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Old 01-13-2019, 08:40 AM
Scyld Scyld is offline
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Hi everyone. Very interested in your reviews too!

My 5 cents... (as usual, not a native english here...)
Quote:
Originally Posted by audio bill View Post
looking for some more specific comments (i.e. warm and rich, detailed, accurate, dynamic, refined, spacious, great decay, etc.)
Actually... all of this The thing is... they sound the way they are allowed to. In a year of owning I changed some electronics, amplification and even a room. And also listened to them with another electronics and in a very different room (and huge it was).

Probably we should start with the fact that they are German. Their sound approach, mostly, is to make a component than has no own character. Music in - music out. You can also look at multiple lab tests available. And then try to find a speaker that measures better. It's not a simple task frankly.

The second point is that they don't use some snake oil improvements of "best original" technical decisions no one else uses. My experience with such products that are built around some crazy patented idea tells me that they always have their own character. Not the case for these speakers.

Comparing to other speakers head to head the first thing I noticed is that other speakers (tried three other different pairs) available for a test at the moment were not linear or distortion-free. The most obvious was the difference in the upper-mid and high frequencies. It's never too much or screaming and painful with Reference K. As a result they have no genre preferences. And can really be pushed hard with the most dirty and nasty rock records, You won't be tired of it.

The soundstage is golographic, but mostly depends on electronics. Same for micro and macro dynamics. They love amplification with a lot of dynamic power (linear increase into lower impedance, down to 2 Ohm).

The overall sound character is rather warm. But again, in a room with low absorbtion and strong echo you won't feel it, this minor thing will be ruined.

The measurements also show that these speakers have very uniform frequency response off-axis. This results in a more even sound field, comfortable for everyone in a room, listening from any position. Using it for a background music or cinema is also very satisfying because of that behavior.

The bass response is huge, but listening experience mostly depends on room and placement for sub 80 Hz frequencies. It can (and probably will) cause you some problems in that region. Even if you feel it's great, try to measure frequency response and it will probably show, that there is too much bass present.

If you have more precise questions, I can try to answer. But it's really hard to explain the flavor of odorless product I can easily describe the home sound of DALI, PMC, Chario, JBL etc... or even Canton non-reference lines with aluminium membranes. But in that case it's really tough.

On a practical side. I find speaker terminals quite puzzling. The spades type of connection just don't work without their native jumpers. So for bi-wiring or bi-amping you should use bananas. And if You want to get rid of native jumpers, the only options are bi-wiring or bi-amping, it's almost impossible to use third-party jumpers.

Last edited by Scyld; 01-13-2019 at 09:07 AM.
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