I love my Vandersteen's but . . . . . . . .

Stumpie,

Oops! My mistake I confused the watts with the first post. But I must agree with Eagleman6722, there must be a marriage between the amp and the speakers. I have had Quicksilver M-60's ( 60 watts per channel ) matched with the Vandersteen 3's and you would have thought you died and went to heaven if you listend to them. I also know that Richard Vandersteen highly recomended Quicksilver for his speakers.

I also recall listening to McChintosh through a pair of Vandersteens one time at a audio store. And to my suprise the salesmen looked at me and said " this system sounds really boring " No I wont reveal the store or the Mac that was running :)

But if you ever do decide your going to throw away those Vandies..... Throw them my way!

Eagleman6722 ,

Thanks for the input.Very helpful and interesting story. I most certainly agree with you,, Getting equipment to work with each other can drive one crazy! This hobby can drive you crazy! , , But I love it .:)

Kt_88 ,

LOL ! Don’t worry . I won’t be giving up my Vandersteen’s . My wife likes them in the home theater system and wants them to stay there. So far so do I …

Thanks again for all the input . This IS a fantastic web site . .

Whooeeee!!!

A small, completly empty, room with bare walls. Gotta be some nasty reflections, peaks, and nulls going on. No wonder things get congested at higher volumes!

Before you switch speakers, amps, or whatever, try some acoustic room treatments. They will do more for your overall sound than any component at this point.

Bass traps, Wall panels, diffusers, all will do you some good, I bet.

BTW, I had my bother's old 2Ce's for about a year before I started my own system. He upgraded to the 3A Sigs with an Audio Research 100.2 solid state amp and LS-16 preamp. Anyway, I pushed those 2Ce's pretty hard with his Adcom GFA-555 amp. Can't say it sounded great, but did get pretty loud.

Stumpie -- It seems that you've found a sound you like with the Paradigms, but I'll offer some comments anyway. Different speakers do different things. I wouldn't get rid of your Vandersteens. They are excellent for small-group jazz, classical string quartets and vocal music. I have a pair of Vandy 1b's. I love their clarity, imaging and subtlety, and they're great for listening into the details of music at moderate volumes.

Vandys would not necessarily be one's first choice for listening to rock at volume, though. Amplification isn't the issue, either. I've got a 120 watt per channel NAD C-270 power amp hooked up to mine through a B&K Pro-10MC preamp, and even with the volume turned well up, the Vandersteens sound well-bred rather than gnarly. That's fine with me, because it matches best what I listen to most these days.

If what you're looking to do, though, is to put on some old Johnny Winter, George Thorogood, Stones or Aerosmith and crank it up to levels that will let you feel the thump of the bass drum, the grunt of the bass, the chunk of the rhythm guitar, and the sinus-clearing snarl of a Les Paul with Seymour Duncan pickups played through a Marshall stack, you might try something else. At the risk of being labeled a heretic, I'll offer a couple of suggestions. Back in the 1970s, I would have steered you in the direction of JBL L-100s, perhaps THE ultimate all-time speaker for listening to rock, but those qualify as vintage equipment and are probably hard to find in anything like good condition. These days, if you want some authentic rock sound without pretension, you might consider JBL 4410A professional studio monitors (available online for roughly $450 per pair, run a Google search for vendors). If you don't want to spend that much money, and don't want to have to hunt around too much, look for a pair of JBL Northridge E50 bookshelf speakers online (available for about $250 a pair), or check out Cerwin-Vega E78s, E710s or E712s at your local Rex or other discount store.

JBLs and Cerwin-Vegas are not audiophile gear by most estimations, but they'll probably be just fine for putting on some rock and cranking up the volume. Let's put it this way -- you sip fine wine from a crystal wineglass, but you pour back beer from a mug, and that's just the way things should be. As with everything else, your mileage may vary, but that's what I'd try if I wanted rock speakers with some bite.

Not sure I agree with 02pete about rock music speakers being like a beer mug to beer and jazz speakers being as a crystal wine glass is to fine wine...

As far as I am concerned, it is all music and a good speaker should do it all well ...as softly as you want and as loudly as you want...whatever type music you like....and all with accuracy and low distortion.

Try auditioning ATC speakers...they are used by Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Tom Petty, Mark Knopfler, Lenny Kravitz and many other rockers and their sound engineers. They are also used by Telarc label for classical. They are used by TEC award winning engineer Doug Sax (do a google on Doug Sax Mastering Lab). They were used by Sony for SACD demos at AES conventions. Doug Sax mastered the Aerosmith "Toys in the Attic" SACD from original master tapes on ATC speakers (an SACD which got great reviews). They are used by Disney and Hollywood studios. The list of professional users is large....in all probability about a third of the music you buy (whatever your genre taste) will have either been mixed, mastered or re-mastered on ATC speakers.

You mention compression (a common problem with low cost drivers in competitvely priced speakers) and the fact that you wish you could really crank it up: the larger ATC models play loud enough to easily do permanent hearing damage and even at these levels they play with some of the lowest levels of distortion in the business....just be careful.

[caveat I am a proud owner of various ATC speakers for about ten years but I am not a dealer or a pro and have no affiliation with ATC]