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

In my personal opinion, a properly set up pair of Vandy 5's would be a major leap forward. The fact that you can tailor the bass response of the Vandy's, either to best suit your room acoustics or your personal listening preferences, is of massive benefit. The Vandy's will not only be easier to place in the room due to their bass tuning capabilities, but you'll get better performance out of them too. Sean
>

Downunder mentions that the Mahler's list at $10K where he is located ( Australia i would assume ). While i don't know how much Vandy 5's run "down under", there might not be as much of a price difference as was initially mentioned. I guess it would be a good idea to mention where one is posting from as this might offer further insight / additional info to take into consideration when responding. Sean
>

I have listened to both speakers, but not in the same systems or rooms. Having said that, i've always found the bass of the larger Vienna Acoustics speakers to be very round, sloppy and ill-defined i.e. the trademark of a very poorly designed vented speaker. The first time that i heard them, i was with my Brother. We both looked at each other and smiled as we were thinking the same thoughts. That is, they sounded like Legacy's i.e. big, dynamic and thoroughly bloated but with a little more finesse up top. Stereophile commented on this and said that the Vienna's that they reviewed were some of the hardest speakers that they ever had to place in a room.

On the other hand, one can play so many games with the Vandy's in terms of the sound that you want out of the bottom end, that one can EASILY match their room and / or sonic preferences. The fact that they come with their own bass amplifier removes much of the heaviest load from the main amplifier, offering the potential for sonic upgrades there too. Much of this will depend on how "sturdy" the main amplifier is to begin with though, so i wouldn't immediately count on this happening. The more anemic the main amp was, the more room for improvement there is in that regards.

Technically speaking, the Vandy is light years ahead of the Mahler's in most every respect too. This is probably why it is a better sounding speaker, regardless of the versatility associated with the bass section. The fact that Richard uses custom built "subwoofer" drivers AND supplies a high powered amplifier AND user adjustable controls to assure the best in-room response possible for the price that he does whereas the Vienna's use off the shelf drivers that make use of poor woofer placement should speak volumes about the integrity of both the designs and the designers. This is not to say that everyone will "prefer" the sound of the Vandy's, but that i don't consider these two speakers as being anywhere near equivalent products for the aforementioned reasons and a few more. Sean
>

The very first words of my first post read "IN MY PERSONAL OPINION, a properly set up pair of Vandy 5's would be a major leap forward". I shared my opinion and then expounded on it when asked to do so. Others with different opinions and / or preferences are obviously welcome to contribute to the thread. I don't know all there is to know about any given subject and to be quite frank, i know very little about any given subject. Having said that, what i do know and what i have experienced, i am more than willing to share. At the same time, what i do know came from others that were willing to share, so i encourage open conversations.

I would only add that studying loudspeaker design would be helpful PRIOR to investing the kind of money that we are talking about on either of these models. If one does that, they will learn that driver placement, cabinet alignment, Q, room loading characteristics, etc... are all very important factors that contribute to what we hear. Once one knows the science behind how & why things work the way that they do, they'll know what to expect out of a given design, sometimes even before they hear it. As was the case with both of these designs, they lived up to their design heritage. That is, as far as i'm concerned.

I don't own either speaker and hope that those that do own one or the other are happy with their purchases. I was simply sharing some observations that i've made about them after studying both design approaches and then listening to them in different listening areas. Sean
>

PS... There is a difference between "slam" and "high output". "Slam" requires both "high output" and tremendous transient response capabilities. That tremendous transient response is what is also required for definition and articulation. In my opinion, the Vandy's are capable of all three aspects of bass reproduction i.e. high output, transient response and articulation whereas the Mahler's are only capable of the "high output" aspect of the equation. That's because using a port instantly introduces poorer transient response into the equation. This is due to a lack of internal damping and the uncontrolled oscillation with out of band leakage that the port ( Helmholtz resonator ) itself introduces into what we hear. Ports are used strictly to boost the quantity of output, but this is done at the expense of quality. The only way to increase the quantity of output without sacrificing damping / transient response ( quality ) is to use more active drivers. Anything else is strictly an engineering / design trade-off. As i've always said, one should buy & use what they like, regardless of what others think.

Dunlavy's have some inherit design flaws that can only be ameliorated by designing the height of the room around them. This has to do with room nodes and room reinforcement. The same goes for any speaker that uses a woofer that is measurably above ground level.

Side mounted woofers were first utilized by AR ( as far as i know ), but they did their homework in terms of the how's and why's of why this can work and be beneficial. One of the requirements that one must deal with in such a situation though is a very low and sharp crossover frequency. Designs that don't take advantage of such an approach are bound to have both room placement problems in terms of low frequencies and the potential for cancellation due to lobing. Having said that, there is something to be said for the sound of a direct radiator that indirect radiation can't match, even at low frequencies.

Other than that, we could continue this thread on forever. The fact that you are comparing your multi-thousand dollar modern speakers to 30+ year old 10 inch two ways ( Advent's ) really has me scratching my head. As to the Dunlavy's, unless you had about 1000 wpc feeding them, you've never really heard what the speakers were capable of. The compression that you were hearing was the amplifier giving out, not the speaker.

As to the design compromises involved with various approaches, ports can not match the linearity of a sealed design, even if the ported design is fully optimized. All a port does is to destabilize the air spring within the box, introduce uncontrolled leakage, produce an uncontrolled resonance and increase the potential for woofer damage if fed a signal below the resonant frequency of the vent. The end result of such an approach is that bass is extended and "may" play louder, but the quality of bass suffers in most every aspect. The drawback to sealed designs is that they are inefficient and require greater amounts of power to obtain the same amount of amplitude output. Pay your money and make your decisions. Sean
>