Vandersteen 5 vs Model 2c/2wq Combo

Hi,

I am a newbie audiophile who has just upgraded his electronics and have only one old component....a Genesis 44 speaker from 1985!! I have witnessed their getting better and better with each component purchase(all used!) I intentionally did this to educate myself. WOW! I read reviews and threads all day and, in theory, Vandy is the way to go for me. Now all I have to do is audition them. I live in Vegas and have a store with a 3a for me on Monday. There is Ces next month! :-) I did get to hear a Dunlavy 3a and it was tremendous.(little bass shy) These are second on my list. I plan to get a used 3a and upgrade to Sig. I cannot imagine anyone's selling a 3a sig.(I guess you guys have helped sell me, along with the rave reviews) I do have a question. I have an expensive FB212 Monitor Audio sub. Would this be a good substitute for the Vandy subs? I obviously will not get another FB212 ($$$$) and this could be superior to 2wq. The FB212 seems similar in operation to the 2wq on the surface. I admit to not studying the 2wq, but some thread somewhere lead me to conclude that! I will have to sacrifice the balance of two subs unless you guys feel it is absolutely essential.
Thanks for any advice!

Audible Illusions L-1
Sony 222ES sacd player modified by SACDmods
Marantz MA500 monoblocs(4 of them)(this may be a weak)
Audioquest sidewinders and type 4 speaker cables for now

Match...: many good observations above. What size is your room? I've owned (and enjoyed) the 2Ces, 3As & 3Asigs, and presently the 5s. I started with the 2Ces in a 12 X14 room and could never play them at more than low-mod. levels w/o overloading the room, and a sub was out of the question. After remodeling and going to a 14 X 22 ft. room, the 3A/3Asigs sounded great at any sane listening level, but I never felt that I had room for even one sub.

All these Vandies are large speakers, but because of their bass tunability, the 5s may actually work best in a smaller room, but as John_1 said, they do need to be placed well away from walls, but then so do the others. Also, you don't need a sub w/ the V5s (subs take up room).

The Vand. 5s are wonderful speakers with world class bass, and my last speaker, and they fit well in my medium sized room, but I wouldn't want them or the 3As in a 12 X 14 ft. room.

Since I got the V5s, I'm going from a 300 wpc McCormack amp to a 100 wpc McCormack DNA.5 Rev A Gold. As others have noted, the McCormack/Vandersteen combination is a good one if you want an SS amp.

Hope I haven't sounded discouraging, but if you really do have a small room, I'd be looking for a high quality stand mounted speaker and maybe a small sub. Looking back on it, that's what I really needed in my 12 X 14 room. Best of Luck, and Cheers. Craig

Garfish and John1 are saying what I am in a diffderent way. The very best state of the art stuff in the wrong room with poor set up won't sound like it should.

I have a friend who has much more expensive stuff than mine in the wrong room for it. He has $13000 speakers and 450 watt mono tube amps in a nice, but overly live room(the speakers are big stats to boot). Mine kills it! Not to say he can't someday get it to work, but set up and careful planning are everything.

Another friend of mine got a pair of 3A sigs at a bargain basement price and they were mint. It was the score of a lifetime in my opinion! He then assembled a system of similar components to mine(same CD player, Mono versions of the amp I had at the time, and a pre amp from the same manufacturer) including a 2Wq. He needed to move it out into a bigger room that he had never tried his HiFi in before. Again my system killed it. It sounded nice, but should have been more than just nice! It may have been the room or some other factor that I am still trying to form a theory about. I would have loved to bring the 3's here to see what they did but I never got the chance. He got discouraged too fast and took the opportunity to turn about a $500 profit on the speakers after only a few weeks.It was my only time to listen to the 3A Sigs. This tells me that proper set up and taking the time to working out bugs trumps spending more money on better speakers until your system is ready for them. Hell yes I want 3A Sigs and another woofer! I think the rest of my system, room and set up are up to the task.

I have read about people who have web sites where they pan handle from strangers to pay off huge credit card bills or huge Hospital bills and people send them cash. Ok now is your chance to be a good citizen! Send your cash donations(no checks please!) to "The Maxgain Speaker Fund". The web site isn't up and running yet so for now just send me an e-mail and I will tell you where to send that bushel of $20's and $50's and $100's!

Garfish, my room is small, I mean very small. It is about 12x12 on a good day, but it is practically empty except for the system and I have some homemade room treatments in there. I have done my amateur best to get a nice sound in the room.

After reading my original post, I may have made a mistake in my question. Obviously, the 5a are light years passed the 2ce. It is like comparing a Honda Civic to a BMW. Maybe my question should have been; will Vandy 2CEs and a Vandy 2wq be equal in sound to a pair of Vandy 3As?

I thought I would add how I listen to music. My listening room has a walkin closet and inside this closet is my PC on a desk. I can close the door to the closet and no one will know that a PC is even there. I do alot of work on my PC and I enjoy playing music at a comfortable volume. I sort of consider the music as the soundtrack to my work. The music inspires me. The thing is, I love it when the music sounds good. I am looking for a quality of sound as opposed to the loudness of it. The music rarely gets so loud that I can have a conversation over it. In fact, I thought that all I need was to turn on some music on my PC, but that just didn't cut it. The music from my PC sucked and never inspired me to do a good job.

In the end, I would like a setup that I can live with for years with little modification. I am on a trip to upgrade and I would like to get good things and then be happy.

Hi Match..; If you're really set on the pretty big Vandersteen 2Ce/3A, they will sound very good when played at low volume settings. In fact that was a characteristic that I really liked about those speakers. The 5s have to be played louder to sound natural. In a 12 X 12 ft. room, you can't get low bass anyway-- probably no lower than about 40 HZ, but for most music that is enough.

You probably already know that square rooms are acoustically difficult to set up stereo systems in because the "squareness" creates some bad room modes/nodes. If you're set on a good sized speaker, the Vand. 2Ce sigs are excellent and would be my choice, and they do sound good at low to low-mod. volume settings in a small room.

But in my 12 X 14 ft. room, I wish I had chosen something like the small Proac stand mounted speaker (don't remember the model number), and a small sub to get greater bass solidity. Good Luck, and Cheers. Craig