Verity Audio speakers

I owned the older Parsifal Encore's for several years, they are wonderful speakers. I was not able to directly compare them to the newer Ovation's though. The Parsifal's could sound a tad dark, so I found they sounded best with more revealing tube equipment like ARC and VAC.

I listened to Parsifal Ovation, Sarastro and Lohengrin II multiple times, but a few times in different Systems to Parsifal Ovation.
The Parsifal Ovation is a very good speaker, you can use a lot of amps with it, it is not so sensitive to room placement, I listened to it mainly with Nagra Tube amps, a very good match, but it sounds also good with Transistor amps.
Indeed, a Speaker where you can't go wrong, even when buying without listening to it.

I have the Fidelios and they are the original Model(really haven't had desire to upgrade or change). At the time when I auditioned them the Parsifal had a different Tweeter but I think the same midrange drivers. The Fidelios were considered a lot easier load to drive than the Parsifals and mine have a minimum of 6 ohm impedance. If you are thinking about running with low to mid wattage tubes I would consider the Fidelios. I currently am using a JOTA with 300 BXL's and around 23 watts.My listening room is about 12x 26. They sound great to me and yes they are very coherent, I get great depth and soundstaging as well. If your amps are capable and your room is at least moderate size, the Parsifels are still considered in many eyes to be one of the best out there but pricey compared to the Fidelios. You do see good deals occasionally come up here on AGON on both speakers. good luck,
Capeman

Greetings from Canada;
I concur with both jmcgrogan and syntax assessment. I currently have the Parsifal Encore (since 2005) paired with ARC Classic 120's (GNSC modded) and they sound fabulous. I have recently moved into a new home with a much larger sound room and i am just setting them up now. I have yet to do some critical listening but i am still unsure how i will spike them down.
Whether on a piece of maple or right through the laminate flooring onto the concrete below. Anyone would care to make some recommendation here. Once they are "anchored" onto the concrete they can not be moved as i will not make holes into the laminate flooring everywhere. The maple slabs are more appealing as they can be moved around more easily.
All this to say that they are indeed very good speakers and you shall not be disappointed if you go with the Parsifal's (either version).

I have the Verity Encores, latest model, for several years. Did have the opportunity to demo the Ovations at home, very similar, slight change in bottom bass section. Did not notice much difference so I kept he Encores, loved them both. Great match for my Herron M1A mono amps and Herron VTSP-3A pre amp. My speakers are 9 years old. Next year I will send to Verity for a going over, testing and upgrade grills and be fine with my "new" Parsifals for another 10 years.

Have been driven the latest Parsifal Encores with Pass X350.5. Agree with the comments above that they need power. I had some discussion with Julian at Verity and he had indicated that they are fairly easy to drive. I tried my other amp, Pass Aleph Os (40wpc) and it could not do the job. So back went the X350.5. I had been using a pair of Discovery jumpers from Verity and I think that contributed to the darkness indicated in the post above. I just switched over to a pair of Nordost Norse jumpers and it opened up the highs. All my interconnects and speaker cables are the Synergistic Research Reference X2 series. A recent change of tubes in my phonostage (ARC PH-3SE) and linestage (ARC LS-25 Mk I, GNSC Ref mod) from Amperex Bugle Boys 6DJ8s to orange & white label Amperex PQ 6922s also improve the highs as well.

FrankC

it is not so sensitive to room placement

Doesn't Verity recommend that their speakers be placed 1/3 the length of the room off the front walls? I'd call that hard to place: eg: 7 ft. from the front wall in a 20 ft room.

This has always out me off Verity, which look like a great line; I'd be pleased to be corrected.

I heard the line in Montreal several years back including the Parsifal Encore, Ovation and Sarastro. The Ovation and Sarastro were in smaller rooms with Silversmith cabling and Nagra electronics, lovely AND memorable sound. The Parsifal Encores were paired with Berning prototype amps and pre-amp with Stillpoints everywhere and Stereovox cabling in a LARGE trapezoidal room on the ground floor with the "big boys". I had a vested interest at the time since I have a Berning amp but wasn't at the time I committed to attend the show expecting to hear Berning paired with Verity or I probably wouldn't have. I expressly attended the show to hear Berning and at the time was considering upgrading to the latest Merlins which were to be demonstrated. Merlin didn't make it and the Parsifals which were new and not even broken in, were a last minute replacement.

