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Sjofen The Clue speakers

I bought a pair of The Clues from Lars about a month ago for my bedroom system. I decided to break them in with my main system, which consists of a Modwright LS100 preamp and KWA 100SE amp, Oppo 105 CD player, Jolida FX Tube DAC, Jolida phono preamp, and a SOTA Star TT. My main speakers are Joseph Audio RM25XL floor mounts speakers, which are fantastic. I have had many stand mounts in my system over the past few years, including GMA Callisto's, EOS HD's, KEF LS50s's, Ascend Acoustics, Usher 718 Diamonds, and a couple others I now have forgotten.

I am simply blown away with the musicality of The Clues, particularly with their dynamic extension. These speakers go really low and are extremely well balanced. They perform optimally when placed directly against the back wall of your listening room.

After listening to them for a month, I will go out a limb and say they are nearly the sonic equal of my $4300 JA speaker! I could go on and on about how fine The Clues sound, but I will say that I have never had a stand mounts speakers in my system that performed as fine as these do. For $1000, they simply have no reason to sound as wonderful as they do, but they absolutely do. You owe it to yourself to give these little gems a listen. Friends that have heard them in my system have come to the same conclusion that I have: they are fabulous, full-range speakers that are modestly priced. Highly recommended!
whitestix
rebbi
1,326 posts
 
Oddly, Stereophile kind of trashed (the clue) in their latest issue.
soix
8,948 posts
 
Oddly indeed. That review runs counter to just about any assessment I've seen of these speakers, including mine. That the reviewer didn't reach out to the manufacturer given his negative experience, especially since these speakers are so placement and room dependant, to me is very irresponsible and inexcusable. IMO this reviewer is lazy or incompetent, or maybe both. And it doesn't look like Atkinson bothered to contact the manufacturer to see what was going on with the measurements either, which he should have given the importance of the room and placement being so critical to this speaker's performance. I think this review is a failure across the board by Stereophile and in no way is reflective of how the speakers actually sound. They should be ashamed of themselves. I bet if the company paid for advertising there would've been more of a effort made to get it right. BTW I don't own these speakers nor do I have any affiliation with the company.
sbrownnw
686 posts
 
I would be interesting to see how many people were able to get the Sjofen Clues setup correctly in their rooms. I PMed a couple of sellers and they confirmed that they could not reproduce the magic that they heard in the shows or demo rooms. I think the owners like this are minority unless the majority of positive posts were from listeners and not owners.

I've exchanged a few emails with Lars. I hope to hear his one of his demos soon but I am concerned that my room and setup will not let me get the placement where they should be. My room would allow me the following (see system page):

- max width of speakers: 8.5 feet
- 1:1.2 ratio is: 10.2 feet (my actual listening couch would be almost one more foot deeper than 10.2 feet)
- I would be able to get the speakers very close to the back wall but I don't think I could get anywhere close to 22.5 deg toe in

I am curious to see how they would sound in my room...
sbrownnw
686 posts
 
And another thing I would be interested in is how the Clues sound with a lot less toe-in...
simao's avatar
simao
1,758 posts
 
The Stereophile reviewer in question admitted in his review that this was one of his first (if not the first) speaker review he has done.

Sofjan's people lashed out in their rebuttal at the end of the issue, pointing out much of everything discussed in this thread.
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