I've had these speakers for three weeks now, and I am very very impressed. Out of the box, I'm not sure why but you just know that these speakers are very nice bits of kit, there is an awe about them. You have three choices of finish black, cherry or walnut all in a pealrscent vynil finish, I went with the walnut. They are very attractive speakers both with the grilles in place or without. A sneak behind the grilles and you can see that fitment is superb, and the wood effect vinyl is also of a very good quality, I havn't come across a speaker this well presented in this price range before...
Setting them up, you'll notice that the binding posts are also of superb quality, feeling nice and solid. I chose to bi-wire my set of speakers as I always do if possible. Positioning them is a doddle due to the bass port being front ported as opposed to rear, so you can near enough place them as close to the back wall as you would like, handy if you've not got too much room to play with.
They say that all speakers sound awful straight out of the box, these didn't sound fantastic in the bass department at first, but what was immediately noticeable was the level of detail (more so the high end stuff from the tweeter) which far superceded that of the Kef Coda 8 speakers they replaced, which in their time were cracking entry level speakers themselves, it really was striking. Of course I had to run the speakers in for the usual 50 hours before I could turn them up a bit and hear what they would finally sound like which for somebody as busy as me does actually take a little while, about two weeks...
However...the wait I'm gald to tell you is more than worth it! I loaded my cd player with my favourite album, turnt the amplifier knob round to about 9o'clock and sat down to listen in. What you hear is very much beyond your expectations when you've paid a mere £180. You get a rich, room filling sound which simply emerses you. The bass is both incredibly powerful for cabinets of this size as well as very taut and disciplined, as mentioned before the detail from the higher end frequencies is phenomenal. You are left with an experience which is rich and warm, but incredibly detailed, and therefore a fully involved listen, it really does make you want to listen to your favourite cds a hell of a lot more often. As what hi-fi said when these speakers won the grouptest, you would probably have to spend twice as much on a pair of speakers to hear a fair improvement over these beautys.
What hifi did however mention one other thing...the only downside they could come up with, apparently there is "perhaps too much refinement and not enough bite/attack" for particularly fast or heavy tracks, personally I have not noticed this to be a problem but this is obviously only a problem that occurs with certain genres of music and certain tracks. I have blasted out my kings of leon cd which is very pacy at times with no problems whatsoever....
Overall these speakers are immense, even more so when you look again at their price tag.
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