Well gentlemen, I'm the proud new owner of Brad's old set of CLSii's. I have a half written review of them on my computer but haven't had time to finish it with this new job and all.
I did listen to them at Brad's house, with his intimidating equipment and I truely liked what I heard. Sure the bass was not what I would anticipate, way down as frequency drops but his subs nicely rounded that out. I wasn't too concerened about them in my system either as I have a pair of subs to do the dirty work also.
As a matter of fact, I liked what I heard so much that when I went home from listening at Brad's, I retuned my Vantages by turning the Bass knob on the speakers all the way doun to -10 and retuned the subs and tweaked the EQ a little.
So last week I made a special trip back home to honor the deal and pick up the CLS's. I picked them up on Saturday and wasn't even planning on setting them up as I had to leave on Monday. But that day, I just couldn't concentrate on work with a pair of boxed up CLS's in the living room. So I gave up on work and gave in on setting them up. I didn't change a thing on my head equipment and placed the New speakers in the same position that the vantages were in. Then I put a favorite CD on.
"WTF! This sounds like my crappy car stereo!"
Whoa, the subs were now out of whack, nodes and overpowered like I never heard before, male vocals were tinny and dry, and it just sounded like crap. What a letdown.
Now before you all start throwing the rotten tomatoes and reach for the pitchforks, I need to clarify a little.
Since the end of March, I have been severely underemployed. What this meant, other than the usual nonsense that comes with abject poverty, is that I had an unusual amount of time to diddle with my system. I tweaked, moved, rearranged, tested, redid all the former and latter countless times to get what I still think is a damn good sounding system. Hell, just by listening to Brad's setup, the first of anybody else's system I'Ve heard, told me I wasn't doing too bad.
One of the major thing I had going on with the Vantages was that I had reversed the polarity on the woofers connection so that they were in phase with the panels, time corrected the whole speaker to match the position of the woofers, and used the rear wave emanating from the rear port to help control (counteract) some of the excess nodes from the subs. All that plus auto eq, test discs, corrective eq-ing and sound panel placing.
For what I had in the room was a custom setup for the Vantages that I can only conclude is the diametrically opposed optimum for the CLS.
So, in the next few hours I had left, I went to work. No use relating what I've done so far because even though it was a kind of improvement, "I still got a long way to go" as Elvis Costello once sang. But I did come away with some relevant first impressions of the CLS's as I see it:
First off, I'll tell you what I see that the CLS cant do. They can't reproduce that sharp edge that the more adventurous alternative and "experimental" is meant to convey. The more intended distortion, fuzz, and complex cuts I listen to just seem to fall apart and want to hide. The sawing electric guitars with wild reverb translate well at sedate volumes but turn up the amps to where those cuts should be at home just inspires cringing. As Brad described and I fully agree, these are not "in your face" speakers.
Now what they can do is truely awesome. Each speaker fills out more than the Vantage does both outboard and inboard. I only had to move the speakers once and that was to spread them about 2 feet further than the Vantages to get what I consider a truly phenomenal stage width. With the Vantages I had a compromise in width where in order to get a decent pan from speaker to speaker the outboard extention had to suffer and visa versa. Not so with the CLS. again, Whoa! Complete wall to wall and beyond stage width AND a completely seamless pan from speaker to speaker. Very, very nice.
Now the more raucous cuts I listen to may have me turning a little annoyed but the more sedate and deep, rich cuts definitely have more information in them. I've even noticed fade-outs are more detailed and prolonged than what the Vantages were giving me. And, Ahh, the girls
. they just sound so nice on these speakers.
The Vantages, being tuned and such give me more of what I want, or should I say more of what I expect while the CLS's give me something new to think about. If I were to make a metaphor about the two, I'd say the Vantages are like a completely modern glass architecture building, with chrome and shiny sparse details, and all the modern amenities the 21st century has to offer. The CLS"s are the old castle, the huge Japanese timber frame barn with a humongous fireplace and bearskin rugs. Each edifice has it's own charm and best use, but they are not the same, neither one good nor bad.
I still have a lot of work to do in getting the CLS's up to how I think they should sound and they do have some age related issues. these I will address as soon as I have saved enough to get them some new panels in case I blow the fixes, but they are keepers.
Thanks, Brad, for letting me listen to them at your home and on your system, for being patient with the lay-away plan, and for selling these intriguing speakers to me in the first place. And damn you too, for making me start worrying about upgrading the rest of my system
