Finally we have found a partial answer to the eternal question of how much to pay for something that is sufficiently good.

Test Heavy Loudspeakers

The Definite Jump
"Painfully" good speakers

     Out of pure curiosity I recently made an entirely unscientific survey of this magazine’s entourage of hi-fi enthusiasts.

The question was:
     What part of the audio chain do you think is the most important to spend money on in order to get that definite lift of the sound? Just as I expected, the most common answer was something like this "Save up a couple of pay checks and get some real full-grown speakers" The people answering were no spring chickens, so they knew that a hi-fi set is made up of almost equally important parts. Nothing becomes better than what is put into it, so in other words the signal source is extremely important. Yet virtually everyone gave the answer: "The Speakers!",  even if one wise-cracker answered "Change the pickup!" Sure, that is all well and good, but does it really mean that total "everybody can hear it immediately lift?" Probably not.

     Modern CD players, even cheap ones, are indecently good these days, the same goes for ordinary stereo amps in the mid-range price class. Speakers are however something apart. They probably contain more compromise than any other link in the chain. If they are to become really good and capable of covering the widest possible range of frequencies they naturally become large and heavy as well as expensive.

     But on the other hand, if you are willing to sacrifice a few month's paychecks you can get a whole lot of good sound for your money. This we have certainly become aware of. All the speakers in this test fit in the category sufficiently good.

Below 30 Hertz
     And this we would say already now. Once having reached the price range, which is being dealt with in this test, even the most prudish audiophile snob may start to loosen up. Because the leap from let us say SEK 80.000 speakers to our SEK 25.000 alternatives is actually painfully little. The leap from a SEK 10.000 floor model to our models is much higher!

     We have chosen four full-grown and bass capable speakers - they go down below 30 Hertz - that do the job of filling the room in very different ways.

     Only one of them could be said to be of a more conventional kind, the Danish Audiovector. KEF on the other hand is approaching the ideal single position sound source. NHT wants to create a direct radiation speaker, which should be affected as little as possible by the room, while the circle radiating Von Schweikert does the exact opposite and lets the room play along.

The VR-3 has a fast and fine resonance with just a few minor irregularities. One also gets a feeling of a powerful bass capacity. The graphs inside the circle are due to the testing environment. Click on the picture to see it up close

Von Schweikert Research VR-3

     This is the little brother of the speaker which has made history as "The best we have ever heard", the large two-split Von Schweikert Research VR-4.

     Little brother is also called VR-3 and it is built on exactly the same principles. Simply put, the designer Albert Von Schweikert wants to create hi-fi speakers that will perform like a microphone in reverse, i.e. a full 360 degree diffusion from one single point. That is to say not a simple task, but to his aid he has had four elements (five in the case of the VR-4), a minimal baffle and a mid-range which covers the to the ear so important range of 175 Hz to 3.5 kHz. Just like the VR-4, the VR-3 has a large separate reflex cabinet for the bass, on which a smaller, sealed box for the mid-range is mounted, which in its turn carries two freely mounted treble elements. One forward, but also one backward pointing, in order to create a more linear frequency reflex spectrum, so that the timbre from the direct and the reflected sound correspond to one another. The backward pointing treble may be level adjusted, but may also be reduced to zero.

     The 10" bass is placed at the very bottom of the front of a dead and very heavy bass cabinet, with triple walls and filled with the company's own "Gradient Density Dacron."

     Apart from the diffusion, the designer has another obsession. In order for a speaker to reproduce the finest nuances of sound, it should be as heavy and stable as possible. VR-3 is as a matter of fact the heaviest speaker of the test, but it may also be sand filled up to a weight of over 50-kg.

Sound
     So far so good about the technology, but how does the VR-3 sound? Well, just like the NHT models, there is a striking, even astonishing, similarity of sound and perspective between the VR-3 and the almost twice as expensive VR-4. The VR-3 has a remarkable capacity to paint a surrounding and vibrating, translucent world of sound. The usually so difficult to grasp sense of presence of recordings, is at times reaching hair raising levels with the VR-3. Despite being principally a circle radiating speaker it never becomes woolly or diffuse, but it manages to give a very fine-tuned precision to the sound. The NHT 2.9 may well be perceived to be even clearer and more precise, but this more due to the fact that the VR-3 has a sort of easy flowing softness to it, compared to the more sharp-edged NHT. Right or wrong, it is two different ways of looking at things and we can live with both. Personally I have a strong weakness for this type of circle radiating and all surrounding sound, but in the case of the VR-3 there is not even a loss of a single ounce of stereo precision. Honor is due to the homogeneity and the transparent and clear stereo sound, but it will probably be the granite solid bass that will impress you the most when it comes to the VR-3. Despite its relatively modest size, the speakers easily go down to 20 Hz in the audio and that we had definitely not expected.

     So if you are looking for a real doomsday bass, then the VR-3 is a natural choice. Without having compared them side by side, the VR-3 seems capable of reaching a level of 80%, well almost 90%, of the sound quality of its expensive big brother VR-4. Who could have thought that?

Conclusions
     Strictly speaking, there are only winners this time, keeping in mind that each and every one is a definite step upwards as to sound quality, from, say SEK 10.000 to 15.000 range.

     We appreciate the KEF Reference 3 for its perfectly neutral attitude and its high sensitivity. The Audiovector M3si is appreciated for the genuinely musical and full timbre, in combination with a very fine transient handling.

     And finally the Von Schweikert VR-3, for its presence and almost uncannily realistic three-dimensionality. And, last but not least for its controlled deep bass capacity.

     The choice between the four above is more of a philosophical than a pure technical question. If I were forced to make a choice, I would probably go for the Von Schweikert...but it would be hard to let go of the NHT.

HiFi & Musik
Number 1
January 1998