The speakers were place well out in the room away from the front wall which had a curtain to counter noise from the AHUs behind that wall, a low rumbling that couldn't be eliminated, no matter. It took a while to get everything dialed in and I had the opportunity to listen over a 3 day period. Long story condensed by the last day I didn't want to leave that room! Didn't matter what the genre, from large scale choral and orchestral to jazz to vocal it did it all so naturally and effortlessly, it just sounded so damn real, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up on almost everything I listened to. I had an opportunity to purchase the speakers but was unsure how they would sound in my space, with the requirement that they be placed well out from the front walls a major consideration that really wouldn't be optimal in my listening room so I passed BUT I often wonder, what if? Most impressive line for sure with mointo potential.

Doesn't Verity recommend that their speakers be placed 1/3 the length of the room off the front walls? I'd call that hard to place: eg: 7 ft. from the front wall in a 20 ft room.

This has always out me off Verity, which look like a great line; I'd be pleased to be corrected.

The rule of 1/3 is a basic acoustic principal designed to mitigate room enhanced nulls and peaks. If you search speaker placement optimization, you will see this principal explained in greater detail plus the theory behind the application.

In short, this is not a Verity only suggestion, but a good starting position for most speakers. As always, with any theory, it offers a good starting point which will allow you to adjust to personal taste and your own room acoustics.

I agree with you Brf and that principle has always correlated to the "ideal" for the vast majority of speakers, too bad most of us don't live with ideal conditions and it always gets back to how important the room comes into play as the real wild card in putting together a great sounding system when all the other parts to the equation are in place, too overlooked in my estimation.

I agree. Real world speaker positioning and ideal speaker position is all about compromise. Verity with their optional forward or rear firing bass module provides greater room placement flexibility than most traditional speakers.

The reason I posted about Verity’s room placement was not to discourage potential buyers into thinking that the rule of 1/3 only applied to Verity.

A lot of what attracted me to the Parsifals initially is that they seemed EASIER to place in a challenging room. More flexible (front or rear firing woofers), generally considered somewhat "beamy" in the midrange (which makes 1st order reflections off of side-walls less pronounced), and, for all that's packed in there, a really small footprint. But, of course, placement matters. A lot. But doesn’t it always? Oh, and they do sound wonderful – seems like regardless of what you throw at them. The ones I have are, I think, fairly described as 1/2 Ovation 1/2 Encore. The monitors are effectively upgradable (although they don't call it that) to Ovation specs. Mine were (before I got them). The bass cabinets on the Ovation/Encore versions are different sizes, however, and thus it's one or the other, and that’s that. Running mine with relatively modest Rowland gear, and 250wpc SS monoblocks are more than enough. Have also heard them (same ones) on Atmasphere monoblocks. Nice, but I really don’t have the patience for tubes any more, personally. No – unless I stumble into unlimited funds to build an secret room from the ground up designed around something cringe-inducingly, self-indulgently, and obscenely huge – don’t expect I’ll ever consider getting rid of the Parsifals.

Smoffat, as for anchoring, your “environment” (dedicated room on a concrete floor) is about as different as possible from mine (main living space on a saggy, 160-year-old, suspended wooden floor) – so I don’t expect the same solution would apply. At all. I need to move mine all the time (from where the sound good, to where they “belong”). And also need to isolate them from that damn floor as much as possible. At first, I had the stock spikes on granite slabs on magic sliders. Effective-ish. Then I tried replacing the stock spikes with the Stillpoints SS Ultras. Like it. Generally, the effect was to sound cleaner and more precise, without losing any of the signature warmth and fullness. Then I swapped out all of the sorbothane pucks (between the cabinets and the aluminum block between them) with Herbies fat black dots as well as replacing the “magic sliders” under the granite with the Herbies slider-plus-“dot” deal. Again, the cumulative (subjective) effect was to firm up and de-muddy the soundstage and presentation (and a lot more cost-effectively than the Stillpoints….). Anyway, may well have over done it, but that’s the current pile for what it’s worth.

I’ve also heard the new(er) Amadis (I think a step above the Parsifals in the price range) running on the new VAC Statement anti-earthquake, pile of amplification and glass (at the audio show in NYC earlier this year, where the engineer actually kicked the thing to demonstrate how impressively anti-earthquake it was, and it was impressive). Meh, didn’t love it. Impossible to say what or why or how much attributable to any given element with a show presentation, but didn’t find the arbitrary whole all that engaging at the time. Mileage guaranteed to vary.

