Vandersteen 5a's - an upgrade from Vienna mahlers?

Hi Sean: Is your advice premised upon the fact that Vandy's have adjustable bass and thus have room placement advantages (and all that that entails), or do you also have direct experience with both of these speakers and have A/B'd them in a system?

Thanks.

Sean: I respect your opinion and trust that you heard what you have reported about the Mahler's sound, but wonder whether your comments may be a bit harsh.

Each Mahler has two 7' midwoofers, two 10" woofers and two ports, making its midbass and bass interaction with a room particularly complex. My guess is that most ported speakers having that many low-frequency sources will sound bloated and boomy if not set up properly or if used in a smallish room. You mention the Stereophile review -- Robert Deutsch reviewed the speaker in a 14 x 16 x 7.5 room -- I doubt there is a worse venue for a speaker with prodigious bass capabilities than a smallish, basically square room. If you read JA's measurements accompanying the review, he made a point of noting that "[t]ry as I might, I couldn't find any particular measured problems in the bass."

My experience is that they require a large room and careful placement in order to produce smooth bass, which I do not think is too much to ask of a speaker. They also benefit from a high-current amp and carefully selected speaker cables (I got excellent results from Rowland Model 6's and Kimber Select speaker cables, but they also sounded excellent run with my VAC Renaissance 140/140's with no feedback). They do favor bass slam over bass definition, something that was documented in Tony Cordesman's review of the speaker for Audio. I believe the emphasis on slam over definition was a design choice, however, not a design flaw, and will be anything but unpleasant to many listeners (I also have Salons, recently had Dynaudio 3.3's, and ran Dunlavys for years, so tight bass I am no stranger to).

As for comparing the Mahlers to Vandy 5A's, I never A/B'd them side to side, so I am reluctant to proclaim one better than the other. The Vandy's cost 50% more and are made in a lower-cost venue than the Austrian-made Mahlers, so they have certain advantages in any comparison. In my listening, however, I found the Vandy's to lack transparency compared to my Mahlers and my Salons, and I hated the tiny sweet spot (the bane of time-aligned speakers) which reminded me of my old Dunlavys. Then again, I heard them at an unfamiliar dealership on an unfamiliar system and only for about an hour, so I probably shouldn't be making any comments about them at all.

As for how the Mahlers ultimately compare to Vandy's, the Vandy's powered, in-room adjustable woofer will certainly give them an advantage due to versatility of set up. But if both speakers are set up properly and put head to head, I am not so sure that the Vandy's win -- not so sure at all.

I respectfully disagree that people who purchase ported speakers have not done their homework regarding speaker design, or, that there is consensus among respected speaker designers that acoustic-suspension / sealed-box designs are superior.

I lived with a classic acoustic-suspension design, Advents, for nearly seventeen years. I then owned a more serious application of this design principle, six-ft. tall Dunlavys, for six more years (and spent a lot of time listening to my friend's Dunlavy V's, which are one of the most serious attempts at the sealed-box design principle). In between, I owned ported KEF's and now own ported Mahlers and ported Salons. Both sealed-box and ported designs have their advantages and disadvantages, as does electrostatic technology, planar ribbons, transmission-line loading, single-driver, etc. ad nauseum. I dislike sealed-box designs because even giant sealed-box speakers are prone to compression on fortissimos, something that is unacceptable to me given that I listen to a lot of orchestral music. On the other hand, I recognize that the use of ports introduces resonances into the sound, the exact opposite of what a speaker designer should be attempting to do. The following article is helpful to clarify the advantages and disadvantages of ported v. sealed-box woofer loading:

http://diyaudiocorner.tripod.com/dilemma.htm

My experience is that quality of sound in speakers is not so much determined by choice of design principle, but rather, how well a given design is implemented. Returning to the Mahler, they are designed for truly large rooms and can sound bloated and loose if used in small venues (Sumiko, the Vienna Acoustics and Sonus Faber distributor in the U.S., used to recommend Mahlers over the Amati Homage in large rooms). As for the quality of the drivers used in the Mahler, it uses the Scan-Speak carbon-fiber midwoofer that is used in the WattPuppy 7, Maxx II and Alexandria (it is also used in the Blue Heron II, and used to be used by Verity), and uses an expensive Scan-Speak tweeter that is floated in silicone gel to isolate it from cabinet resonances. The upper midwoofer is run from 70 Hz. to 4 kHz, spanning six octaves and giving the speaker a coherence that I find very appealing. The side-mounting of the woofers is a perfectly legitimate design choice that is currently also used by Audio Physic, Genesis, and Mission to name just a few, the benefits of which are described succinctly by Israel Blume of Coincident:

http://www.coincidentspeaker.com/whatsnew.html#Anchor--The-39790

The Vandy's powered woofer is nice for the reasons described above, but I would not own a powered speaker because it is just one more thing to break on an item that weighs a couple hundred pounds boxed and will be a real pain to return to the manufacturer (or God forbid, a powered speaker breaks and the manufacturer has gone belly up, which is real possibility -- speaker manufacturers seem bested only by restaurants when it comes to business failure rates).

So is the Vandy an engineering tour-de-force and the Mahler just a pretty face? I don't think so. I respect Richard Vandersteen, but I lived with time-aligned speakers for six years and do not care for their tiny sweet spot. The Vandys' use of both first-order crossovers and a sealed-box design limit dynamics and that is unacceptable to me, given the type of music I listen to. Powered woofers are a potential maintenance problem. Vandys to me are ridiculous looking, while the Mahlers look like furniture. When the homework is done, and be it for technical or aesthetic reasons, the Mahlers can be a very deliberate and very defensible choice.

The link to Israel Blume's comments about side-firing woofers referenced in my last post did not come through -- here it is again:

http://www.coincidentspeaker.com/whatsnew.html#Anchor--The-39790