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VR-4
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Von Schweikert Research's VR-4 Ever felt victimized by your own biases? I certainly have, and I bet it has happened to you, too. So, answer this very short questionnaire: Have you ever decided not to buy something because it's too cheap? How about refusing to audition equipment because it's not some magazine's "Class A recommended," or worse, that it only received a Class B rating? How about the fact that it just is not big enough a deal in the circle you frequent. Maybe you're just the type who cannot cope with what others may think when you own speakers that have not received the ultimate accolades. Certainly, most of you can agree with me on at least one of these examples, but whether anything can be done to thrive on owning the most expensive products. It is depressing to see the price of so-called reference loudspeakers going up and up, at a faster rate each year. The consensus seems to be that "if it costs more, it's better!" Confusing quantity of dollars with quality of sound, ranking price over performance, complexity over simplicity: yeah, yeah that's the ticket. It's no wonder that most non-audiophiles refer to us as a sick breed and refuse to get involved with our hobby Well, there is a loudspeaker on the horizon that sells for $3,500.00 and competes with the big guns in every single area that audiophiles crave: Soundstage, three dimensionality, and focus. This speaker simply has no competition in its price class whine it comes to coherency, dynamics, sense of ease, sheer power capability, and versatility. Welcome to the world of virtual reality The Man Discussing his theory with me on the phone, Von Schweikert went further and stated,
Von Schweikert went about creating the VR 4 loudspeaker by first designing his patented crossover network, the Global Axis Integration Network (GAINTM) network. However, this review is about the sound of the product he designs, not so much the design itself. So let me go on record and say right here, this speaker is so damn good that it challenges much more expensive loudspeakers for sound supremacy and will run with virtually any speaker for top to bottom coherency. The Speaker Standing 46 inches high and a very slender 13½ inches in width, the VR4 has a tall appearance. It looks deep, too, and measures 20 inches from front to back. Because the cabinet has a minimum-baffle build, you can look at the midrange/tweeter enclosure and see what I at first thought was wood behind the grille cloth, but upon closer inspection you will find only your own real estate. Sitting on the baffle, behind the black grille cloth, is a carbon fiber, 5 ¼ inch Audax midrange driver with a custom-made, 1 inch Vifa tweeter above it. Another 2-inch driver is used on the back of the midrange/tweeter enclosure to insure true reproduction of the ambiance from the recording space. Truly, this is a five-way speaker system designed to perform like a one way. Absolute, total integration was the goal here. Kick the Ballistics….Gee So you can imagine the work the Von Schweikert VR 4’s had cut out for them. A planar lover is someone who enjoys music spread out across the entire back wall of his listening room. There is a sense of air in the planar tweeter’s reproduction that, to me, makes dynamic loudspeakers sound dry and brittle. The sound achieved by planar speakers, when coupled with tube amps, is just impossible to duplicate with dynamic speakers, with or without tubes. With dynamics, you just do not get the air or the liquidity in the voices. Planar speakers, to be sure, are not perfect, but I had no problem living with these tradeoffs. What are they? You know, the typical "no dynamics," "no bass below 35 Hz," and "you have to sit perfectly still to keep the images between the loudspeakers." Most of these planar speakers are very big and wide and they can take up some serious amounts of real estate. Bet hey, I loved them, and whenever I was comforted with Uncle Denial. He would say, "We don’t need that much bass, and what recording do you listen to that’s going that low anyway? This is real bass." Or Uncle might say, "Dynamics! You have great dynamics." To convert a flat-out planar-head back to liking dynamic ones and woofers is no easy task, to say the least. Von Schweikert’s rather audacious claim is that he has brought the virtues of both planar designs and dynamic loudspeakers into the VR4’s; so lets see what the VR4 brings to the table. Setup Moving my Maggies out of the room and setting the VR4s up in the exact same position, I put on track 7, "I’m Tired of These Blues," from Give It Up To Love by Mighty Sam McClain on an AudioQuest CD (AQ-CD1015). I sat back and hit the remote on my Sony DVP-S 7000 DVD player/transport and my jaw just dropped. I could not believe the sense of smoothness, focus and transparency I was getting from a dynamic loudspeaker. It became apparent in front of a great loudspeaker. If you ever have planar speakers and are used to that bass performance, maker sure your sitting down when you first hear the VR4s, because the bass will startle you. You will pull out, as I did, CD after CD in disbelief at the amount of low end extension you were mission and most importantly, the very importance of those frequencies in setting the foundation for the music. Next in importance is the level of dynamic