Intuitive Summits & R.S. Audio Sasons?

I own the Sasons too and they have taken me further toward musical bliss than any other speaker that preceded them...and by a significant margin! What the Sasons do for me is combine into one package some of the individual strengths I've chased in other speakers over many years.

My longish audio history example: About a decade ago, when I paired the Avalon Eclipse speakers with Manley Neo Classic 250 tube amps, the improvement in coherence, musicality, soundstaging, imaging, and general "believability" was dramatic compared to my previous Martin Logan ReQuests. Over time, the lack of dynamics and "compression" limitations got me searching for "more". I ended up with Kharma Ceramique 1.0's paired with Atma-Sphere MA1 MkII.2. Dynamics were better and driver compression not so noticeable...overall very musical. Ultimately, the Kharma's lacked something and I sold my entire setup, somewhat disillusioned with the hobby and whether or not what I was looking for from an audio system was even possible. A couple of years passed with only a boom box and I jumped in again, purchasing Magnepan MG3.6r's, coupled to Parasound JC1 amps...loved the sense of speed in transients, musicality was high, bass in my room was decent, dynamics ok, though peaks seemed to be compressed. I had no interest in upgrading from the Maggies during my 3 years with them...until hearing the Sasons. Owning the Sasons, I feel I'm getting all of what I loved about the Avalon Eclipses paired with the Manley Tube amps with none of the restrictions. Dynamics from the Sasons can be absolutely startling, something none of my prevous speakers were capable of. Tonality, musicality, transient speed, soundstaging, imaging and, most importantly, "believability" are all better served by the Sasons than any of my previous speakers.

TedmBrady and I had e-mailed back and forth prior to my receiving the Sasons and I was prepared for a long and difficult break-in, but fortunately, my experience was not so bad... basically enjoyable - though unimpressive - for the first 100 hours, improving significantly by the 200 hour mark, and mostly just amazing me ever since. There were more subtle changes within these timeframes, but I just found them too enjoyable to take much note of them. In other words, there was so much "new information" to discover on all my old CDs brought about by the Sason experience that I really couldn't get too worked up about some of the more subtle breakin changes I thought were happening. I probably have in the area of 750 hours of play time on them now.

I often times sit down for a "quick listen", intending on listening for an hour or so to a few select tracks from multiple CD's only to find myself listening to multiple CD's from start to finish. The Sasons have made it difficult to do the "quick listen" thing for me.

Regards,

Jordan

Composed 10/13/07 12:36pm

Little late coming back to this. Sorry for that. We're buried and I can't find enough days in the hour. I'll be brief.

Sirspeedy Wrote:
...What EXACTLY is "Rothboard",other than the play on letters,from the designer's name.
Also, if the front "Rothboard" baffle is 4 inches thick(impressive),is it layered,like how Avalon does it,or one piece?

Rothboard is a unique material chosen for dissipative qualities. It's a cast monomer board - nothing like MDF or HDF. We chose the material which we dubbed Rothboard because it's very good at not storing energy. Along with the granite, this material contributes significantly to the Sason's "boxless" and open sound.

Sirspeedy Wrote:
...so I must assume the cabinetry is damped

Yes, the cabs are internally damped. One thing to realize though, the frequency at which granite resonates is pretty high. This means as a cabinet it would take one hell of a lot of energy to excite it's resonance - more than a speaker driver is capable of producing. Also I think it's good terminology to say the cabinet panels are damped in three dimensions. In other words, along with the internal damping, each cab panel is of course captured top/bottom/front/back by the other panels and this virtually eliminates the "PING" sound you mention. As the drivers are doing their business, there is no cabinet talk. Rap the Sason cabinet....nothing. Hit the cabinet with a 10lb sledge hammer....well okay, it'll probably break - don't do that.

Rja Wrote:
Robert,
What does the new short version weigh compared to the tall version?

The tall version weighed close to 140lbs. The short version weighs around 100 - 110lbs. Still that's pretty heavy but the size of the speaker is a lot easier and less awkward to handle. Now the stands weigh more but that's not an issue unless you're trying to put the stands on top of the speakers.

So still, as a package each side weighs around 200lbs with speaker and stand. Add sand to the stand's three columns and now you're talking about 250lb a side. Maybe you're saying "Geez! how do you move these things?" Solved: Carpet sliders! These work like a charm. You can almost move these with one hand with the sliders.

Sirspeedy Wrote:
Finally...What is the current cost,with stands...

Mfg. Direct pricing is $8575.00 as a package. And that my friends is an incredible value - believe it or not. As Ehider mentions, there's a lot of things done in the Sasons that no one else is doing including the other speakers mentioned in this thread. These things are all performance related. The "Pure Direct Connect" binding post arrangement is one example and is not inconsequential compared to other binding posts which are little more than audio jewelry that promote convenience rather than performance.

I guess finally, my little 10 second commercial to maybe affect some positive change in high end audio or at least ponder. This grabbed my attention and I thought it worth addressing: "I told my friend to seriously check out the Sason, before he went for the Magicos. His response was that he didn't think they had enough exposure". Now I hope I don't offend anybody but this is kind of a sad commentary. If one is endeavoring to assemble an outstanding music system, does one really approach that based on how much exposure a product has? I think the answer is too many times Yes. Good/bad, right or wrong, it's certainly easy to be motivated by "exposure" - all those cool ads or that over the top review - than it is to invest time and effort in personal experience over a broad range of whatever.

"Certainly, it would seem, the only thing worth expereincing is that product that has the greatest "exposure". And certainly if it costs a gabillion $$$$ it's the best. And it's definately true your gets what yous pay for." To the latter I agree and I think what's "got" a lot of times is SOTA marketing and perfomance that achieves little if anything to raise the bar.

Advertising and all the industry politics that produces "exposure" can do much to drive up the selling price of a given product. When all is said and done, I believe the bar is set too low for what can be expected out of a system component or music system.

Too much in audio is more about image than substance and unfortunately, the consumer buys into it. It costs a lot of money to create an image and something usually has to give to meet a price point. That something is usually performance. Doesn't mean a given product won't sound good but how much better could it sound if more of the cost of creating an image went into the performance of the product. Once you start putting a lot of focus in creating an image you then have to say what you have to say bigger and louder than the next guy. After a while the whole marketing thing just kind of goes nuts it seems. What gets promoted as the greatest thing since spread peanut butter is really only peanut butter flavored paste product...LOL!

The bar is set too low. I say there's more to be had and the bar can be set higher without some of the astronomical selling prices. I think that's what a few smaller companies like Dale Pitcher's Intuitive Design are trying to do. I would also include RSAD in this camp. We're more interested in folks buying performance than marketing. For us, our exposure comes from people's own experience of our products and then by word of mouth end users. Slower process for sure but I trust it's more credible. Anyway....was that 10 seconds? I know I screwed up "brief".

Cheers!

Robert
RSAD

Hi Robert,

Taller speakers get slightly shorter stands and shorter gets taller stands ?

My upstair floor joists should be up to snuff, otherwise I'll be downstairs on the couch !

Rx8man Wrote:
Taller speakers get slightly shorter stands and shorter gets taller stands ?

Correct Pat.

Cheers!

Robert
RSAD

Robert,
Is this a ported design or acoustic suspension?