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PSB Stratus Gold i

142.150.100.26

Posted by jazzhead on June 11, 2001 at 12:43:26

The PSB Gold i: A Flawed Giant

I'll begin by echoing what many others before me have said: the PSB Gold i can't be beat at its list price and then some, maybe twice the list price. It's a rare value for a full-range speaker with audiophile pretensions and few objectionable flaws. This, in an industry notorious for fleecing the unsuspecting slob and dreamers alike.
I don't own the Golds. I've seriously been looking for a replacement speaker which could replace a two-decades-old pair of Dahlquist DQ-10s, but after a year of serious searching, I've essentially come up as dry as a dessert bone.
The old Dahlquists have their faults, to be sure. They're bright, inefficient as hell, dated (designed in 1972 or so), they have an overly-complex crossover filled with cheap parts, the use cheap (cheap, cheap, cheap) nasty-sounding, screaming Philips tweeters and a Philips horn 'super'-tweeter to boot! The Dahlquists have little usable bass and they take up a hell of a lot of the average living room. But paired up with (and tamed by) my Dynaco-Stereo 70 tube power amps, they defined the word 'synergy'. My system had its faults, sure, but it did make good music. So for twenty years I collected music and kissed the audio roller-coaster goodbye.
A couple of years ago I replaced the almost-rotting foam surrounds on the DQ-10's proprietary ten inch woofer. It occurred to me then that I should probably start looking around for something designed since the wake of the Beatles' breakup. Sure there are speakers that I like, but I can't afford them -- what's more, I wonder if they're really worth it.
Until the purchase of a Bryston 4B ST last Summer I didn't have an amplifier that could drive a large number of speakers on the market, so eliminating that limitation opened up new vistas for me. "Now," I thought to myself, "I can really speaker shop in earnest." But after listening seriously to about three dozen speakers in a variety of price-ranges from $1,000 to $12,000, I keep coming back to the damned Gold i -- literally. I keep returning to my local dealer (thank you for your unending patience with me, Whitby Audio) and so far I've had four or five extended listening sessions with these things over the course of a year and I've come to realize that these are very appealing speakers which only lack the last degree of sophistication and refinement. Specifically, they don't have quite as open a midrange or image as I'd like or am used to and they sound just a bit ragged at the top end. Now, this doesn't detract from their real strengths: the Gold i has a wonderfully realistic, dynamic, open, full-range sound. They can image like the Dickens and they sound like music. There, I've said it. Yes, the Gold i reproduces bass without reservation and then some -- perhaps more bass is there than I'm used to, coming from off of a lean-sounding thing like the DQ-10. So where's the problem?
I wish, oh I wish they didn't have a 'hash' in the crucial mid-band areas. It's so evident it hurts. When a vocalist speaks up there it is; rising and falling with the vocal. This is a persistent problem which is evident on all accompanying equipment. It's there on female vocals (like Holly Cole, Joni Mitchell, The Roaches, Indigo Girls, etc.), it's there on saxophone: John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, Michael Brecker, Lou Tabackin (on his own and on Tom Waits' wonderful "Small Change" CD/LP -- ah yes, it's audible on both sources, CD and LP) and it's there on the classics as well. Everywhere there's a natural voicing there's this CB-radio like static/hash rising and falling in amplitude with the source. It really busts up the almost-wonderful imagery too. Keith Jarret's solo piano opus "The Koln Concert" should have a wonderful rendition of a piano in mid-air, but alas, it falls just short of near perfection. So I ask this again, what's the problem?
I think it's the cheap Vifa tweeter. Long considered a drawback to Paul Barton's excellent design efforts, this metal-dome driver lacks the nth degree of subtlety and refinement. But it's the hash, that's what makes these so difficult a choice for an audiophile on a budget.
Now my question to you folks is this: has anyone ever delved into the guts of the Gold i (or its baby brother the Silver i which shares the Vifa metal-dome tweeter and this characteristic hash/buzz) and tossed out some of the cheap crossover parts. For example, I understand there are some electrolytic capacitors in both models that could stand a bump up in quality, but does this make a difference in that crucial midrange area where I find the 'hash' distortion so objectionable.
The PSB Gold i could have the last word on three-dimensionality if not for this annoying problem. And it affects the midband to a degree that hurts, because these are so lovely a speaker. A sort-of perfection is just within reach and that's an music-lover's dream.

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