range; in short, these speakers kick. I pulled out Steve Ray Vaughn and Double Trouble, threw the CD in the Sony, went straight to track 5, "Tin Pan Alley," and just could not believe what I was hearing come out of these speakers. The focus these babies possess is downright scarry; the images become so locked in between the speaker, it’s sometimes unsettling. Three dimensionality is really where these babies go to work. They bring together all their attributes in one gigantic illusion of being at the live event. I have had plenty of speakers in my place, but never have I had such an experience as I am having with the VR4s. I will confidently put these speakers up against speakers costing many times the VR4s sticker price because they do nothing wrong as far as I have been able to tell, in the three months I have been using them. Believe me, they’re the real deal. Now, this does not mean that I did not have any problems at all. I have never had such a powerful bass in the room with the Maggies, so on certain CD’s, like Keb Mo’s Just Like You (Epic/Okey), there was a noticeable amount of port noise coming into the room from the two tuned ports located at the rear of the 8inch bass drivers. After a while, my friend, this became a problem, not so much to me, but to all my audiophile associates. But after living with planers, I will take all the bass, please. ("Ah, I love the smell of napalm in the morning.") But my friends (whose ears, I admit, I trust more than I trust with my bank card), believe it or not, did not put one vote on keeping the VR4s over the Maggies in side-by-side comparisons. The Maggies are just that good in my listening room and I must say they do something magical there. But I personally had a very strong inclination that these VR4s could still, at least to me, be better sounding there. I knew I had more work to do in getting them better integrated in my room. I am almost certain these guys thought I was out of my mind when I chose to keep the VR4s over the Maggies (except the dude who bought my Maggies, he wouldn’t talk about how loony I’ve become until he got the Maggies safe and secure in his listening room. I now had to tame the VR4s woofers, and this was going to be a job if I wanted to leave the speakers in the same position as the Maggies. I called up Von Schweikert Research, spoke with David Kersh, their Marketing Director, who, by the way, seems to know quite a bit about setting up the VR4s properly. Most importantly, he put me in touch with Stu McCreary, who is a Von Schweikert expert and was first to put to press ink the virtues of this speaker. What a blessing it was to get in touch with him and utter this very word, "Help!" what a blessing it is to talk to someone who has had all the problems I had and fix them. He game me the antidote; stuff the ports with a foam or stuffing and amazingly it worked like a charm. When I played the Keb Mo track again, it sailed right through without a hitch. The bass articulation and tautness turned magical right before my ears. One interesting feature of these loudspeakers is that the rear ambiance driver is adjustable in level. If, for example, you like a smaller stage and tighter focus, merely turn them down. For a Maggie owner like myself you simply cannot live without this control turned all the way up, which keeps the top end sounding similar to the Maggies and with exceptional focus. A Perfect Speaker? The Second thing, and this is much more difficult than the first thing, is that I’d like to see these babies act like true point-source monitors. I have been looking for something to accuse these speakers of not doing. Do I sound as if I adore these babies? Got that right! They do for me what I always wanted in a loudspeaker like the Maggies without their shortcoming: Seamless midrange, tweeter, and bass integration, soundstaging, and both width and depth that envelops you. These speakers seem to posses a level of palpability in the midrange that not even the famous Maggies could better. I am referring to that sense of focus and transparency which combine together to float a huge soundstage in the center of the space between the speakers, giving the ultimate illusion of the performers actually being in the room. When you hear this loudspeaker, you too will wonder just how someone can create like something like this and sell it for just $3500.00. As far as I can remember, I have not heard a speaker in this price class that can compete top to bottom. Put to the max SPL test with a pair of Balanced Audio Technology VK 1000 monoblocks no less, reaching levels that can cause instant eviction, is simply to invite hearing damage, and there are no sonic difficulties. I think this is one of the finest loudspeakers you can buy regardless of cost. Because VR4 lists for 3500.00, it’s downright stupid not to audition them. I cannot give a higher praise than that. The funny thing is, while writing this review, I realized just how good this speaker is because you may have noticed that I have nothing negative to report. I wish all reviews were this way. Unfortunately, they are not. Reviewers are the eyes and ears of you readers. Our job is to report what you should take out of the show room and what should stay there, regardless of cost. Regardless of cost, the VR4’s are one of the best loudspeakers I have heard period. By: Clement Perry |
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