Vandersteen Mod 5 vs Coincident Tech Total Eclipse

I owned the van 5's for about six months. I found I simply could not get them to sound 'awesome' in my then 13x16 L shaped listening room without bringing them 6 feet into the room which gave them an ungainly placement. Henceforth I sold them. The back wall has wall to ceiling bookcases to absorb the sound. I think those speakers really need a big 20 foot+ room to sound good. I also found:

- They need to be turned up a bit to liven up.

- In close low level listening is not their forte. At the
time I sat about 7 feet from them & I listen at low to
medium levels, so this was a problem for me.

- For a reference grade speaker I would like to hear more
detail. I realize this is part of their voicing.

- They are far and away the most difficult speaker I've set
up. I think this is directly related to my room size and
their overpowering bass/low detail. I spent months of
experimentation with an spl meter and found they
only 'locked in' at a very specific place in my room. The
big problem was that if you moved them 1-2 feet you
would need to recalibrate the crossover settings to
flatten them out again. I don't think this would happen
in a larger room. By comparison I set up my full range
eidolons in 2-3 hours and found they sounded excellent in
almost any reasonable placement. Note that I'm now
using a 20 foot room.

- I found I could only get them to sound good by throwing
ultra high resolution gear and cables at them to
compensate. I didn't get them to sound GREAT until i
put an $8000 vk-50SE preamp and 20K in quattro fil and
double run spm speaker cables on them. Great they did
sound, but I've achieved great sound with far lessor
components.

- Their amazingly powerful bass was a problem in that
pictures and my fireplace grill would shake at virtually
any volume. Perhaps a good thing. I did have the bass
dialed down a bit.

- The highpass filter that goes between the preamp and amp
was a problem for me. I had the balanced version. I
coudn't use my cd player as a direct source. I also
could not use my pass labs gear because pass labs have
differentially balanced circuitry. Audio research
balanced worked well.

For components I found the audio research vt100m2 to be the best amplifier and the bat-vk50se the best preamp match. The vk30se and ref1 were also good. Because the amplifier is only driving the midrange and tweeters you don't need that much power.

I realize I've outlines some negative aspects of this design. These speakers did not work FOR ME in MY ROOM. I still think they are one of the best speakers made at any price. Very natural presentation, and wonderful instrument weight. Best bass I've heard. A must listen for anyone shopping.

One of the unique characteristics of the van 5 is that you run it with a highpass filter between the amp and preamp. The filter lowers the subwoofer handled frequencies by 6 db before handing to the amp.

The amps signal hits the van 5's crossover where the 6db is added back then handed to the 400w solid state amp.

When you use a tube amp, this gives the UNIQUE characteristic of a perfectly matched TUBE mid/top with a solid state lower end. I found this to be one of the van 5's greatest strengths.

Note: Don't use pass labs balanced amp/pre with the van 5 balanced hipass filter - you could destroy the speaker. It's a $50 mod at pass labs. Those guys are just SO GOOD to their customers.

I am currently using avalon eidolon's and finding that one of their weaknesses is that you need to have a monster amp on them. If you want tubes, this limits you to huge tube amps such as the premier 8, the bat vk-150SE, and the vt200. There are lots of drawbacks to these monsters - upfront and running costs, HEAT and physical size. I 've gone to solid state right now - an Ayre v-1x. My 100w pass labs alephs could not drive them.