Daedalus

I use a pair of Pass XA100.5's in a 18 by 23 ft room and it is spectacular sounding. Neither the speakers or the amps give out at any volume level I can tolerate and I listen loudly. Lou's products are wonderful, musical and great values.

You guys have the Daedalus sound down pat. However, the Ulysses does have offset tweeters while the DA-RMa is a single tweeter design that does not position the tweeter off axis. None the less, the Ulysses do pinpoint imaging with the added benefit of sounding very engaging from off axis listening positions.

How good are Daedalus speakers? I have a good friend who is going through the figuring out phase of buying stereo equipment. One week it is this and the next week it is that. However, when he is in the mood to hear great music he comes here. At some point in time he will figure out that the reason he comes here is because of these speakers, although my room and the rest of my gear is pretty damn good.

My system uses Lou's Ulysses speakers being driven by Pass XA100.5 amps being driven by a ModWright LS36.5/PS36.5 preamp. I also use a pair of Art of Sound Jazzmon subs in an 18' x 23" room. These are 12" subs using an ACI driver in a closed cabinet. I have used them successfully with both Beauhorn and double stacked, Wayne Picquet re-built, Quad 57 speakers. Both of these were easier to blend with the subs than Ulysses and this is with the subs doing only below 27Hz via a Marchand X over and being operated with very little gain.

With almost all of the music I listen to, I don't need the subs and this particular night, as we were comparing the sound of my Marantz SA7S1 CD player with that of a Berekley DAC being driven by the Marantz and driving the amps directly, I didn't use the subs. The folks that were over hardly believed that the subs weren't on and we listened to everything from jazz, to rock, to classical and to solo guitar. My listening room is 18 x 23 and the sub doesn't add to the sound of the system, unless there is content there, which there usually is not.

These speakers do not need subs to sound great. Really, Lou's DA-RMa speakers don't either. My subs are fast, but if you ask them to do even 35Hz and turn them up even a little too much, they slow the sound down with Ulysses. This tells you one thing about Lou's speakers and that is that they are fast. They are also warm, dynamic, detailed and the most natural sounding speakers I've heard or owned. They are also beautiful and get even more so as they age.

I don't read BFS anymore as I lost interest when I found out Marty uses Lowes AC cable for speaker cables. However, I do own a pair of Ulysses speakers and it would be a loss for you or anyone else interested in them to not run out and listen to them. They are the best I've owned and the best I have heard and I've owned re-built dbl. stacked Quad 57's, B&W 802's, Beauhorn's, 3A De Capo's, Legacy Focus and unfortunately for my pocketbook, too many others to remember right now.

Lou's speakers, including the smaller DA-RMa model, which I heard at RMAF, are great, dynamically natural sounding loudspeakers that can be driven by SET's or high power SS.

They also have a timless beauty, which I do not tire of.

Good luck.

Frank