did you manage to hear the Vivids with your Statement or a NAP500? i would love to hear this combo. I take it you werenât impressed enough to proceed. Would love to hear what your impressions of this combo were.
Hmm, I honestly cannot recall the upstream chain. The problem with this audition was that the room is way too big. Itâs literally the whole shop lot. As a result, I could not make out any bass definition. Non ideal listening environment. I wasnât about to shell out my hard earned money to try this out in my room.
thats a shame, i would love to hear the G1 spirits powered by a statement. My only expereince of the statement was being demoed with Grand Utopias, they were huge but again the demo was not ideal. Nice room but too short and not my music.
Yes agree very difficult especially where I am located. Home demo is impossible. I lucked out as the dealer carried the same brands that I happen to have in my system. So, under the circumstance, this is the best I could manage. I cannot help but think that I should have persisted to audition the Magico M3. My friend has a pair of S7 with Naim S1 & 500 power amp. Very very nice.
Some humble thoughts.
I guess that the absorbers and diffusers you have arranged in your rom are tuned based on your former Proac speakers? Utopias may respond differently in your room?
Further and as an example, I see that you use Vicoustic Wavewood which some use with success. In my room (with Kudos T88 at that time) they made an unbearable top end even worse and it was like the livelyness of the room accellerated.
You could as an experiment temporarily remove diffusors and only keep absorbents?
I have tried several speakerbrands in my listeningroom and none has worked as good as Focal (Sopra No 2, no comparison to Utopia of course)
When I read you had ditched the ProAc Carbons for the StellasâI sorta thought Hmmânot in my watch. Iâve heard the Statement /Stella Combo on at least three occasions and frankly the Speaker
was toppy and bordered on fatiguing â to me anyway. I wonder if Focal Tube Trapped the tweeter as Wilson did on the early Watts?âsorta tamed the brightness.
Magicos have the same affect to my mind so you dodged a bullet there!
I feel there are other Speaker contenders you might have considered-never mind whatâs done is done.
Sorry to be a party pooper
Guess you will have to preserve --I hope the combo improves to your liking, you certainly have fair bit of coin invested there!
âGood luck.
D41
Iâm curious what kinds of power products do you use? The Focal are ruthlessly revealing of upstream issues. And poorly managed AC can cause a lot of grit and high frequency brightness. One can not build a great system without clean and noise free power.
@joeling I would really give them some time to run in. With some speakers the first 200 or so hours can make a big difference. With electronics this is also the case, but less in my experience. I would only take decisions on whether you like the sound or not after 500+ hours.
The Focal was a surprise choice for me as well. Never thought Iâd go for them but after audition with similar upstream electronics, well, the rest is history. At the moment I am insecure because the speakers sound a bit harsh compared to the pair I auditioned. Hopefully, break-in will help them to settle as many have mentioned and also mentioned by my dealer.
Naim bits are all plugged directly into the wall. The rest are powered by 10 year old Purepower regenerators (2 units - 1 for digital, other for analog, TT power supply for motor powered by PS Audio P5). When the Purepowers fail eventually, a Stromtank will take over. For the moment, preference is for the Purepower. Hmm, maybe with the new speakers, this may change. I found the PS Audio P10 to be too soft for my liking. Stromtank also just a tiny bit off compared to the Purepower. These were tested using ProAc.
Do not have direct experience with the speakers in question but in general it seems people typically say beryllium twitters are some of the longest components to fully break in, so I would think the dealers advice of having at least 200hrs on the speakers before any real judgements is a good idea.
Of course you may correct me and as I say, my humble opinions. I find this strange, it may well be correct in theory for the room itself, but then, why does one speaker work for the better than the other speaker, in the same room? Speakers do have different approach or design which can act differently versus another design? At least, that is my experience.
My former Kudos Titan T88 needed alot of room treatment to work (but never did actually) compared to Sopra.
@joeling You might want to try getting a demo of a Shunyata setup⊠Iâve never been a fan of the PS Audio regenerators . If you can find a dealer that will setup a full Shunyata system, I think youâll be shocked. Also I guess you have dedicated AC lines with top range outlets ? I really like the Oyaide R1, Also the Furutech outlets are very good. My experience is that the higher the performance of the system the more important AC power becomes.