Funny you should ask! I've been laid off since last November and today was officially my first day back to work. Basically I sold my old Adcom stuff for $800, bought those ARs for $400 and I still have right in the ball park of $300-400 for a decent two channel to tide me over until I get caught up on paychecks and can shop for something nicer. I had actually planned on buying just an amp to drive my CVs and DQs, like I said in my story, when I happened to come upon those ARs, so I know I'm doing things backwards and cutting my budget tighter than I had originally planned but... I just couldn't pass those up

As I'm running an HT setup whatever I buy now can be used to power the rear surrounds later (350w 4 ohm carvers), but yeah, that's what I'd like to spend. I've put my precious CVs up on CL, a bit high ($400) but with the adline that I might consider trade on/for a good amp too but so far no bites.

And for those that are curious, yes, very new foam, and I expect some break in time which I've been working at carefully (remember, just a relatively underpowered Yamaha AV receiver at the moment!) but steadily.

Pink Floyd "Time" from Dark Side of the Moon was still almost a spiritual experience, even with the Yammy! Originally I had them toed in a bit, like I do with the DQs, but later decided to place them mostly parallel and I think the sound stage in my small living room actually *improved*. My eyes stick fast to them every time I am in the room, like a hottie in a bikini or something, and I had to make a conscious effort to close them and just listen, but it was worth it.

The DQs are very easy to listen to and like. They have a great sound stage and don't feel like they have a weak (or unduly strong) point any where in the frequency range. The ARs sound a bit harsher on the mids (I think the main reason for that LSi mod) and overall perhaps not quite as "refined" but again, very new foam and far from an ideal amp or pre, for that matter. What they do have in abundance is a very tight and fast mid and low bass, much more prominent than the DQs even. The low end isn't as forward, grab you by the throat and shake you, like the CVs, but then again maybe that's a good thing, and honestly I have yet to push them to the same dbs as my CVs (waiting for that new amp!) I do think the soundstage of these ARs is deeper than the DQs too, drums especially being very pronounced and pin-pointable in a greater depth of field. And the highs? Sometimes they REALLY shine, other times I think the DQs still do it better, but for example one of the songs I use for a reference, that I've listened to probably a hundred times with a discriminate ear, revealed a very subtle chime or maybe a triangle for the first time with these. I wish I could remember what song that was but let's just say these ARs have made going through my collection all over again quite fun.

I'm going to leave the possibility of modding them for after these have had a proper break-in with a good amp and see how they sound then.

The Dahlquists are going to give you a more broad and ambient sound, and the ARs will deliver more of a point source sound- so your description is spot-on.

The LSi mod looks relatively easy and straightforward, and is not expensive to do.

The very tight fast mid and low bass with those big cabs and muscular drivers indeed much more prominent than the DQs ever could be, by design of cabinet size and driver used.

Thus the preference of a subwoofer to reach really full range with them.



you have some great speakers there!!!!

Added an Adcom 5500 (350wpc @4ohm) to these today, with an ADC Sound Shaper in the mix, mostly just for the pretty lights

These are HUNGRY bastards, or rather not very efficient, but they sound great, especially at lower volumes when I keep all the rest of the noise in my house to a dull roar. We listened to music on these with that amp for probably 8 hours straight, some of it at high enough volumes that the "distortion" warning light on the Adcom actually flickered a couple of times and neither the amp nor the ARs ever gave any sign of giving up!

In the mix was:

Johnny Cash - Best of
Depeche Mode - Exciter
Rammstein - various tracks
Big Pig - Bonk
Tom Waits - Rain Dogs
Tori Amos - Little Earthquakes
Dead Can Dance - Into the Labyrinth
Tosca - Delhi 9
Leftfield - Leftism
Supertramp - Classics
Pink Floyd - various cuts
Simon and Garfunkel - various cuts
and much, much more.

