I bit the bullett and picked up the DeVore Gibbon 8 speakers which I bought off a fellow audiophile on Audiogon on Dec 30th. I have since set them up to my liking and have these observations based on 3 days of listening. Most importantly, the brightness I was getting from my 15 year old Vandersteen 2CE speakers are a thing of the past. In addition, the hootiness I occasionally heard from the midrange in the Vandersteens are gone as well.
The Gibbon 8 speakers excel at soundstaging (width, height and depth), they image like a champ and totally disappear into the music. The highs are "just right" to my ears and the midrange is magical. This afternoon I played the cd "Letters Never Sent" by Carly Simon, and her voice never sounded so good and sweet. In the midrange and treble department, the DeVore's are quite a step up from the Vandersteens.
I am having difficulty with the amount of bass however. The quality of the bass is excellent, in pitch and articulation, but in my room, sounds a bit thin. I have the speakers about 10 inches from the wall, 6-7 feet apart, and toed in slightly towards me. That has yeilded me the best and smoothest mids and highs, and has reinforced the bass.
With the Vandersteens, the bass was always good and never drew attention to itself and I never felt it lacking. With the DeVore, I am constantly wishjing for a little bit more to make the sound a little fuller. I am also finding I have to play the speakers a little louder than I would like in order for the bass to be more satisfactory.
Which leads me to this: I am thinking that a subwoofer may be in order. I wrote to John DeVore asking his thoughts on mating the Gibbon 8's with a subwoofer but as its a holiday weekend and with CES coming up, don't expect an answer for a couple of weeks. I am wondering if any fellow Audiogoner's has experienced this?
I am thinking of a 10" sub, used subtually, adding just enough to fill in the thinness a bit. I have seen a good deal on a new Velodyne Impact 10" subwoofer for 299.00. It has adjustable low frequency cutoff and a built in 200 watt amp and level control. I can run the second pair of outputs from my preamp to the sub and have a corner reserved for it already. I would appreciate anyones thoughts on this or other suggestions
Associated equipment: Classe 15 (175wpc amp), Modulus 3A preamp with JJ 6922 tubes, Raysonic 168 cd player with EH 6922 tubes, VPI/JMW9/ZU-Denon DL 103 low output mc. MIT Terminator 2 speaker and interconnects. All power cords and filtering courtesy of Shunyata.
The adventure continues................
