Finally had a chance to stop by and give the Special 40’s a listen. They were driven by a McIntosh MA5200 integrated. Much of their qualities were already discussed before so I won’t try to duplicate it in my post.
In a nutshell, I found no glaring faults with them at all for their price. It is not the type of speaker that may try to impress from the first note and that’s a good thing to me. I found the bass to be very articulated and resolved for a smaller monitor speaker like this, the midrange was rather pure and uncongested. With no traces of note hardness or upper frequency harshness, the Special Forty impresses me with a very generous soundstage that was wide and deep and after playing around with some mild degree of toe in and further tweaks with positing on the fly (some dealers look at me funny as I jump up and start moving their setup around
) the center image locked into focus with image density and proper weight that I find enjoyable.
Slight deviation from neutral towards the darker, warmer side to my ears with the pairing gear (McIntosh) but I find that more enjoyable in the long relationship with a speaker anyway.
Not a giant killer but for $3k one can’t go wrong with this musical and enjoyable speaker if looking in that price range and perhaps up even a bit higher. I’ve certainly heard much better at multiples of the price and have heard much worse sounding speakers that were more money than special forty.
I am coming back next Tuesday to try out different pairings of amps and may very well order a pair for myself. They impressed me enough to own them and not go chasing more expensive pair for my room. The special forty hit all the right notes and resonated well with me.