The ARs are very capable speakers that sound good with just about any sort of music I threw at them, even a bit of Tupac and Eminem! They are not near as efficient as my CVs and thus not as loud, even with the Adcom hooked up to them, and the bass, while very sharp and articulate, just doesn't seem capable of moving internal organs around like the CVs do at high volumes, but I really, really like them regardless.

Hope to maybe drag the CVs into the house tomorrow and do a little three-way comparison with them, the ARs and my DQs. I'm afraid I love them all for their own special charms and wish I had an easy way to keep and switch between all of them!

Just placed an order for 20 feet of Canare 4s11 and some decent terminators too.

Glad you found a good pair for a decent price.
They are a very good sounding speaker.
The key is a proper amp to drive them and good placement.
I saw a pair last year local went for over $1000.
They are on my next purchase list.
The only speakers that I regret selling were my AR 10pi's.
Of course the 9's are a whole different breed.
Enjoy.
Where in the NW are you located?

Thanks

I'm near Tacoma Washington.

hows the comparison going?

Well, here's the thing. Our 12 year old brought home a pretty nasty bug from school one day last week and roughly 48 hours ago it slammed both my wife and I like a runaway freight train. As a consequence I'm all drugged up on nyquil and my ears pop every time I swallow. Have still been listening to music but not with the sort of attention that is deserved. Also hoping to see that Canare in the mail soon!

One thing I do know is that my ARs DO perform admirably as home theater fronts. They don't have quite the room shaking bass as my CVs for explosions and such but hey, that's one of the reasons I run a powered sub too. Adding the Adcom helped as they seem to breath easier with the extra power and headroom. My wife still thinks she prefers the CVs for her kind of music which leans mostly towards bass heavy rock from Big Pig (her favorite band), Korn and the like, and she's probably right. For party music cranked up over 100db (the way she likes to listen to music) the CVs are likely the more satisfying of the two but at that volume who can really tell?

My opinion so far has been that while the dbs in the lower freqs aren't as prominent on the ARs that it is much tighter and refined than my CVs, sort of falling in between them and my DQs in that aspect, but of course it takes listening carefully to the right tracks to reveal it.

I love the mids on my DQ20is but again, they don't have near the bass performance of either the ARs or the CVs. But honestly at the time of this posting I haven't really done much in the way of a/b ing them yet either. I'm also planning on trading the two places, putting the ARs on the outside just to experiment with the sound stage a bit more too.

Should get the new wires maybe this coming Monday, hope to be feeling better soon too and with luck will be able to maybe even pull off a three way A/B(/Cing?) with all of them.

ouch thats a bad bug going around, i've managed to avoid it so far ...

anyway, i cant comment on the DQ's or CV's, but the AR's are definitely placement sensitive so play around with that. hope you feel better soon.

Thanks.

Not quite human feeling yet but I can breath through one nostril again and I found the energy to put together two 10' runs of Canare 4s11 with some decent twist lock banana plugs I found at monoprice.com

I'm not sure I hear much of a difference, or rather how much of the difference I DO hear is purely psychological, but they certainly aren't any worse than the monster zip I was running and the banana plugs should make it easy to do A/Bing the 'old school way' Helluva lot nicer looking too! Just need to find some shrink wrap which I forgot to order with the cable.

BTW, Westlake was out of the 4s11 "by the foot" so I took a chance on Performance Audio out of Salt Lake City instead, mostly due to the proximity and decent price of $1.08/ft. $29.75 total bill including UPS ground, ordered Friday morning, got it today (the following Monday)! The cable was well packed in a heavy cardboard box filled with styrofoam peanuts and they were exceptionally communicative too. I'll give them my business again and can recommend them.

http://www.performanceaudio.com/

Who/what do you recommend for ICs?

I have A pair Of ICs I'll let you demo for 2 weeks.
Larry

i rolled my own IC's a while back and have been very happy with the results.

I'm tempted to roll my own out of Canare LV-77S but always willing to learn from other peoples mistakes

IM sent.

forgot the link ....

http://www.sound-thinking.org/index.php?showtopic=2959

is that some sort of wangfangled new college type talk?