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Speaker Asylum General speaker questions for audio and home theater. |
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Speaker Asylum General speaker questions for audio and home theater. |
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In Reply to: Would you trade KEF 104/2 for Vandersteen 2CE? posted by centaurus3200 on February 28, 2007 at 10:52:01:
thanks for your input guys.well, i decided to give the 104/2 a fair shake. thing is once i installed the Vifa MG27 tweeters, the vague bass annoyed me enough to where i just hooked up my KEF Calindas again and called it a day. the 104/2 do have HUGE soundstage and incredibly forward mids (thanks to dual B110 mids based on the famed BBC LS3/5A drivers). very sexy sounding.
i had to revisit them as my friend and i had a little mishap with my janszen Z-200. put new diodes in place of the stock ones. and some solen x-over caps. did the rectifiers just to be on the safe side. made more problems than helped. one speaker worked and the other one blew a fuse in 3 seconds. i haven't gotten back in there to see what went wrong.
anyway, based on my learnings from my old acoustic research AR3, i found out very quickly that some speakers are very boomy if the cabinets are on the floor. luckily, i have my adjustable 9" high AVF metal stands for my calindas.
putting the 104/2 on stands did two things. got the tweeters up to ear level and the bass really cleaned up a lot! good lord these are some very groovy and HUGE sounding speakers. i put on some greyboy allstars and i felt like i was in a nightclub with them. i don't really crank music, so i was very, very impressed with their low level resolution. i got a lot of ambiance at low gain. very impressive.
i also (at least for tonight ;-) take back my thoughts that the bass extension is marginal for a speaker of its size. i still use my REL Q100 sub, but the weight of these speakers fool you into thinking they are much bigger than they actually are. bottom line is that they throw a soundstage of speakers much larger than them. they may not go super low, but they have excellent mid bass resolution. you can hear the body of an upright bass, not just the attack and the BOOM of many modern speakers. this sort of resolution is sort of similar to my old bozak 302A urbas, but not quite as tight.
as far as the "boomy bass". raising them on stands GREATLY tamed the low end. I'm still on the 8 ohm tap on the macs. i will try the 4 ohm tomorrow. i also have some microscan anti resonance thingamagigs. I'll use some double stick mounting tape for them, so i don't screw up the cabinets with glue.
lastly, those fricken Vifa MG27 tweeters have got to be the best deal on the market at $22.10/piece. given, i have never heard a properly working pair of KEF T33b, but from what i understand, I'm not missing much. the vifas are very smooth and extended. they don't go up to 30kHz like my calinda's T27, but they are far smoother. i think the MG27 might have just been discontinued. which would make sense being they are the last of the actual Danish made vifas. most are from china these days (not that there's anything wrong with that).
I'll end with this. i used to have a pair of vandersteen 2 (the original ones) my friend has them now (uses McIntosh MC75s on them). the highs aren't as smooth, the mids aren't as smooth and forward, but bass is tighter and deeper. however his vandys never conveyed the "ambiance" of a recording like the 104/2 (microdynamics?). they don't transport you to the smoke filled night club. you feel like you are listening to a recording.
so, i guess i'll hold off for now. i have this knack of buying or trading for equipment then never really using it long enough to get a real baseline. the 2CE are not the signatures and he wants $600. they have the sound anchor stands. he's in the bay area on craigslist if anybody's interested.
see ya,
Robby
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Follow Ups
- starting to like the 104/2 for the first time! - centaurus3200 22:35:21 02/28/07 (1)
- tried to post a pr of B139s to you on ebay... - docw 07:24:26 03/01/07 (0)
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