Vandersteen Model 7: has anyone heard?

I too was at Audio Connection for the Vandersteen demo a few weeks back, and they indeed are among the finest speakers I have had the pleasure of hearing. And Richard Vandersteen is an absolute pleasure to speak with as well. If I ever get enough money they would be on my short list. And the great thing about them, like the 5As, is that you can adjust the bass level to tame a lot of the low frequency problems a full-range speaker like this would otherwise have in a listening room.

One other thing I forgot to mention, while they were superbly musical speakers, the Model 7, perhaps more than any speaker system I've heard in a while, really made starkly apparent the difference between a top flight analog source and a merely very good digital source. IMO, of course.

Mad, I liked that the 7's disappeared better than just about any speaker I've ever heard including the 3's. The fact that they could be tuned to fit the room exactly that they were using them in with pitch perfect bass was also a huge plus.

The 3's might have an advantage in reproducing the scale and overtones of a full orchestra while the 7's seemed uncanny with small groups and voice. I tell you, I'd love to have the 7's over for an extended visit but couldn't comment in useful detail until I had.

No question though that they are in a small class of the best speakers I've heard outside my home.

I have heard Vandersteens have narrow sweetspots like Wilons, those that auditioned did you feel your head was in a vicegrip or was the sweetspot generous?

Not a vice grip, but they definitely did sound better in the sweet spot than off axis, as far as imaging goes. Noticed the same thing with the Quattros as well.