Vandersteen 5a or Eggleston Andra II

Mothra, your "salt" suggestion is right on the beam, and well taken. Funny how those who should be in an asylum are the first to suggest "meds" to others.

Oz, what you have read is correct, at least in some instances. The "slots" for spades on the 5's I had were such that I had to slice just a sliver off the silver spades on my Ridge Street Audio cables (it was easy with those). Other spades will fit fine but, for instance, the Kimber spades on a set I run in a vintage system would NEVER fit. So it is a consideration in that if you have exisitng cables with wide spades, you'd have to get them reterminated (which could be a real issue with some cables). Someone told me that Richard had addressed this in newer models, but not from what I've seen - maybe on the newer Quatros. (?) As a side note, your sytem has come a good long way on a couple of years thee, Oz. ;-0

i never minded doug's system, i just can;t tell what;s going on. the room seems to have real phase issues depending on where you sit.

I'll post some pics sometime. You guys would laugh. I don't have a listening room, i just have a bunch of junk all in one place!
Thanmks for the kind words. I like mt speakers but there are many other great speakers out there.

Shadorne, you mentioned in your thread the Andra's are "a bit bass light". The original Andras were but the Andra 2's aren't, bass has allot to do with placement and associated gear. I have had some speakers where the stage was great but the bass was not visa versa but I am not having any problems with my Andra's.

If you compare the Andra's to say the Wilson Maxx 2's then yes. The Maxx 2's move allot more air, is this correct I'm not sure but I do like the effect but there are other issues with the MAXX 2's. A step up would most likely be to go to the Savoy's, trying to integrate subs is very difficult. I have had a few speakers in the past with big bass but it was unrealistic and did not integrate well with the rest of the drivers or over loaded the room. I have tried sub satellite set-ups in the past, highly regarded Entec SW-2 subs stacked along with Artimis speakers, allot of work and money.

If you like ATC then you should also look at PMC BB5-XBD-A speakers.

Regarding speaker cable hook-up, wow! to have slice the spades so to fit onto the Vandy's not for me. No problems with the Andra's, I have Virtual Dynamics Genesis top of the line bi-wire speaker cables hooked with out any cutting and they are beast to hook-up.

Going back to the bass, I really noticed putting my Andra's on top of Systrum platforms improved over all along with even improving the already excellent bass. I have passed this info. onto many with different speakers and all have come back with great results. A friend has JM-LAB Nova BE's and recently put them on and is just over whelmed with the results.

Just so you are aware I new you had Vandy's all along, they are great speakers also.

Dev,

Shadorne, you mentioned in your thread the Andra's are "a bit bass light".

Actually that was supposed to be paraphrasing Mothra ( my fault as I was not clear). I never actually said anything about the Vandy's (I think they are great too) or intended to imply anything about the bass of the Eggleston Andra II's for that matter. My only comment was to throw out that Bob Ludwig had chosen Andra II's for his surround system and Eggleston Ivy's for his main studio two channel monitors - so they must be darn good!!

I guess I respected Bob's choice even if he made the tragic terrible mistake of ditching his ATC 100's after only 7 years of mastering use, how could he possibly do such a thing!!!(LOL, just making fun here)

However, my respect has turned to a slight bit of concern when I dug deeper, partly because of Mothra's "weird" comments. I guess I felt there was something Mothra knew but was not comfortable saying in these forums ("weird" is a pretty strong comment in my book)

Further research (today) indicates that Bob Ludwig's choice of Ivy's may have been unduely influenced by the "attention" that he received from William Eggleston - see this report. As you can see other creditors to Eggleston were not very happy about time and money being devoted to such an esoteric project (a speaker with 23 drivers costing $100,000, partly designed by an a mastering engineer who does not make speakers for a living and apparently, like most Eggleston projects until that point, likely running at a loss) Interestingly, you will also see that a favorable "Stereophile review" was believed to have made a huge impact on sales of a previously not so well known speaker manufacturer. I leave readers to make your own judgement whether Bob should have ditched his ATC's ( again just joking...it is OK by me to hate ATC's!!).

As for PMC's, indeed yes they have a great reputation too. Generally less forward in mid range and a lot more bass is how I would describe them versus ATC; they are an excellent choice and I would highly recomend them too (to those finding ATC's make their ears bleed but want something dynamic...LOL).

Now I think that this thread has well and truely become a drunken diatribe....I think I'll stop there. Apologies to all those who found this boring and a waste of time - fortunately you can simply ignore it, as the originator of this thread appears to have done ;-)