Okay sports fans, here we go with the comparison of Double Impacts that teajay has been listening to with my Wilson Sashas. Keep in mind, my Stereo Times publisher, Clement Perry, is working on the Double Impact review and I don't want to get in the way of what he has to say. With that being said.......
Allen Richards and I got together for this listening session and as was mentioned previously, we were listening with the VAC Renaissance Mk V preamp, two VAC Signature iQ amplifiers run in mono ( so that's 200 watts per amp) and I'm running Asus laptop with Fidelizer Pro (maxxed out at the "audiophile" level) and a custom NOS DAC built for me by Gilbert Yeung at Blue Circle Audio. I had been using Klee Acoustics cables throughout but discovered another little inexpensive gem from Tellurium Q called the Black II that I have been using on the speakers. Mike Kay's Archon Blue power cords are used on the amps and the preamp.
Allen and I bought the DI's in the house and laid them down as we began to listen to music on the Sasha's. We each took two tracks to listen to, and once we were done, we set the DI's up, if you want to call it that. Nothing too serious. The DI's were set up with the side of each speaker five feet from the side wall, seven feet between the speakers and the front of each speakers was ten feet from the front wall. They were spiked. We re-listened to the four tracks we listened to on the Sasha's. Initially, the sound from the DI's was uninvolving, bass was diffuse from the midrange and the highs, and pretty much just not a good listen. The Sasha's were clearly the better sounding speaker.
I shared with Allen that before I passed judgement on the DI's, they needed to settle into the carpet with the spikes, that I needed to spend a lot more time setting them up, remembering that we had merely set them up where we placed them when we bought them into the house, and that I need to do more experimentation the taps on the back of the amps. We were listening to the DI's on 2-4 ohm tap which is where they work best with the Sasha's and I suggested we listen on the 4-8 ohm tap. Allen didn't want to wait until later so I made the tap change right away. The improvement was immediate and it was not subtle at all.
We started off with the four tracks we listened to on the Sasha's and the DI's and the music sparkled with life and energy. There was a sense of verve and reality, with the music seemingly being performed "live" within the landscape of my listening room. The Sasha's has these attributes as well, but not to the same level as the DI's. What's remarkable to me is the DI's ability to sound effortless like a horn speaker, have the ability to "see into" the performance like good planars, and the the ability to convey the life-like realism of dynamic speakers, all at the same time. Though they do a fine job, the Sasha's couldn't quite match that.
The Sasha's deep bass performance exceeded that of the DI's if that type of thing is important to you. I need to move the Sasha's to the side, do my due diligence and devote some time doing some serious setup experimentation for the DI's in my listening room (25' X 16'). One last thing to add; I noticed a lot of you like using the SET or small powered tube amps to drive these speakers. That's cool. The sound of these amps has been quite impressive at teajay's on the DI's and Ulberchts. I just want to lend my two cents and say that the DI's can sound just as compelling with 200 watts/channel as they do with the lower powered amps. That's just my opinion and probably Allen's too. YMMV.
