Speaker Asylum: REVIEW: VonSchweikert Audio VR-4 Gen III Hovland Special Edition Speakers by David Spear

Model:	VR-4 Gen III Hovland Special Edition
Category:	Speakers
Suggested Retail Price:	$6000
Description:	Two-piece full-range speaker
Manufacturer URL:	VonSchweikert Audio
Model Picture:	View

Review by David Spear ( A ) on August 11, 2004 at 04:20:39
IP Address: 220.215.83.91

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INTRODUCTION
Although I have been a fan of panel and line-source speakers for many years (various Magneplanars, Eminent Technology LFT-VIIIAs, and most recently, Soundline SL-2s), I have always been curious to hear a pair of Albert Von Schweikert's VR-4 series speakers. When one of the ribbons in my SL-2s started making strange buzzing noises a few months ago, I immediately contacted the folks at Soundline, but their warranty service has turned out to be less than stellar. (Admittedly, the fact that I live outside the US is a major complication.) Rather than continue with this frustrating process, I decided to order a pair of Von Schweikert Audio VR-4 Generation III Hovland Special Edition speakers direct from VSA in California.
SHIPPING AND PACKAGING
The folks at VSA were very friendly and helpful and were happy to ship me a pair of speakers by BAX Global, with whom I have had good experience in the past. Five days after my speakers were sent from VSA, two burly BAX guys showed up at my house in rural Japan and carried three big, heavy boxes into my listening room. Unpacking the boxes was just barely a one-man job. I thought that the packaging was quite good, with each of the bass units packed in a separate box and the two head units in the third. Everything was snugly braced in foam and thick corrugated cardboard, with thick plywood end-pieces placed at the ends of the cardboard boxes for additional protection. The speakers arrived in perfect condition, and all the little bits and pieces were provided.
ASSEMBLY AND SET-UP
After unpacking and assembly, which consisted of simply placing the tweeter/midrange modules into the "trays" on top of the bass modules, I thought that the speakers looked really nice. The African hazelwood top-caps, bases, and trim pieces are very attractive and beautifully finished. My speakers came with a black cloth wrap covering all sides, including the back.
The manual provides pretty detailed set-up instructions. I ended up placing the speakers about 5 feet out from the front wall and 2 feet from the side walls in my listening room (12 x 17 x cathedral ceiling), with no toe-in. This was a bit wider apart than my usual speaker positioning, which was pretty much in line with the Cardas method.
Hook-up was a snap using the high-quality gold-plated Cardas binding posts. I should mention that these speakers are expressly designed for biwiring. There is a pair of binding posts on the back of each tweeter/midrange module and another pair near the bottom of each woofer module. The separation is about 30 inches or so, and no jumpers are provided.
The speakers come with spikes, which I haven't installed yet. At the moment, they are sitting on thin, hard-rubber "slider" feet intended for use under heavy furniture. The assembled speakers weigh 135 pounds each.
DESIGN
As mentioned above, these are two-piece modular speakers. The woofer modules are 11" wide by 20" deep by 32" tall. Each contains two 9" carbon fiber woofers and a 7" front port, with transmission line loading. The tweeter/midrange modules are flat on the inside and angled in on outside (11" wide at the bottom, 6" wide at the top, and 20" deep to match the woofer modules). They sit on top of the woofer modules in a wooden tray with clear plastic pads. Each contains a 6" Aerogel midrange driver and a Vifa/Scan-Speak dual-ring tweeter on the front and a naked 1" fabric dome ambience tweeter on the back. There is also a little knob above the binding posts for adjusting the level of the rear tweeter or turning it off entirely. I set it to halfway, which seemed to give the best overall presentation in my room. Crossover frequencies are 150 Hz and 2.6 kHz (acoustic 4th-order design).
SOUND
I broke in the speakers by playing a "surf sounds" CD on infinite repeat until I couldn't stand it any more, which was every day for about a week. During break-in, I noticed that the bass seemed to become a bit fuller and richer, although the bass extension and power were quite impressive right out of the box. (My REL Strata III has been relegated to use as a small table.) The tweeters also seemed to smooth out a bit and the midrange to gain a touch more presence and palpability. I expect that full break-in will take 200 hours or more, so this post should be considered more a report of my initial impressions than a real review.
I guess the thing that I find most striking about the VR-4 Gen III HSEs is their ability to convey a feeling of total effortlessness from the deepest bass to the highest treble, their ability to play any kind of music (Bach organ works, heavy metal, electronica, etc.) as loud as you could possibly want without a hint of strain, hardness, or congestion. But this ballsy, up-front sound is somehow combined with wonderful transparency and delicacy, with acoustic guitars, quiet solo piano, and female jazz vocalists presented as true-to-life instruments and voices positioned within a precisely defined acoustic space. This combination of power and nuance is great for my favorite kinds of music (mainly progressive/experimental/RIO/avant-garde/unclassifiable) because it means that the speakers can easily handle the loud parts while also clearly delineating all of the subtle details and complex musical inter-relationships that I find so engaging in these musical genres. In addition, vocal intelligibility is truly outstanding. Good examples of this would be Planet Gong's "Angel's Egg" and Prince's "Lovesexy", in which all the subtle vocal interplay can be clearly heard deep within a dense, multilayered mix. Close-miked female vocals are also completely free of any harshness, spittiness, or excessive sibilance.
