Audio Note AN/E vs. DeVore O/96

fsonicsmith,


Please let me know how it goes when you put the Devores back in the system.  I wonder if you will welcome them with open arms, or perhaps be less forgiving of their lack of soundstaging prowess.



One of the things I like about the Joseph Perspective speakers that I ultimately bought is that they do the soundstaging/imaging/disappearing thing with world class, tonally beauty,  but also have the rich, punchy fun factor in the mid to lower bass that makes music grab you, more like the Devore speakers.


My Thiel 2.7s sometimes seem like an in-between of the Joseph and the Devore speakers:  killer soundstaging and imaging like the Josephs, but bigger and richer and "organic" like the Devores.   Naturally this means sometimes they sound like the perfect speaker to me, combining the best of all the things I like, and other times more like a neither here nor there between what the Josephs and Devores do well.   I'd say that for the vast majority of the time the Thiels split that difference beautifully.Who'd ever thought Thiels would be described as rich and lush?  But they did make a break-through in their final design, and the richness is no doubt helped along by my CJ tube amps :)



Anyway, regarding Audio Note, I hope to hear them again some time, (pandemic allowing...)

If you ever get a chance, do try and hear the Spendor Classic 100.  This is what Spendor now calls what would otherwise be the SP100 Mk3.  I heard this in the same system with D7's, and the admittedly more expensive Classics significantly outperformed them.  Particularly in the treble, but really over the full spectrum; fuller, more meat on the bone, more characterful, a bigger sound.  They came very, very close to my all-time favs, the Harbeth 40.2.

BTW, as I said above, I found the Audio Notes perhaps the purest speaker, timbrally, that I've ever heard.  But again, I didn't go for the tight corner placement.

Heard the 0/93s, but never the chance at 0/96, which I suspect are significantly better, or Joseph.

I would LOVE to hear the latest Spendor Classic 100!

I own the Spendor S3/5s, the little guys, and they make me swoon over how beautiful they sound, so I was curious about a bigger classic version.  (I used to hear the BC1 regularly, but it's been a while).

I searched around for some Spendor 1/2s and 2/3s, which are about as big as I'd go for that kind of thing, but unfortunately even Spendor dealers never had them in for audition.   You just had to order them.

I had the Harbeth SuperHL5Plus which I really liked, but sold them because my Thiels were close enough to them in good ways, and other ways better.   But my Spendor 3/5s are magical - for their size rich, with a fullness and roundness and organic quality to voices that rival the Harbeths.

I owned a set of Spendor SP1/2Es and really enjoyed them. Their ability to reproduce naturally recorded voice and acoustic instruments was incredible. Their imaging was the best I've heard, but that came at the price of a very small sweet spot. (I haven't heard the SP 1/2 r2s, the latest incarnation, but have read that the current generation of classic Spendors have lost a bit of their magic by trying to keep up with the modern fad of a more analytic sound. That's sad if true, but I have no idea if it is.) 

Sadly, my wife finally had enough of their 1970s big-box-in-the-room appearance and I had to sell them. I don't have a dedicated room for the stereo so it needs to share the space with other uses. 

I've got a pair of Ohm 1000s now that I really enjoy. The Ohm's also have a very natural balance, plus a much, much bigger sweet spot. In the latter sense, they are easier to enjoy than the Spendors. 

@prof 
I intend to put the Devores back in this week and will report. 
In fact, I listened for quite a while last night more critically than normal in preparation for the swap. 
I listened to the Perspective2 Graphenes for an extended period of time at Axpona last year. The room was crowded and I never got to sit down despite returning to the room three times. Joseph is both popular and gets a lot of press buzz. So take my impression with a grain of salt since i never got in the sweet spot but I would classify the Joseph sound as very similar to the Spendor's which only makes sense since they have very similar design configurations. 
The sad truth is that by and large, 95% of the rooms with various loudspeakers sounded more alike than different. Another room that really stood out besides the AN room was the Volti/Border Patrol/Triode Wire Labs room. The latest S'Phile has a review of Volti's new and most affordable speaker, the Razz. I would love to hear it. The beauty of the Volti room was the unrestrained "aliveness" character and yet with much better integration than I usually hear with horns. 
Every design has a trade-off. The trade-off when the bass is taut with two 6-7" woofers is that the sound-to my ears-is just a bit hollow/thin. I believe it is analogous to a solid state amp with lots of negative feedback. A little bass slop is like a little euphonic distortion-it creates a sense of fullness. It has to be minuscule before it becomes more problematic than beneficial. My point being that the 10" paper woofer from SEAS in the O/93 coupled with a large mahogany front baffle creates a euphonic sense of fullness. 
Btw, and sorry for digressing, but people complain about the price of the O/93. They either don't know or forget that John Devore uses solid machined copper posts, silver wire, and though he keeps the particulars to himself, he reports the use of "exotic" crossover caps and the entire crossover is handbuilt and hardwired, and the individual drivers are carefully matched. That and the artisinal cabinet construction account for the price.