Score!!!

OK, I've had some more time with them and this still qualifies as the best $200 I've ever spent. I cleaned them up last night- dude must have been a smoker or hadn't dusted these in years- there was all kinds of crap on the cones and I still haven't gotten all the dust out of the grills. Still no luck on popping out those two dust caps, but I'm trying the vacuum tonight.


Soundstage: Freaking huge! and you get all kinds of weird effects... if you close your eyes and try to point at the right speaker you'll find yourself about three feet too far to the right. Some instruments some like they're litterally hanging from the ceiling right over your head- others sound like they're sitting a few feet behind the speakers. The sweet spot doesn't seem to matter as much- even sitting lined up directly in front of one speaker (but at the usual distance) you still get the same sound... The SDA effect seems to work differently for older rock (Pink Floyd, Led Zep, ZZ top, AC/DC) vs more modern recordings- the old stuff seems mainly to give a broader horizontal dispersion, whereas the newer recordings seem to give a vertical dispersion as well. I'm still experimenting- and at some point I'm gonna have to find a second pair of SDA's and throw down my Quad Dark Side of the Moon.

Range- These probably outdo the LSi25's on the bottom end, but its hard to say in my current setup (the 25's are in a really bad room). I put on Outkast/ speakerboxx/"The way you move" and it hit even the deepest bass effortlessly. Same thing for all of Massive Attack/Mezzanine. I guess I could run Lord of the Rings to see if they can get those 10hz thumps, but the Outkast is already pushing the lowest notes you're going to find on most recordings. The bass is super punchy, too. None of that ported sloppy bass on these. On the top end they're a little harsh- they've got the original metal domes, so I guess I should look at swapping them out for the silk ones. I defintely prefer the ring radiators here.

Volume: So far I've only had them on the Krell 150wpc integrated- it goes to 11 (heh- I love that about it) and anything past 4 is freaking loud. Taking the LSi up to a similiar volume will start to change the quality of the sound quite a bit- they brighten up a bit and quickly get fatiguing. The SDA's hardly seem to change at all- they just get louder.


Anyhow, I'll get pictures up soon- my camera batteries were dead when I went to get them this morning.

Yep - you can set one of the inputs to bypass everything but the power section... but if I'm going there, I'll just hook it to the ELP + Bryston 4b. The first key is for me to get them up to the man room... right now I've got them sitting on an old rug in the garage which is a far from ideal listening room- While it does have a dedicated 20amp plug, all those hard surfaces could easily explain some of that tweeter harshness.