Have you seen the VR9SE Review?

Onhwy61. Maybe you didn't notice that the article is listed under Audio Discourse not Hardware Reviews.

Mr. Lavinge has certainly been on an odyessy with that room and all of the various equipment changes. It's very generous of him to take the time to share his experiences with us.

One thing that bugs me about those speakers is that traditional hifi logic suggests that having all of those adjustments in the signal path would have some affect on the overall transparency of the speaker. Of course Mike's room probably allows him to hear more detail from a boombox than most of us hear from our systems but still, I wonder if the system could be improved further by going fully active and using something like DEQX or a Lake Contour (http://www.lake.com.au/) to handle the crossover. Of course these solutions would introduce extra a-d and d-a conversions, but I wonder what would be the lesser of to evils: having additional circuitry in the signal path after the amplifier, or having the additional digital conversions but thereafter maintaining a direct path from the amplifers to the drivers?

Mike,

An extremely thoughtful and well-composed article. I await a future review about your next speakers with anticipation.

Regards,
Rufus

Tim, thanks.

my previous speakers to the VR9's were the Kharma Exquisites which were a prime example of simple signal path. they had a very simple 'serial' crossover and the mid-range ran free. when i had compared the Kharmas to most anything they had that mid-range clarity and open naturalness that was so important to me.

when i initially looked at the VR9's i had a similar reaction as you.....why would i want all that 'stuff' in the signal path? then i heard them at CES back to back with Kharmas and clearly i was hearing as far (maybe farther) into the music as the Kharmas. i can tell you that as clear, open and uncolored as the Kharmas are the VR9's are another level or two beyond that.

the key is in the execution and component choices not in the overall circut scheme. all things being equal simpler is cleaner....but all things are not equal. Von Schweikert choose some very expensive autoformers (over $500 each x 3 for each speaker) for attenuation for the tweeters and similar for the woofer. these autoformers maintain the same impedence at all positions. from my conversations with Von Schweikert these components were transparent in the signal path thru the design stage.

the proof is in the listening. every time i listen i find it hard to believe i am listening to a 6-way 7 driver speaker with 4 attenuators.....but i am.

as far as ANY digital crossover i have NEVER heard one that is transparent.....and if you can do the room and speaker correctly they have no purpose. i will never dumb down my sources by digitizing (or re-digitizing) them.

Looks like the VR9's are gonna be collector's items, huh?