Which integrated Amp for Vandersteen 2ce Sig2 ?

I have heard the Rogue Cronus integrated amp (new at $1795)with the Vandersteen 2C Signatures at Audio Connection in NJ and the results were absolutley sublime. I have never owned Vandersteens, and my system is far more costly, but I have to say when I heard that system, I asked myself "do I really need anything more" as it was so musically satisfying.

Include the Rowland Concentra...one of the best ever.

Agree with Raindance about placement. Assuming you have the Sound Anchors stands, make sure you have the tilt-back set appropriately for the distance of your listening position and height of your ears from the floor. If the speakers are too upright the tweeter might be emphasized as it aims at your ears--and you can lose the speakers' time coherence.

At a distance of eight feet and with a low couch, my 2ceSig2s are tilted back three inches (the manual explains this procedure well), which was a night and day difference over two inches. You'll hear everything cohere when you get it right.

hi ablang

the sound that i am hearing is nice, what is the signifacnt dififernce when it cohere and u got it right?

art80342

Art80342,

If any other Vandie users can jump in with their experience, I'd be happy, but my sense of it when I got it right was that there was an overall balance to the sound--a smoothness from top to bottom, with nothing exaggerated or edgy at all. With the tweeters aimed too directly at your ears, you might hear a disjointedness between the treble and mids, even as if the frequencies are coming from different depths within the soundstage--and the treble can certainly be accentuated.

I'm listening to Kenny Burrell's Midnight Blue right now, and the only thing even at a high volume that has any edge to it is the few moments where Burrell's guitar clips his amp--and that's only natural to the sound of a loud, clean electric guitar being pushed to its dynamic limits. If I lift up off my seat, the cymbals and guitar take on a flat, harsh texture. Settle back in, they're smooth as can be. I think the time-alignment might actually best be heard in the "air" on recordings--it seems like a part of the whole cloth of the sonic picture when it's right, and almost like grain otherwise.

If it helps, from where I'm sitting right now, looking through the grill cloth at the white wall behind, the angle of the top of the mid-driver's cabinet is aimed at or just above my ear-level. That's hit it just right for me. Try messing with the tilt-back an inch or half an inch at a time, and see what sounds right. Heretical as it might be to say, if all else fails you might try dialing back the treble driver on the back of each speaker by a dB or more, which I do for some "hot" rock or pop recordings; it doesn't suck out any particular frequency like an eq, it just draws down the whole range of that driver's volume. The graphs on the Stereophile review show this pretty well.

Hope this helps--and happy listening.