Vandersteen 5a Carbons

I have owned Vandy 3's and 5's as well as their subs. I guess every speaker has its fan base. I talked to Richard several times and believe he is one of audio's all time greats. The speaker or the room it's housed in to me are the most important part of the audio chain, then everything must fall in behind it. So a speaker can only kill another one in the same room under the same conditions, each using the amp that it was voiced with in order for it to be a fair fight. The Vandy's are fantastic if your ears say they are the best then go for it, at that price I try to be damn sure I like it. i no longer own Vandy's, I still go to dealers to listen to them, to my ears the Rockports ( I heard them at Andy's home in Maine) set up properly are fantastic as well as some other brands, including king Sound, Merlin, Raidho, Vapor, etc. you can't go wrong with any of them, show conditions are not optimal I've hear the new Vandy's sound great then not so great. Once you have a great speaker design the hard work is building a system and a room that make it sound great!

Pal,
My thing is space-robbing panels (Sound Labs, Analysis Audio) have a lot strengths, a greatly reduced down side and come in to their own at that budget.

Guys, I just read the last few posts. Never owned Vandies, but a couple of years ago, I spent some time socializing with Treos at a dealer. The dealer had taken in trade an ARC VS-115 amp, which happened to have been the same model amp I was using at the time. I was underwhelmed.

Having said all that, I'm not so sure now that the fault was the Vandies, the amp, the cabling or any other system component. Instead, the problem may have been the room.

I'm not going to repeat the schpiel (sp??) I already posted in the DEQX thread that is still active. But suffice to say, I bought the DEQX PreMATE which corrected a goodly amount of my speakers' time alignment deficiencies. Even still, I can't say in good faith that my Paradigm Sig. 8s (v3) are as time coherent as the Vandies. But my speakers are more time coherent as corrected do sound better.

All that said perhaps the most important correction effected by the DEQX was room correction. If I didn't see the room effects with my own eyes via mic and computer display and hear the corrections with my own ears ... in my sound room, using my gear ... I wouldn't have believed such improvements were possible.

So ... back to the Vandy posts above. Even if I stipulate that Vandies are the most time coherent and best sounding speakers ever made and are driven by the best electronics, I submit that if the room sucks, the sound will suck.

Trust me on this. In fact, call Mr. Vandy himself, John Rutan of Audio Connection, and ask him what one could expect by way of performance if the room sucks. Johnny R is a pretty straight shooter. I surmise he would say get the room in order or be prepared to trash a lot of dough.

Btw, in my case, the room distortions were not limited to 500 Hz and below. Point being, I am dubious that the low end equalizer correction features in the better Vandies would be able to address all of my room issues.

Regards,

Bruce

Thanks Bruce. I have this talk with Johnny on occasions too. Everyone knows that the room is as important as anything else. There are a lot of inexpensive corrections you can make to get a nice starting point.

I have had the Paradigm that you reference in my home before I bought the Treo's and it wasn't even close to my ear or my wife's. She has no clue what is what but she said she was happy I got the Treo's as they were much better than the 'other ones'. I have an old pair of Paradigm's with cube sub in my bedroom, so I like the company overall.
Bruce, the correction is bass only, but it allows you to be much more liberal in placement of the speakers in the room making it more friendly if you don't have a dedicated room like most folks.

Ctsooner ... the Paradigm S8s (v3) are very good speakers.

The Vandy dealer compared the Treos to the Paradigm Tributes. The Tributes ate the Vandy's lunch. But again, I'll be generous and open minded. I suspect the room was the culprit.

Equipment synergy and room effects are sooooo important. It's difficult to make generalizations.

In my case, I think the DEQX tamed my Sig 8s and crummy room. Perfect ... NO. Better ... YES.