Spendor D9.2 Run In

philip swift some years decided on the bifurcated strategy to cover market/buyer segments for speakers

classic series for classic looks/bbc design. a/d series for modern slimline floorstander looks, and increasingly, a modern sound - meaning he is targeting focals, revels, magico, proacs, wilsons and so on... but perhaps not so successfully as one would hope...zippy city...

for a modern-styled floorstander type speakers that hark back to the more beautiful, less attacking, natural sound of spendor classics, i think modern sonus fabers deserve a look, perhaps some revels, some devores (non orangutans)

@roxy54

We’re in agreement, but when I think about it, it is a little surprising that they would have gone so overboard on the treble.

terry miles, who for many years succeeded derek hughes at spendor (post sale of the company to philip swift) as their main designer, remains active on the spendor user board -- he has recounted how the company has felt the need to ’modernize’ its sound in light of what it sees as market trends... even successive iterations of the classic models have had the treble/upper midrange energy dialed up slightly each time (of course, despite this, in absolute terms, the classics remain quite natural sounding) - think this explains why/how the d9/d7 have been pushed so far in that direction...

terry is ’one of us’ so to speak, still feeling connected to the bbc heritage, more natural style of sound... interesting that he recently departed spendor and now works with alan shaw at harbeth

agreed @kren0006

other factor here is that some speakers with hotter top ends, if they are not torture chamber loads as seen by the driving amps, can sound really lovely with tube amps

proac response speakers were/are a prime example of this... stew tyler voiced them with audio research tube amps for years - and so folks who bought, say, a set of proac response 3.8, then put a run of the mill solid state amp on it, would hear a speaker that was pretty darn edgy, strident and unforgiving.... but then if they swapped in an arc vt100 or a music reference amp, and then tonally, everything would be ’just right’, the imaging would become expansive and enveloping... ahhhhhhhhhh....