Vandersteen's new affordable mono blocks at the CES 18

I’m interested in anyone’s long term opinions of running the Vandersteen M5-HPA’s with the 5A Carbons, especially, or the other high passed models. Are they significantly better in this application than any other amplifier, tube or solid state?

I’m running my 5A Carbons with a set of Pass XA 60.8s and a Pass XP-22. The latter is quite neutral, I think, and certainly the best preamp I’ve heard. The amps are very good or great, I’m not sure. I suppose it depends on the setup. One thing I’m not looking for is more warmth, as I think I have a tad too much of that, especially in my smallish room. I would kill for a way to directly tame the midrange on the speaker. I do have an excellent solution on my digital chain, because I have a Roon setup, with some curves that drop the midrange at the crossover points by 1,2, or 3 dB, depending on my preference. But that leaves my analog setup at the mercy of my cartridge loading, which is imprecise. The bottom line is that I feel strongly that the 5As needs lots of room width and height to breathe. Their more revealing midrange over the Quatro CTs is both good and bad, again depending on the recording. So, with all that said, if there’s a chance that my amps aren’t quite the right match, then I want to check out the M5-HPA’s, 

Another question is how much better the M5-HPA’s internal high pass circuitry is over the external crossovers. I have set of late model balanced with fresh batteries.

A partial listing of the equipment in my system includes: Vandersteen 5A Carbons, Pass XP-22, PS Audio Directstream DAC, PS Audio P20 power regenerator, VPI Classic 4, a Roon server and currently one gaping hole because I have no amps since I sold my Pass XA60.8s. I’m going to be getting a loaner amp in a day or two to tide me over.

Compared to the XA60.8s, I felt that the M5-HPAs sounded smoother and instruments sounded more natural. I had mentioned somewhere else the saxophone on the "The girl from Ipanema". When it hit, it just sort of jumped out at me as sounding like it was weightier and almost right in the room with me. Massed strings are less emphasized and more as part of a cohesive top to bottom presentation. I was pretty happy with XA60.8s when I had my Quatro CTs, but the more open midrange on the 5ACs made me feel something was amiss that no room treatment, positioning or Roon DSP tweaking could ameliorate. Essentially, there was a glare in the upper midrange - at times. On good days, when I wasn’t too fatigued from other things and perhaps the AC quality was good, (P20 is only on upstream components), I could be floored with my setup. At other times, trying to get through an extremely difficult piece to do well on a system - for example, Brahms 3rd symphony, especially the opening, was a bit fatiguing. RV himself chalks this up to the XA60.8s having global negative feedback, which causes time smear and is especially evident with his time and phase correct speakers. Also, I’m sure something could be said for the simpler circuit path in his M5-HPAs. All I can say is that once I heard the M5-HPA’s, there was no going back. Now, my Pass XP-22 sounded great to me and I plan to keep it in the system. It is exceedingly neutral and very low in distortion. Is feedback an issue with it? I can’t say, but I’d be curious to know what others think. I suppose some would say for a system like mine especially, that you should banish all traces of it.

I just put in an order for a pair! It’s going to be a long next three weeks.

I hadn’t considered that Roon software could be an issue, except when playing with DSP. If I raise a frequency band really high, say 70db, just to see what happens, the result is bad distortion, but I don’t know if that’s because I was overloading the USB input to my DAC. DSP aside, I don’t see how there could be degradation. Red book CD all the way through double rate DSD all sound very good generally, depending on the recording, with DSD sounding the most natural. But even DSD doesn’t quite match the best of my LPs, played on my VPI Classic 4 with Kiseki Purpleheart mounted to an SME 312s to a Pass XP 17.

After waiting a grueling three weeks after I placed my order, I finally have in my possession a set of M5-HPAs. I have them connected between a Pass XP-22 and Vandersteen 5A Carbons. Cabling is AQ Water interconnects and four foot Anticables 3.1. I have had the M5s running for twenty four hours. In a word, they are amazing. I’ve never heard holographic, clearly layered deep soundstaging like this. Ascribe any positive attribute you want. They deliver. I would put them up against any amplifier hi-passed to a sub. On top of that, they run cool and don’t hog power!