Coincident's "Victory" spk:beautiful, but... sound??

Sunnyjim, there are some $20k speakers that "roll off sharply at 40Hz". The real question is, how do they handle what they can reproduce? There are a number of speakers that can do far below 40HZ, that sound like crap. I don't have any experience with the Victory, but capability of less than 40Hz is not necessarily the mark of a high end speaker. Many of the members on this board will attest to their need for a subwoofer on many of the "high end" speaker that they own that cost way more than $4600. This, by itself, will tell you that alot of the better speakers are rolled-off around 40Hz, whether the specs show that or not.

Any speaker design will entail some compromises. Deep bass is expensive (multiple drivers, large heavily braced cabinets, etc.), so I am not surprised that at the $5k price level a manufacturer might not even try to attain sub-40Hz performance. Presumably within its somewhat limited bandwidth the Coincident performance well, which as Twl states above, is preferable to sloppy, but deeper bass. Compare the Coincident to the NHT 3.3 (a very good full range speaker (IMO) similarly priced to the Coincident). The NHT will go lower in the bass, but it's not a refined in the mids and treble.

I recently auditioned the Victorys after an extended listening session with Alon Lotus SE's. Both the Alons and the Victorys were driven with a Berning Siegfried amp.

Compared with the Lotus, the Victory struck me as rather forward and lean. I did not feel this was due to inadequate bass, but sounded more like extra upper midrange energy. Now the Lotus SE's are a dipole, and so provide the illusion of spaciousness, air, and a removed presentation, and the Berning is an extemely revealing amp, without any typical tubey warmth. So whatever intrinsic "forward" qualities the Victory might have would be accentuated in this comparison. The Victory's might cotton to a warmer amp, e.g. Cary 300 SEI.

Hope this helps.

Clifford