Hi Drubin
Well I would't say they are as smooth as some I've heard, particularly upper midrange and it is only noticable to me on SOME recordings. Say the ideal speaker, at least to me that would be smooth and most natural would be the Quad ESL. I have a friend with a pair of 2905 and you can clearly hear that at times the Decapo may have a tendency to maybe exaggerate or push forward the sound a bit. It isn't consistent and it doesn't bother me but it does deviate from what I would consider a very neutral speaker. Even with regards to my previous speaker, the Merlin VSM this can be heard. The Merlin is a bit smoother across the board. I would like to measure this in room to see what is going on. This is just such a minor thing and less a nit than it might be for others. The speaker just does so many other things that I DO like that I DON'T hear from other monitors. A matter of taste for sure. They so naturally produce tone and timbre without sounding either pinched, slow, lean or etchy at any frequency, great integration of the mid/bass driver with the BE tweeter. The mid/upper bass on this speaker is both very fast and well resolved which melds with the rest of the frequency range. Most small monitors sound either overly rich, bloated, MIA and/or missing the speed and articulation of this one. The VSM while also very fast is by comparison lean sounding in this area, at least with my Berning amp which on the Decapo is rich and totally convincing. The lower registers on the piano with the Berning amp is SO much more convincing in adding the weight, accurate pitch and harmonic overtones and decay heard on the instrument. The speed and believability factor is quite a big deal. I have a hard time believing it possible from a speaker this size in that the scale and dynamics are also retained.
So while the speakers aren't perfect Dan, they will be convincing to some and less so to others. I was comparing to a few other small monitors over the past 6 months including the Audience 2+2, Gershman Acoustics X2 and Gallo Stratus and to my ears across the board they were hands down my favorite. But then again I fell in love with them within the first minute of listening, they just sounded more right to me than any of the others although for coherency and imaging the Audience is about the best I've personally heard from ANY box speaker, a very special design but lacking the total package for may taste and they are quite inefficient. The Gallos were also very good in the areas of coherence, transparency and imaging but tonally they didn't get it right and I quickly became bored listening to them. The Gershmans are very sweet in the mids and upper frequencies, missing some of the transparency of the others with zero low bass and a mid/upper bass that was too plump and colored for my taste. The bottom line is that the Decapos will appeal to some more than others but if I were to use the term "neutrality" in describing the performance of a loudspeaker the Quad would come closer to fitting the bill, particularly in the midrange, they just get it the rightest :) Hope this helps clarify a bit more my tastes, and biases.
