New Gallo 3.5's

Thanks Barry and Dopogue, I realize there are many different options for Gallo speaker stand upgrades but I would like to hear someones impressions of the Mapleshade stands. I am particularly interested in what effect it has on the bass.

I can't figure out why they are charging almost twice as much, with only minor tweaks to two of the drivers.

Additionally, the new speaker needs to address the real Achilles heel of the previous design, which was the very considerable resonances of the (metal!!!) 'cabinet' (frame). I found that covering many of the exposed metal flat surfaces with adhesively backed neoprene killed most of the very noticeable frame resonance. For about $175 you can get enough 1/8 inch neoprene from VibraSystems to do the job. No one seems to have ID'ed this issue, but my listening tests suggested that this treatment of the metal surfaces does clean up the speaker a bit. Of course a direct A/B comparison would be best. I suspect that if John Atkinson at Stereophile ever reviewed this speaker (either the 3.1 or the new 3.5), he would climb all over the resonance issue. Tribute to the rest of the design that they sound as good as they do.
best, DW

I honestly don't believe that resonance is any kind of an "issue" with the Ref 3s. Just tried to stimulate it on my pair with some pretty loud music and was amazed at how NON-resonant these petite speakers actually are. Their forerunners, the Reference 2 series, were far more resonant (I still have the four-ball-per-side Gallo Ultimates) but sounded great anyway, though not nearly up to the sonics of the Ref 3 (3.0, 3.1) series. Dave

If you get close to the speaker when it is playing even moderately loudly and place a stethoscope on the surface, you will hear much more noise (mostly in the bass and mid-bass) coming from it than from the cabinet of any really first rate speaker (B&W, KEF, Revel, etc). This issue is a major design target for most high and even not so high end speakers - an acoustically non-resonant cabinet. Given that this has a metal structure, the resonance is not bad and pretty well controlled, but compared to a top wooden MFB it is really not so great. I notice that the sound seems cleaner, but of course this could be just auto-suggestion. Double blind testing would confirm whether it is an issue, but I am happy with the now totally inert surfaces that I have on my 3.1s.

best, Doug

Depends on the design philosophy too, and whether it "works." One
of the best sounding speakers I ever heard were the Shun Mooks whose wooden
enclosures resonate like crazy, intentionally, like violins.

In any event, the absence of boxy sound was the reason I went for Gallos in the
first place. I've never heard conventional (i.e., wood enclosed) speakers -
EXCEPT the Shun Mooks -- that didn't sound "boxy" after listening
to the super-clean Gallos. To each his own, YMMV and all that :-)