Vandersteen 5a vs. B&W 802D vs. Maggie 3.6 vs.?

I can't say enough good things about the Harbeth's. I owned a pair of Compact 7's for a long while and loved every minute with them. I also owned a pair of Spendor S-100's a while back--also a very musical sounding speaker. While I've only heard the Monitor 40 briefly (not the new 40.1) it struck me as more transparent and revealing than my old Spendors with much greater inner detail and better imaging. There are many similarities as well--the boxes are about the same size, as is the driver configuration. Both have the same BBC house sound with the slightly recessed midrange and lightly rolled off treble (though the Harbeth not so much). I'm a big fan of the M40 though with the current exchange rate and innovative design features I think the Vandy 5A would be my choice in a head to head. (Again, I haven't heard the new 40.1) I just think you get more speaker for your money with the Vandy--one that can adapt to any room and one which pushes the limits of what a dynamic speaker can do. I think it would be interesting to compare the two and would encourage you to do so. I would, however, again suggest you check out the Daedalus Audio Reference series Ulysses or new DA1.1. Either will rival the Harbeth and certainly give the Vandy a run--for less than half the money.

Hey Timball, if you want to sell your 3a sigs, I may be interested. How old?, what town/state?
kyneo@swbell.net

I have reset up my 5As a couple times with a Stereophile test disk (1/3 octive bands) and a Radio Shack meter. A little time consuming but its not that hard. Trick is to run through the adjustments a couple times to smooth out the overlaping interaction of the eq bands.

The dealer who had to travel a ways to deliver and then again to adjust the bass eq brought a disk with tones and used the same meter. I was a little underwhelmed and my subsequent adjustments sound a tad better to my ear.

I think it could be done better. Have not doug too deep but I think there is free or cheap software that one could use to create a test disk with test tones centered on the 5A eq bands. And there are better sound meters that one may be able to buy, borrow or rent. I have read claims that Vandersteen provides/uses such a custom disk while others say thats not true. One can call Vandersteen.

Each time I make adjustments (done it 3 or 4 times) I feel that I can tweek a slight improvement based on measurements and what I have been hearing.

Even if I am only 80% of the way to being fully optimized using the eq, my system is much better through out the bass than my previous Dunlavy SC4A/REL Stentor III combo.

If you tackle the eq process with a RS meter be shure to go to the AVS subwoffer forum and find out about the bass frequency adjustment tables for that meter. It under reads the level at very low frequencies, e.g. if you get a 0 db reading at 20 HZ you need to add a several dbs to that reading to estimate the real level. How many db depends on which version of the meter you have.

Terry