Everyone whose Merlins...

hi george,
i am happy that you found something that you really like and enjoy to listen to, i wish you continued enjoyment!!
you mentioned to me in an e-mail that your listening room was filled with a lot of items and that you could not listen to the speaker at the suggested listening distance. the merlin vsm sounds fuller the farther you get from them. it is not a nearfield system because it is too damped and it is too uniform in amplitude. it uses the power response of the speaker in the room to build the full tonallity. used in the manner it was designed to be used in and with gear that is suited to them in damping, you would have had plenty of bass, imho.
still though, even the most powerful and robust bass possible is not enough for some. it is a matter of taste.
enjoy your wilsons!
regards,
b

I agree with Oneprof's comments on the SuperBAM. The BAM with its current improvements add significantly to the performance of my VSM-MX. I have had the SuperBAM for a few weeks now. The SuperBAM provides for a fuller sound and it lowers the noise floor. The BAM upgrade has made a great performing speaker even better. The upgrade is worth the effort and cost.

Boy, I like the bass in the VSM's a lot and I do play some 16Hz organ music, sure it's no subwoofer but the articulation makes up for any 20hz rumble.

I did a show with these speakers some years back and the room was so over loading with bass it would have made a 12 inch driver proud! If you can't get bass out of these speakers the room is too small or there is something else not right!

just to clarify some points, also posted on aa.
the x max of the woofer is 24 mm which equals some 15 to 18 inch jbl drivers. with the fs of the driver being 28 hz, it likes to go low and move a lot of air. the filter at 28 hz in the super bam, removes out of band output which reduces im distortion elsewhere. with the use of the bam we were able to optimize the bottom end of the speaker in amplitide and phase while utilizing a smaller encloser to keep sensitivity higher, reduce distortion and greatly improve the midrange clearity and uniformity. this enables the vsm/bam to be used with lower powered finnessed amps. in essence, what is missing is 16 to 30 hz. this is the lowest octave so you would be wanting for the lowest pipe organ notes and some electronic music only. all other acoustic instruments, jazz, blues and rock are handled by the in band response of the speaker. the speaker is just not designed to fill large spaces or go super low which can be a benefit in a large environment. the vsm is designed to work in normal sized living environments. if you need more bass quantity in your set-up consider changing something in your system to improve the tonality. give me a call for a discussion.
thanks,
b

I picked up my “Super BAM” (is this a trademark now Bobby?) back in June when Bobby was just shipping them out the door. I already had the VSM-MX for about 1.5 months. I followed his suggestion of fully charge/fully drain cycle perhaps 10 times. Now I usually unplug the AC and listen in battery mode for one hour and plug it in again and flip the switch back to fully charge. Once a week I do the fully drain/fully charge cycle simply because it does not require much effort.
Bass? Damn straight it does and it does it right. Among others, I have owned a pair of Revel F30 and Gershman Acoustics Avant Garde RX-20 speakers that, in absolute terms, put out more bass in the sub ~150 Hz region. The Merlin’s, however, put out the “right” amount of bass – the amount that did not call attention to it and was just part of the music. I can understand the comment that this speaker system is somewhat bass shy, but I cannot agree with those opinions whatsoever. If one owns a bass heavy speaker (i.e. there is a bump in that frequency region), the whole spectrum of the music is off and sounds irritating. At least it does for me. As an aside, I had all three speakers mentioned above at the same time for direct comparisons (the Merlin’s then were the VSM-M with the “regular BBAM).
System matching is very important with these speakers. This has been noted many, many times. A couple of years back, I did have a subwoofer for a short period with my VSM-M’s but sold it after replacing my preamp (Sonic Frontier Line 2 SE for a Joule Electra LA 100 MK III). It made the speakers sound fuller – not deeper really, just fuller to the extent that a sub was not required.
To the question at hand: What do I think about the Merlin’s after numerous hours under their belt? They are the cornerstone of my system and I will change my system based upon what I feel is the best match for the speakers.

David