Absolute Sound Review of 801 D4

[Greg Gale]

Interesting review. Discussed how sensitive they were to having the right kind of power as with his existing Pass XA 60.8 monoblocks with 60 Watts of power experienced, " a lack of control and grip with dynamic source material". He claimed this also included Piano recordings. Even with a 200W per channel amplifier he said he had to "lean in" to engage with the music. Part of this I wonder is if he was too close to the speakers for him to experience a fully coherent sound stage. He stated he was only 8 to 9 feet away in a listening room 15x15 which would appear to be too small for the 801.

Others on this forum including Joey had this experience with the 800 D3 and felt he could not get his listening chairs far enough back and that the speaker had to be pulled further away from the back wall due to bass challenges.

He did agree however the speakers represented a fantastic value, although reading Andrew Quint's review was not as enthusiastic as I thought it would be, considering the improvements to the D4 series.