After Audio Physic Vigo II's

I have a pair of VMPS RM30 ribbon hybrids in a large room and a pair of the new Silverline Preludes in a smallish room (which is where I had the Virgo II's). I have to say I like both of these speakers better than the Virgo II. The Preludes cost much less and work extremely well in small to mid-size rooms. Imaging is unbelieveably holographic and you won't believe the quality of the bass that comes out of the two small woofers.

I owned Virgo II's for seven years and had a great time with them. After five years of tweaking them to sound their best in my room (top tips - use the optional straps and spikes on Marigo Bear Feet, put three VPI bricks on top of each one and use the best Nordost speaker wire you can afford). I honestly thought that in many respects they had the best sound I'd ever heard on any system; particularly in terms of refinement and imaging. That said, they did have compromises which I never could overcome including a lack of deep bass, time alignment issues with the drivers, and a tendancy to become edgy and fatiguing if even a small thing was off somewhere else in the system.

For a number of reasons, I've now replaced the Virgos with Vandersteen Quatros, along much of the rest of my system. While after only six months I can't honestly say that they sound better than the Virgos yet, I'm optimistic that they will get there. (The Virgos needed a lot of work too at first.) For now, I've been distracted by other things, such as learning how to work with power tubes (#!%?#). I plan to post my new system soon and perhpas further progress updates. To be continued...

Hi Glide3, could you explain the big differences between the Virgo's and the Avanti III.

Bob- It turned out that my living room had the space to be off the back wall. It sounds great with room behind it. I also have the black ash model, which does not initially look as great as the contrasting woods, but makes it much easier to live with.

I owned AP Virgo II's for a few years, driving them initially with a Mark Levinson 383 integrated, and later moving to a Blue Circle hybrid seperates setup (BC3 + BC28). I had just become a dealer and was looking for a speaker lineup, and after demoing a number of speakers, I was referred to Focus Audio by the folks at Blue Circle. Focus provided me with a demo of the Focus FS788 speakers...and a couple of days later, I sold my Virgo II's and became a Focus dealer. While I found the Virgo II's to still be unparallelled in their ability to image, the FS788 had similar "disappearing" qualities, midrange beauty, and ability to present delicate acoustic/harmonic tones well. But I found the FS788 to produce an overall fuller sound that handled a wider range of music better than the Virgo II's.