as the opening to the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club band, Jon Batiste’s We Are, or any Amy Winehouse; the drivers seem to bottom out on the low bass notes creating a mechanical sound that can be annoying at normal listening volumes 60 dB to 72 dB measured. It seems to happen on “artificially low notes” below 40 Hz. This has left me wanting better bass on these. If I turn it down to night listening levels the problem goes away, but for someone who has come to enjoy scale this is a bit annoying. Albums such as Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories are unlistenable at volume. That said, I can crank the hell out of Credence Clearwater Revival, Pink Floyd, Miles Davis, INXS, Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen, etc. and the sound is great at any level. So be wary of the type of music you will feed through these. But again, 99% of the time this is not a problem. Though that 1% of the time it is noticeable and distracting and has caused me to switch albums.
Final Thoughts:
These are really enjoyable speakers for most music, and rock in particular. In a small room like mine with the right equipment these beat anything in their price range in terms of sound. If you want something pretty to put in a main living room, these may not be it, but in a dedicated audio room like I have (and a lot of you too, I’m sure) that doesn’t matter. I can tell you that the prettier stuff mentioned above will give up quite a bit of sound quality in the mid-range and every bit of scale to the Impact Monitors though. If you are making your decision based on sound alone in this price range, in my opinion these are the best speakers – which is why I bought them and would highly recommend them to anyone who isn’t a “bass head”.
That said, once again I am fortunate to have an increased hobby budget, and am considering upgrading to get better bass. I like Tekton, but for my $5,k budget am wondering if there is better out there? I am looking at either the Double Impact SE, Sonus faber Sonetto V, or Salk Song3-A...