Von Schweikert VR9SE speakers

When you are in the room, it also looks like one would have their ears blown off by one channel or another sitting anywhere else but in the center seats. Nope. Didn't happen - the balance was not perfect sitting right in front of one speaker or another, but it was pretty damn good. OK, speakers can disappear along with the best of them.

The next thing that comes into mind, especially at this hotel, is the bass. Are we going to find ourselves as just two more little sound absorbing protoplasmic blobs in what will be one gigantic subwoofer chamber - at least from the point of view of those laughing at us from outside the room in the hallway? Nope. The speaker's built-in controls, essentially an equalizer no matter what all the manufacturers are calling them, did its job quite well. Bass was well balanced and in proportion to the other frequencies found in the music. Of course, we do not know what compromises were made in the sound quality using this feature - as we have never heard the speaker with the equalizer un-engaged versus engaged. But in a situation like this - a very small room and rather large speakers - it was welcome no matter what the comprises by this listener.

Both DSD tapes and SACD disks were played in this system. My sense is that the tapes were a little smoother, and a little noisier, and with perhaps less PRaT. But it is only a sense and with the caveat that I did not get to hear a controlled comparison between the two I probably preferred the disks overall. There was not the difference that a reel-to-reel tape deck compared to the Meitner has, for example.

Now to the sound itself. This was an all soildstate system. And in the final analysis it sounded like it. Oh, it was very good. Not bright or cold or anything. But there was a tiny trailing edge of grit to the notes of the music. Very subtle (to these ears) but present and it took away some of the shimmer and beautiful decay that many instruments have when they just start fading into the background of silence.

Another thing I heard, not sure about Neli, and it could just be I am not used to subwoofers, but there was a slight prominence to some of the lower notes that sounded a little out of balance. Whereas the Kharma subwoofers at the show faded into the background so much so that a person had to ask if they were turned on - the powered subwoofer in the VR9 was such that you knew when it came on. I am tempted to write this off to the room - one of the smaller ones at the show - but I am hear to describe what I heard and that is what I am trying to do.

Similarly, again attributable to the room or not, there was a weird side to side imaging anomaly that caused an image to grow and shrink in size, and move forwards and backwards, as it moved from one channel to another. And where I expected the image to center on the one speaker or another at the beginning and end of the move, it instead stayed a foot or so away from the speaker.

Anyway, not much else to pick at. If there was we'd let you know :-) This system and the Kharma Midi Exquisites really begged to be put in a large room so we could all enjoy them in their sonic splendor as opposed to seeing them cinched up in a hotel room girdle like this, barely able to breathe.

One last thing, someone, not the distributor played them so loud near the end of the show that the listeners were in serious danger of damaging their hearing. I kept looking at the host, every time there was an over the top crescendo, expecting him to notch down the volume a little. Finally, after about 60 seconds at which point I felt my eardrum vibrate to its, until now unknown, natural resonance frequency, we left.

DartTZeel NHB-108 monoblock amplifier sitting on SRA amplifier stand

EMMlabs DCC2 DAC and CDSD transport, Tascam DSD digital tape player

Tascam DSD digital tape player control panel - Looks like awesome fun to me!

Tascam DS-D98 DSD digital tape player

Von Schweikert VR9SE speaker

Von Schweikert VR9SE speaker