JMR Offrande Supreme V2 vs GMA Calypso

My Offrande Supreme V2's arrived a little over three weeks ago. After breaking them in and optimizing their setup in my room, I am very pleased with my purchase. I find their most outstanding characteristics to be the way they reproduce the true timbre of instruments and the rhythm and pace of the music. They are, in a nutshell, incredibly "musical" and are great for all genres of music.

I must say that I don't hear the cabinet vibration coloration referred to in cmjones' post, nor do I feel any significant vibration when I put my hand on the side of the speaker.

I have to thank Leatherneck1812 for turning me on to these speakers as I had never heard of them before he replied to an email I sent him. I first listened to the Offrandes at RMAF 2010 and was most impressed by their sound.

Far too many of the speakers I heard at RMAF, in their obsessive quest for resolution, sounded unnatural and induced listening fatigue very quickly.

GMA, as someone else has pointed out sounds extremely articulate, dead center pin-point images with clear cut boundaries...this is exactly why they sound artificial and cooked to me. Never can a human voice or a guitar placed 8-9 feet away from you can have a solid boundary!!!!!!!! It never happens, it can only happen if the recording is highly cooked, but with speakers like GMA it happens all the time which means the speakers are cooking it up.

Similarly the tone and timber of voices and instruments also sound extremely crisp, you miss the woodiness of wooden instruments and wettiness of a human voice, it is all replaced by something which sounds like a precise computer generated music.

Yes they are good at timing.

Pani,

Yes they can sound that way if improperly set up. That is the beauty of the time/phase coherent design. If you screw it up, you know it immmediately. Get it right, same thing. When they ARE right, you will hear the leading edge of transients just like you do with live music. But you also get all of the note, not just part of it.

Shakey

Shakeydeal, I cannot overrule what you say, but I am yet to be convinced with the tone and body these stone-enclosure speakers produce. In my experience tone is something that doesnt require setting up to be judged.

I can't comment on the GMA's because, as noted earlier, they weren't available for listening at RMAF. However, what I love about the Offrandes is the way they pick up the natural warmth and woodiness of instruments like acoustic guitar and bass. And female voices are to die for. There is nothing artificial sounding about the Reynauds.