D-Day at Robfine’s House: Heritage Specials have arrived!
 

My god it took forever. I thought maybe they were in a container on that freighter that got stuck sideways in the Suez Canal a couple of months ago (I still not totally convinced they weren’t). But they are finally here!

Congrats Rob, they look great!

Congratulations! Can’t wait to hear your impressions :)

You plan on telling us what you think about the Hertiage Special?

How did I miss Rob's post the first time?

Yes, Rob, please post your impressions once they run in (I know it takes 300-400 hours).

If he's serious about this hobby, he must have 300 hours on them...


:D

Sorry for taking so long to report back. It’s been crazy busy at work leaving me not a lot of free time. So with the time I’ve had available I could listen… or I could write… I guess I can write while I listen… but noooooo, I wanna listen. I don’t wanna go to work. I just wanna listen. Okay, I gotta write something. Just one more album. At the moment, it’s Virgo: Atzko Kohashi, Tony Overwater and Angelo Verploegen. Last night, Yo-Yo Ma and The Goat Rodeo Sessions. Artemis. Paul Brener Band. Thad Jones and Mel Lewis- Pot Pourri. Jen Chapin- Revisions. Need to stop and eat… and maybe sleep an hour. Trombone Shorty- Parking Lot Symphony. Sinne Eig & Thomas Fonnesbaek. I can’t put them down. I mean stop listening to them. Supertramp, Katie Melua and Eva Cassidy. Count Basie and Joe Williams- Kansas City Shout. Pink Floyd. More Pink Floyd. Ablaze Cissoko. David Bowie and Queen. A bunch of Holly Cole. Hiromi. My family wants to do an intervention. Keiko Matsui & Bob James- Altair & Viego. A whole bunch of stuff on Qobuz I can‘t remember the name of…



Opium for the eardrums…? Aural opium? What can I say? They sounded great right out of the box. Better now but no noticeable rough spots.



How the system I am listening on came together is the subject of another, future string. In the meantime, starting at the wall: WW Silver Eclipse PC to Shunyata Hydra Sigma S12 PD—>>> PrimaLuna Dialogue Premium Int. Amp with KT120s. Music comes from a Synology DS 415+ and Qobuz to Bryston BDP-3—>>> Singxter USB Digital to Digital Converter (i2s) —>>> Holo Audio Spring Dac Kitsune Edition. Interconnects are WW Silver Eclipse. USB is WW Platinum Starlight. Speaker cables are WW Silver Eclipse 6. Components are sitting on Stillpoints Ultra SS and Ultra Minis. Everything except the speakers and Shunyata are on a Quadraspire double width rack. My previous speakers were Thiel CS 2.3 (about 26 years old). The room is about 12.5 feet x 15 feet with a 12 foot ceiling. The speakers are set up along the long wall with the back of the speakers about 24 inches from the wall, front of the speakers about 6 feet from me and the speakers are about 7 to 7/12 feet apart with mild toe-in, maybe 15 degrees, and about 4 feet from the side walls. They are sitting on (bolted to, actually) Dynaudio Stand 20s. They are not spiked in at this point. The highs are …. I’m trying to think of the right adjective but the acoustic bass is like vibrating me through making it hard to think. I could be much more expressive if I would turn off the music but I’m not turning off the music (aural opium, remember?). The speakers are fast, very fast and yet the notes have their full decay. Really well balanced. Back to the highs- they are crisp, have sparkle when that’s what is in the music and yet, in 100 or so hours of listening I cannot remember one occasion of hearing sibilance that I didn’t know was baked into the recording. The bass is full but tight, lush but not at all sloppy. I can’t say they go ultra deep but in the room size I’m in and the music I listen to, it does not sound or feel like I am missing anything. In fact these little speakers let me feel the bass through and through.



I have not listened to any complex classical music yet. The opening track on The Goat Rodeo Sessions has all sorts of strings of all types coming in and out, some bowed, some plucked, some strummed- and you can hear it as all the separate instruments. Nothing blurred together at all. Big band sounds like big band. Amazingly big sound for such little speakers and about 42watts into 8 ohms amplification. Soundstage is goes almost to both side walls. Depth pretty much stops at the back wall but comes up to about a foot in front of the speakers.



I took a chance buying these without auditioning them first (but I was given sone “change your mind time) but I can tell you these babies ain’t going back. They are a really good workable size for my room and are sounding just really good. They don’t just sound good but they feel good. Listening to them is just… just like… aural opium. They are only making 2500 pairs of these. If you are looking for mid-size monitor speakers, these are really worth a listen.

Rob, thanks for the excellent report, looks like you have scored a fantastic speaker, congratulations!

When you get the time could you please elaborate further about the midrange and overall coherence (apologies if I missed it in your report)? Many thanks!

Rob, I thoroughly enjoyed that review.
It made me smile.
I'm happy for you!
If I were in the market for new monitors, these Dyns would top my list.

Midrange and overall coherence. Earlier today I put on Eva Cassidy- Live at Blues Alley. I was really something for a rainy Miami Sunday. I’ve been to Blues Alley a couple of times. When I was there it did not seem to me like Blues Alley “had a sound”. Today, it was clear that it does. I was transported back there in a way that was uncanny. You don’t hear these speakers, you just hear music. The only thing I can say about coherence is that it’s not worth talking about because the lack of it is just not a thing. The midrange is about as good as I’ve heard. For low level listening, they remind me of hearing TAD floor standers fed by Accuphase equipment in Ivan’s Florida living room at fairly low volume. And while I feed my Dyns with what I consider to be nice equipment, “it ain’t Accuphase”. In fairness and context, Ivan’s living room is about 4x the size of my listening room but I only need these to sound great in my room. They remind me a lot of Quad ESL-63s I used to have. They are lightening fast (even with tubes, albeit KT-120s), and yet piano and plucked bass notes have just a lovely extended decay. I also think this is a case of just a great match of speakers and room. When I started looking for speakers I was looking at bigger speakers, but I’ve tried to learn the lessons of others, especially here on AA including not “over-speakering” the room.