Vandersteen 1C to 3A Signature

I auditioned the Treo CT and the newest 2CE Signature III against each other for a long time, and chose the new 2CE to replace a 20 year old pair. At the time I was considering a like-new pair of Treo CTs (1 year old, $6000), and I still second-guess myself for not getting them. They don’t come up for sale often.

I think the newest 2CE is arguably a better speaker than the 3, and my dealer said the same thing. It’s certainly a better value. I would get the Treo CT instead of a pair of 3’s for sure.

Virtues of the 2CE Sig III:
* Price ... a superb value.
* Better bass extension than the Treo (though the bass the Treo has IS superb)
*Same mid-range drive as the Treo CT, iirc

Virtues of the Treo CT:
* Gorgeous speakers, and much better spouse acceptance factor esp. for a living room
* More solid cabinet, fewer resonances
* Carbon tweeter. My 63 year old ears couldn’t hear much difference between it and the 2CE, and the midrange of the two seemed equal. Said to be a better tweeter by "everyone" though.
* Can be placed closer to the wall without messing up the bass response

The salesman at my dealer owns a pair of 2CEs that he has paired with $20k of amp and preamp, and he says they just sung beautifully. With every improvement to the front end, the speakers rose to the occasion. When I was trying to choose, he warned me that the Treos might reveal deficiencies in my front end more than the 2CE’s did, which meant upgrading everything and I couldn’t do that. The other salesman there has Treo CTs to which he’s added a pair of subwoofers (the alternative could have been the Quatro CT), with an Audio Research front end and Chord Hugo TT2 DAC, and he says it’s magical. More $$ than I have!

I am in the process of investing about $10k in amp/preamp or integrated soon, and I think the 2CE’s will rise to the occasion. Of course, that’s pocket change for some of you! Maybe later I will switch to the Treo CT. Maybe.

Long-winded tale, taking it FWIW. Good luck.

I've heard good things about the Ohm. In that form factor, the speaker I would audition if I wanted something other than the Vandersteens (front firing), would be the Larsens. Larsen 6 or 8. I say that only because of intriguing reviews and word of mouth. They fire towards each other, throwing up a "wall of sound."
Larsen 6.2 review: https://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/larsen-model-62-loudspeaker
Larsen 8 review: https://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/larsen-model-8-loudspeaker

The Sound In Itself
All this detail about exactly what happens and why does not really get across the remarkable impression these speakers create. If one forgets about audio categories, turns one’s mind away from a checklist of what speakers are supposed to do, and turns one’s mind away from what most speakers do do, and thinks instead of what music sounds like in reality, these speakers are hugely intriguing. Once one gets used to the fact that they are different from free-space floorstanders; indeed, one can become positively addicted to their sound. In a certain sense, the Model 8s are something of a road not taken in audio. But one cannot help wondering if this is not perhaps because audio took a wrong turn somewhere to some extent if the goal is to sound like real music, especially in terms of reproducing the lower midrange on down.

Large-scaled music, where the match between room sound and direct sound is a vital matter, especially illustrates the virtues of the Model 8s. Orchestras sound surprisingly like orchestras, with a transparency that goes not just down into the midrange but all the way down. If you wanted to write down the bass and cello parts of a symphonic composition from listening, these speakers would make it easy.

At the same time, the human voice is also very convincing. A good recording of a person speaking sounds startlingly like a real person, something that often escapes speakers that change directivity in the midrange on account of the baffle step. And instruments with serious lower-midrange content sound unusually convincing, as noted.

The Larsen Model 8 is to my mind a speaker that everyone seriously interested in audio ought to listen to and at as much length as possible, since one needs to adjust to its quite different approach to reproducing sound in rooms. There are things it does, and important things at that, that to my mind lie at the heart of actually sounding like live music. The approach is entirely different from the near-field, directional speakers that can also claim a really accurate reproduction of what is on the recordings, albeit in a different way. But the approach of the Larsen Model 8s has validity of its own. How speakers should work in rooms is not a very standardized matter. But the way of the Larsens is one of the ways that works. The Larsens, most impressively, really sound the way music actually does sound. The Model 8s are not just another try at making a speaker like all the rest except better, as so many high-end speakers are. Rather, the Larsen Model 8s are something special in their own right.