sirspeedy, as Howie mentioned.....i am not one to change gear willy-nilly. i had owned to Exquisite's for almost 4 years.....and had no particular desire to change until the new room came along and gave me a reason. i've had the same cables for 4 years, the same passive pre for 3 years, and other aspects of my system are pretty stable too. the reason for building the room is that i realized the limitation of gear......after i had tweaked and tweaked over a few years to wring all i could from my gear and previous room.
we agree on the 'art' aspect of the Kharma.....yet.....it's simply not the issue. aesthetics are obviously important to me; but not at the expense of performance. a few years back i switched from the Linn CD-12 to the emmlabs......from beauty to the beast.....but the beast was better. and over the last three years my decision to switch to the emmlabs has proven correct FOR ME. there have only been 4 sets of VR9's made so far and there is limited exposure of the product.....i am not looking to make a popular decision......i want the right product for my situation.
i do have one question; where do you come up with my 'Rock Music Tastes'? my personal viewpoint is about exactly opposite and has been stated numerous times. i would never want what i refer to as 'one-note bass' or 'rock-show bass'. i would take the bass performance of the Exqusisite's in my current room 1000 times before i would want boomy bass energy for the sake of itself. bass performance needs to serve the music.....and never be an end to itself or prominent. my perception of the VR9 is consistent with that viewpoint and if that proves to be untrue when i have them in my room i will go another direction. in fact, the main reason i did not go for a separate subwoofer with the Exquisites was my fear of incoherence and boomyness in the bass.
i asked my designer to design the best room he could; and not the best room for the Exquisites. i knew the Exquisites did not have the deepest bass extention and the most visceral dynamic performance......i didn't know how they would actually work but i wasn't surprised by what happened.
Cinematic Systems; i must disagree with your opinion that different amps might make huge differences in my bass extention. the truth is that the anachoic bass performance of the Exquisites is not too different than what i get in my room. the rear port just can't do enough in my room to support the 40hz to high 20hz range that it will do in most rooms. this is a speaker/room issue, not an SPL issue. it was down over 15 db from 20hz to almost 40hz.....so another amp is NOT the issue. another amp may add a sense of weight or presence, but it won't measure differently......and would come with unacceptable trade-offs. it is POSSIBLE that i am wrong here......but not too likely.
i have had many amps in my previous room (maybe 20 SOTA amps) and i never had one that seemed to significantly effect bass EXTENTION. they might allow better control, better articulation, or a sense of foundation......but they won't make 40hz extention.....22hz extention.
the Tenor 300 monos have lots of bass control and were equal to many high powered amps when i had them in my previous room. these were the amps my new room was measured with.
we agree on the 'art' aspect of the Kharma.....yet.....it's simply not the issue. aesthetics are obviously important to me; but not at the expense of performance. a few years back i switched from the Linn CD-12 to the emmlabs......from beauty to the beast.....but the beast was better. and over the last three years my decision to switch to the emmlabs has proven correct FOR ME. there have only been 4 sets of VR9's made so far and there is limited exposure of the product.....i am not looking to make a popular decision......i want the right product for my situation.
i do have one question; where do you come up with my 'Rock Music Tastes'? my personal viewpoint is about exactly opposite and has been stated numerous times. i would never want what i refer to as 'one-note bass' or 'rock-show bass'. i would take the bass performance of the Exqusisite's in my current room 1000 times before i would want boomy bass energy for the sake of itself. bass performance needs to serve the music.....and never be an end to itself or prominent. my perception of the VR9 is consistent with that viewpoint and if that proves to be untrue when i have them in my room i will go another direction. in fact, the main reason i did not go for a separate subwoofer with the Exquisites was my fear of incoherence and boomyness in the bass.
i asked my designer to design the best room he could; and not the best room for the Exquisites. i knew the Exquisites did not have the deepest bass extention and the most visceral dynamic performance......i didn't know how they would actually work but i wasn't surprised by what happened.
Cinematic Systems; i must disagree with your opinion that different amps might make huge differences in my bass extention. the truth is that the anachoic bass performance of the Exquisites is not too different than what i get in my room. the rear port just can't do enough in my room to support the 40hz to high 20hz range that it will do in most rooms. this is a speaker/room issue, not an SPL issue. it was down over 15 db from 20hz to almost 40hz.....so another amp is NOT the issue. another amp may add a sense of weight or presence, but it won't measure differently......and would come with unacceptable trade-offs. it is POSSIBLE that i am wrong here......but not too likely.
i have had many amps in my previous room (maybe 20 SOTA amps) and i never had one that seemed to significantly effect bass EXTENTION. they might allow better control, better articulation, or a sense of foundation......but they won't make 40hz extention.....22hz extention.
the Tenor 300 monos have lots of bass control and were equal to many high powered amps when i had them in my previous room. these were the amps my new room was measured with.