JMR Offrande Supreme V2 vs GMA Calypso

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.

I've owned more modestly priced speakers from both GMA and Reynaud and for my ears it was no contest -- the Reynauds win every time. I had a basement full of speakers, several Spendor models (great warmth but a bit fuzzy and inarticulate) and the GMA Europas (very clean, articulate, and great timing). No cabinet resonance from the GMAs, as was said, but they did have a characteristic "ping" of marble that annoyed me greatly. Besides, I want to hear wooden instruments sound like wooden instruments. I found a pair of Reynaud Duets (now called Bliss) and sold all my Spendors and the GMAs and never looked back. The Reynauds gave me most of the articulation of the GMAs without the annoying "ping" and coldness and gave me all the warm natural woody sound of the Spendors without the bit of fuzzy smearing in the midrange. The only speaker change I would make now would be to buy the Offrande Supreme V2s if my room could take them.