Verity Parsifal Encore VS. Vandersteen 5a

The tenor's can EASILY drive the Vandersteen 5a. Why ? Because to an amp, a vandersteen 5 looks like a monitor speaker.

There is a vandersteen high pass filter box that goes between the preamp and amp. This filter removes 6db of the subwoofer's range (100hz on down ?), so the amp is not required to produce bass notes. Later inside the van 5's crossover, the 6db are added back to the low range before being fed to the internal subwoofer amplifier. That's one of the best design characteristics of the van 5.

Fmpnd: I might agree with concerning the Tenors
because of the 6db headroom, which translates
into 300 watts of dynamic power. But what is the sensitivity of your Kharmas, lets say around 88 db;
and that is at 3 feet, say at 8 feet that translates
to around 85 db, so at 105 db continous you are at 100 watts continous, and climaxes at 111db puts
that at 400 watts dynamic. Now at 95 db you would
I guess be ok. But still I like the reserves of
higher output. I do not know how well the Tenors
compare to a output transformer tube amp like my
ARC D115, which gracefully clips driving my Acoustats.
But above 5% distortion it really starts to become noticeable. Transistors amps, obviously clip into
distortion much quicker and much more noticeably.
Maybe that is why I prefer much higher powers for my transistor amps. I can easily clip the Spectral DMA-200
on my Avalons and my Acoustats and it has 3 db headroom.
On the Vandy 5s, Robert Harley, really likes them. He still believes that the VT200 gives it more juice/jump
than the VT100. I once had a D250 Servo on the
Acoustats sometime in the early 90s, I remember how
that raw power really made the sound much richer,
much cleaner, more transparent.

I also heard the 5A's at CES. I've owned Vandies for years and believe they represent the absolute BEST value in their respective price points. The model 5A has everything almost any person could ever want. Honestly, a no brainer. To own Vandersteens is to never live without them again. You will soon realize you are closer to the music than you ever have been before and will see the competition's overpriced underperforming speakers for what they are. Did I mention they can be matched to YOUR room as well and come with in-home dealer set-up? YOU WILL LOVE THEM !!!!!!!!!!!

I have been a Dynaudio fan for years, so I talked a Vandersteen 5 owner to try the Confidence 5 without hearing them. Having them side by side, C5 beat V5 in every single area by a mile except low end volume. And frankly, not too many speakers on earth can match V5's bass because it's self power. The same guy actually found C3 was more coherent than C5 and later on "upgraded" to the new Special 25.

There are lots of good sounding speakers at V5's price range. Yes, V5 is probably the best bang for the buck for a full range speaker. But all other speakers in that price range usually do one or more thing better than V5.