Vandersteen 5a vs Genesis 5.3 ?

No luck with personal experiences with Genesis.

I owned the similar Genesis Vs a couple decades ago. As a dipole they will stage differently than the Vandys. They were very spacious and layered but lacked pinpoint imaging. I loved the dipole bass--deep and powerful. Really liked them with classical music but as my tastes moved more toward small group jazz I wanted a speaker with better instrument focus. Try to listen to a dipole and see if it's your cup of tea...

Tank you. Good info!

I have a pair of Genesis 500's and Vandersteen Quatros. Both are very good at exploiting their design philosophies. The Genesis are only a hand full of speakers that their character does not change with vertical listening height plus the servo woofers are hard to beat. With the Vandersteens the time coherence is phenomenal but the adjustable head modules on the Genesis can come close with very careful alignment. Believe it or not, the bass on the Genesis reveals that there are some colorations in the Vandersteen bass but it is musical so it is mostly benign but it is there.

Both speakers are very musical with different attributes with the Genesis winning out by a margin with their dipole arrangement, ribbon tweeters and sheer impact but the Vandersteens still throw a very detailed 3D soundstage that is addictive and the bass equalization along with adjustable damping is hard to beat when tuning the speaker to the room.

@nmmusicman   Just curious...do you find the equalized bass from the Quatros "warmer" than that coming from the Genesis?  To put it another way, is the Genesis bass subjectively "faster" than that from the Vandys?