paulo m
Well-known member
Hi all,
Just to say hello to everyone here. I bought a pair of Vantages about a month and a half ago, finally fulfilling a lifelong dream of owning a pair of electrostatic speakers after a revelatory audition some 12 years ago of a pair of Monoliths. And the best part of it all is that making this purchase was not planned at all!
The speakers are still being broken-in, so I can't really say I am at audio nirvana yet
... Eagerly waiting, nonetheless, that they truly open up.
In early January I finally took my wife to an audition and have her experience what a high-end system is. Words are really useless to explain it--and I have tried, over the years--so one Saturday morning we got out, bag of reference CDs in hand, and off we go to listen to a pair of Magneplanars (the 3.6). We went there just so that my wife could listen to a proper system for the first time in her life, and she was impressed. I felt happy to witness the whole "I hear stuff I didn't hear before/I didn't know that was there" routine. I am fortunate that my wife is very musical and has a excellent pair of ears, so I didn't have to come with long, detailed explanations as to what was going on in that virtual soundstage.
As we were returning home, we decided to stop by a different dealer, since we already had the bag of CDs in hand, just for a "2nd opinion" kind of thing; another experiment, with different equipment, just to corroborate the whole routine again. Hopefully my wife would see that this high-end audio thing is like any selection of good wines--they're all good, but there actually are several dimensions to this, and some small aspect of one may stand out in appealing to our taste and make the experience amazingly enjoyable. Oh well, that 2nd dealer had Aeons on display, so I would have another chance at listening to Logans.
We spent all the weekends for the rest of the month at the dealer, always listening to the Logans with an assortment of electronics. For comparison, he showed us a pair of similarly priced Dynaudios. I was very glad my wife was able to immediately notice the difference in character and say that she preferred the Logans . There's just something about the electrostatic sound that drivers cannot achieve...
Anyway, even though we started on the audition circuit with no intent to buy anything--especially given the prices of the systems we were listening to--in mid-February I was pulling out my wallet at that dealer and ordering a complete system based on Vantages (even though the dealer only had that single pair of Aeons in the store, I actually ended up taking a leap of faith and deciding on the Vantages).
As I said above, the system is still being broken-in. I've already had a few pleasurable sessions with it. As it is right now, it plays a certain kind of music quite nicely (concrete and electroacoustic, i.e. Parmegiani, Normandeau and others) but it is not quite there yet for acoustic and classical music: Piano sounds a bit clangy, dense ensemble passages are mushy and vocals are quite recessed and as if under a veil.
Here's hoping that they continue to improve their sound as their mileage grows and that my chosen electronics and cables were not a bad choice.
//p
Just to say hello to everyone here. I bought a pair of Vantages about a month and a half ago, finally fulfilling a lifelong dream of owning a pair of electrostatic speakers after a revelatory audition some 12 years ago of a pair of Monoliths. And the best part of it all is that making this purchase was not planned at all!
The speakers are still being broken-in, so I can't really say I am at audio nirvana yet
... Eagerly waiting, nonetheless, that they truly open up.In early January I finally took my wife to an audition and have her experience what a high-end system is. Words are really useless to explain it--and I have tried, over the years--so one Saturday morning we got out, bag of reference CDs in hand, and off we go to listen to a pair of Magneplanars (the 3.6). We went there just so that my wife could listen to a proper system for the first time in her life, and she was impressed. I felt happy to witness the whole "I hear stuff I didn't hear before/I didn't know that was there" routine. I am fortunate that my wife is very musical and has a excellent pair of ears, so I didn't have to come with long, detailed explanations as to what was going on in that virtual soundstage.
As we were returning home, we decided to stop by a different dealer, since we already had the bag of CDs in hand, just for a "2nd opinion" kind of thing; another experiment, with different equipment, just to corroborate the whole routine again. Hopefully my wife would see that this high-end audio thing is like any selection of good wines--they're all good, but there actually are several dimensions to this, and some small aspect of one may stand out in appealing to our taste and make the experience amazingly enjoyable. Oh well, that 2nd dealer had Aeons on display, so I would have another chance at listening to Logans.
We spent all the weekends for the rest of the month at the dealer
, always listening to the Logans with an assortment of electronics. For comparison, he showed us a pair of similarly priced Dynaudios. I was very glad my wife was able to immediately notice the difference in character and say that she preferred the Logans . There's just something about the electrostatic sound that drivers cannot achieve...Anyway, even though we started on the audition circuit with no intent to buy anything--especially given the prices of the systems we were listening to--in mid-February I was pulling out my wallet at that dealer and ordering a complete system based on Vantages (even though the dealer only had that single pair of Aeons in the store, I actually ended up taking a leap of faith and deciding on the Vantages).
As I said above, the system is still being broken-in. I've already had a few pleasurable sessions with it. As it is right now, it plays a certain kind of music quite nicely (concrete and electroacoustic, i.e. Parmegiani, Normandeau and others) but it is not quite there yet for acoustic and classical music: Piano sounds a bit clangy, dense ensemble passages are mushy and vocals are quite recessed and as if under a veil.
Here's hoping that they continue to improve their sound as their mileage grows and that my chosen electronics and cables were not a bad choice
.//p