Seems like the 1/3 rule depends a lot on design:

Eggleston and Montana, I believe, say to start tuning placement 18" out. Audionote loadsw in corners, and the bass in Northcreek's near wall designs optimizes at 9" or less.

John

John, it also depends on the room’s size. It is not always practical to have the speakers placed 1/3 into the room. Some manufacture realize this and offer starting distances at a multiple of 1/3 i.e. 1/6 or 1/12.

As you have noted, some speakers are designed to utilize room boundaries to their advantage, most notable, corner loaded horns. Verity’s represent a typical bass reflex design, which is one of the most common designs.

You can take what the speaker’s marketing department says about room placement and easily substantiate their claim with a few easy measurements.

I've owned P/Es for over 10 years. A few observations, FWIW:

IMHO, this is a very fine speaker, but there is a noticeable hump in the octave below 100hz (exactly where is room dependent) and gently falling FR thru the mids and treble region - with the exception of a "plateau" thru the presence region that probably contributes to the speaker's striking dynamic impact. I suspect that the overall falling FR is why some say "dark" while others say "musical". For any given listener, that distinction might well end up being source, room, and system dependent.

Close to wall placement may further emphasize the bloom in the bass, so I'd personally suggest that you get 'em away from the boundaries. Also, warmer sounding tube amps can be problematic, per several posts above. I agree that ARC works well, as does quality solid state amplification.

This is a moderately tough load, so low output SETs and OTLs need not apply. I'd also note that there's limited bottom octave output with any amp, so real bass freaks can probably do better for the $.

If you get all the other stuff (room, system, etc) right, and you don't need the pipe organ / HT option, IME the P/E sounds really, really good with a broader range of source material than most other speakers that I know.

Marty

Interesting, Brf. I'm betting 1/12 is a good starting point in my room, for speakers that are not obviously disqualified from near wall, like OBs

John

I also owned the P/E's for 6-7 years. I think Marty's observations are spot on. It's interesting that someone mentioned running Art Jota's on Fidelio's. I tried them on Parsifal's, and it was a no go. Not even close to enough power. I owned two amps at the same with P/E's. I had the Accuphase A-50V, and CJ Premier 8's. As Marty mentioned, warmer sounding tube amps can be problematic. The 8's were warm, and did not have a detailed, articulate bass. The bass (on P/E's)could be rather undefined, and a bit boomy. The Accuphase, on the other hand, really grabbed hold of those woofers, and was much better in the low frequencies. That said, it was the CJ that stayed over the A50V, just because of what only tubes (IME)can do. I think a more linear, neutral tube amp is the way to go for P/E's. If you have a small room, I could argue the case to go with the Fidelio's. Pair them with a good solid 30 or so watt tube amp, and you could be set. I know someone who runs them with a sub, and is quite content.

I spent a very enjoyable morning with Verity PE's at a local dealer last week.

I'd briefly heard a Luxman cdp into his Soulution pre & pwr driving the Verity a month or two back. The experience blew me away, the sheer resolving power was fantastic on a double bass jazz piece.

On the basis of that experience we arranged a free morning and I took some music I was familiar with. In the meantime the system had been moved so it faced down rather than across his relatively small dem room. Also changed was the cdp, a Reimyo CDT/999 combo replaced the Luxman. A stella looking cast!

It turned out rather frustrating. Initially the combo didn't work. Great transparency but something was missing, highs were that bit expicit and lows were strong but a little tight, it sounded like hifi rather than music.

Some messing about with cables revealed just how transparent the Verity speakers are. I've not experienced a system where changing out a set of signal cables was as noticeable. Eventually we ended up with a combination that performed well. Still I was left with that feeling I'd been listening to a (very good) hifi rather than music which was disappointing. My system at home gets closer to the message for me, that was a big surprise.

I've no doubt that the combination I heard has greater potential to sound stunning than my own. Just goes to show that whatever the system you need synergy between everything connected and the room before you reach the point where you can relax and suspend disbelief.

The Verity speakers are undoubtedly wonderful speakers, like any state of the art transducer they'll tell you what you're feeding them and whether they're happy with it or not.

A little of base may be, but the parsifals I owned for a while benefited tremendously from putting them on stillpoint ultras. Not cheap, but worth the investment in my experience.

One of the strengths of the pass amps is the ability to control the woofers well to produce a realistic bass.

FrankC