Vandersteen

this hobby would be a lot easier if the recordings were better.  That is the main issue a lot of times, our expensive gear makes some of our favorite music sound like crap.  I don't get how they could make something like Dark Side of the Moon sound so good in 1972 but yet in modern times with all of the knowledge and techniques most guys can't come close to making recordings like this. 

 I've heard Vandys on a handful of occasions over the years... 
 Many years ago I had the 3A Sigs here in my house for a demo, w/ Parasound Halo gear that I had at the time and I loved them. From what I remember, they had the sound that everyone describes from Vandy... I was quite inexperienced then and had yet to experience real 'hi-end' audio, just then coming out of HT and into 2-ch, so I don't know what I would think of them today, 15 years later. Was it the Halo gear that made them sound good to me?

 Five years or so ago Richard V. was in town with a SimAudio rep. They did a controlled presentation / demo of some new huge (and expensive) 700w or so Sim SS amps with the Model 7. After a long introduction by the Sim guy, he played some somewhat odd tracks of island-fusion something or other. It sounded a lil cold and emotionless. Could it of been these new amps not wormed up or not fully broken in?

 Two or three years ago I had a Quatro demo (for serious consideration) at the same local dealer, w/ SimAudio gear. The tone was so off that very familiar music sounded like it was being played by different people with different voices and diferent guitars. Sounded like a weird facsimile of what I was used to hearing from this band all my life --not natural and real sounding at all. I was very surprised at what I heard (but my current system excels at real, natural and proper tone and timber, so I could be spoiled). Was it the mid level Sim gear or the cables to blame for the bad tone?

 Same year as above, I listened to the Trios a few times at AXPONA w/ C/J gear. I played a reference CD track of mine, a bluegrass version of Another Brick In The Wall. It has a segment of some fast picking of two acoustic guitars. It totally fell apart. A jumbled muddy mess, but sounded good when the tune was in its clean and simple stages. Is the CJ gear to blame for the lack of clarity?

The point here?  I know people love Vandys, and I did one time too, but as mentioned from others, they need gear and cable matched very very carefully to sound great. There are many out there that can attest to having great sound with Vandys...just to many bad demos for me.  As a reference, I like Daedalus, Devore and sometimes Harbeth (set-up dependent), just bad luck with Vandy.

Thanks to everyone for your thoughts

Why don't you answer the questions raised in the replies by describing the rest of your system, how it's setup in the room (including dimensions) and let people try to give you some meaningful suggestions? 

Vandys can rock pretty well IMHE, this might be as simple as tweaking your placement, etc. Cheers,
Spencer

What is the rest of the equipment in your system? What previous speakers did you use?

Vandy's are pretty darn good speakers. There are 4 likely possibilities:

1. Your setup is off.
2. Some other component in your system is causing the issues you hear.
3. Your newly acquired Vandy's are broken.
4. You don't like them.

I've heard Vandy 2's and 3's with large scale classical music and though they were about as good as it gets at their price point.