John Atkinson's thoughts on the New Vandersteen System Nine from LA Show

I was at the LA show and JA couldn't be more correct. The musicality and tonal correctness of the Vandersteen setup was second to none. There were wuite a few rooms that sounded awesome but none has the relaxed sit down and listen for hours sound like this room. Randy always does a great job at shows. Before the show opened on Saturday I went to his room early and found him carefully listening to every piece of music he was thinking about playing that day to make sure the system was at uts best and to prepare a plan for the day. I've never seen anyone do that before. The new Basis TT was for sure the source that took this system to the next level. The passion AJ Conte had for his craft was refreshing and it showed in his final reference piece he produced. 

At at the show most of the rooms that sounded the best were playing reel yo reel tapes as the source. The price of entry for tapes and the UHA decks is very high but the SQ that comes out of them is second to none. I wish I cound have heard the Vandy room with that set up as well. 

CT no shame in promoting the love you have for the Vandersteen products. IMHO no other speaker at any price pushes all the right buttons in SQ, timbre quality, etc like the Sevens do. With the Sub Nine it takes it to another level. 

@exron Interested in what size midranges you like and what correlations you've observed between midrange size and performance.  

Richfield.  We need to catch up before I go to Cancun on Wed.  Want to hear about the show. Maybe next year I can tag along with you guys.  We'd have a blast for sure.  

Thanks for sharing about the new Basis TT.  AJ told me about it last year I think it was and he probably spent an hour on the phone explaining it all.  Man do I miss him.  Just a great guy and I see why he and Richard were so close for all these years.

I assumed the 9's would take it to a new level for so many reasons, but you are the first one I know who's heard it and shared about it.  I realize it solves the problem he had of moving more air in rooms without hurting the SQ.  Seems like he's solved more problems than creating more by separating the enclosures of the mains and the 2 extra subs.  I will wait until he puts the 11 band EQ into his smaller sub (pray he does this eventually) and get a pair to augment the Quatro's.  I personally like to stay in the same company line if I'm going to use subs. They are voiced the same and integrate better I feel.  That goes for anyone's speaker's/subs.  JMHO

JA is a funny guy, and one I blame for the modern "Stereophile" curve being pursued by so many speaker makers.

Even if he's right about a speaker, he's so biased so often I no longer feel his objective reviews are worth reading.

erik,

I can understand your view.

And  I tend to find JA's reviews less descriptive, leaving me less of a sense of what a speaker sounds like.  He will tend to talk in terms of frequency response etc, whereas Michael Fremer will paint a subjective picture of the sound.  Fremer's descriptions have proven very accurate to my ears, over the years.

At the same time, I've found JA has a very keen ear, and to the extent he describes any problematical issues he hears it's often bang on. 

I actually think JA is something of a treasure in the high end world, in terms of the scope of what he has contributed.  Stereophile's measurements have been a gold mine of info.