It's difficult to focus on the bass, midrange, or treble individually because these speakers have such a coherent, balanced, "all of a piece" character. The bass is very deep, powerful, and tight (rated 3 dB down at 16 Hz); the midrange is super-clean and transparent; and the treble is amazingly clear and extended (rated 3 dB down at 40 kHz). But the most impressive thing to me is the total continuity of the sound, with absolutely no feeling of changes in character, texture, or spatial presentation over the entire frequency range. In particular, the VR-4s are great at maintaining absolute tonal and positional consistency of subtle sounds such as backup vocalists, quiet tinkling bells, woodblocks, or those ribbed gourd thingies in the background as other parts of the musical performance ebb and flow in the foreground. The details never seem to be obscured, colored, or skewed by the other musical instruments, even when they are playing very loud.
In terms of imaging and soundstaging, I think that I may have been spoiled by years of living with dipole panels and line sources. Imaging is really quite good, with nice localization from side to side and front to back, but it's not as razor-sharp as what I enjoyed with my previous speakers, the Soundline SL-2 ribbon hybrids. The soundstage generally extends to a foot or so to the outside the speakers, but this is compensated for to some extent by the relatively wide spacing recommended by VSA. Also, the soundstage can move much farther out with some recordings. For example, some of the background voices on Isildurs Bane's "MIND Volume 1" appear to come from the next room over on the left, say 8 feet outside the left speaker. Soundstage depth is also a bit less than I am used to. With the various dipoles I've owned, the soundstage sometimes seemed to go back 20 to 30 feet beyond the front wall, but with the VR-4s, it's more like 10 to 15 feet. The sonic perspective is also a bit more forward and immediate, tending more toward "they are here" than "you are there". It's possible that I just haven't found the "magic placement" yet, so I'll probably futz around with speaker positioning some more over the next few months. Also, I guess it could be argued that panel speakers tend to present an artificially deep soundstage, so the VR-4s may actually be more true to the recording. I should also mention that the extended bass of these speakers does give a very realistic sense of the size of the acoustic space in which the music was performed.
Actually, one of my main worries in switching from 6-foot-tall dipoles to box speakers was that I would lose image height, but the VR-4s are excellent in this regard, with voices and instruments appearing to float in space well above the tops of the speakers. In addition, the VR-4s are able to disappear completely into the sound field, with no feeling that the music is coming from a pair of boxes.
SUMMARY
All in all, I am very happy with my decision to buy a pair of VR-4 Gen III HSEs. VSA seems to be a good company to deal with and the speakers sound great, look nice, and are obviously very solidly built and meticulously finished. I am extremely pleased (and, frankly, a bit surprised) that I was able to make the switch from dipole speakers to a conventional box design without feeling that I had a taken a step backward. The minor limitations that I have noted in imaging and soundstaging (be they real or imagined) are more than counterbalanced by a greater sense of immediacy and presence, with an airy and rather "ethereal" sound being replaced by a more substantial and "earthy" sound. As a non-audiophile friend said after listening to the VR-4s, "They sound 'richer' than your old speakers." Yeah, I guess that pretty much sums it up.
Some of the CDs used for evaluation (in no particular order):
Hooverphonic - A New Stereophonic Sound Spectacular
Prince - Lovesexy
Isildurs Bane - MIND Volume 1
Yes - Tales from Topographic Oceans (Japanese mini-LP)
Ana Caram - Bossa Nova (Chessky)
Junko Onishi - Live at the Village Vanguard
XII Alfonso - The Lost Frontier
Jacintha - Here's to Ben (XRCD2)
Bach - various organ pieces (Telarc)
Planet Gong - Angel's Egg (Japanese mini-LP)
Genesis - The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (remastered mini-LP)
Aaron Copland - Third Symphony, etc. (Reference Recordings)
Nucleus - Labyrinth
Ry Cooder - Chicken Skin Music
Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks - Where's the Money?
Massive Attack - 100th WIndow
Pineapple Thief - Variations on a Dream
Albert Collins - Cold Snap
Philip Hii - Bach: New Transcriptions for Guitar
Wappa Gappa - Gappa
BT - ESCM
Jan Hammer - The First Seven Days (remastered)
Led Zeppelin - IV (remastered mini-LP)
Michael Hedges - Aerial Boundaries
Frank Zappa - Hot Rats (Japanese mini-LP)
Aikawa Nanase - Red
After Crying - De Profundis
Magma - Attahk (Japanese mini-LP)
Ua - Sun
Trio Esperanza - Trio Esperanza Do Brasil

Product Weakness: Biwiring required, not quite as expansive-sounding as dipoles
Product Strengths: Excellent top-to-bottom coherence and power, extended bass and treble response, good build quality, kind of attractive in a no-nonsense sort of way, reasonable price

Associated Equipment for this Review:
Amplifier:	Accuphase P-550
Preamplifier (or None if Integrated):	Accuphase C-265
Sources (CDP/Turntable):	Accuphase DP-75V
Speakers:	VR-4 Gen III HSE
Cables/Interconnects:	Silver Audio Appassionata/Silver Symphony/Silver Stream/Power Burst
Music Used (Genre/Selections):	See review
Room Size (LxWxH):	17 x 12 x Cathedral
Room Comments/Treatments:	Large DIY bass traps in front corners, acoustic fiberglass panels on side walls, quilt on front wall
Time Period/Length of Audition:	2 weeks
Other (Power Conditioner etc.):	Accuphase DG-28 6th-octave digital equalizer, Accuphase P-1200 power conditioner
Type of Audition/Review:	Product Owner

Product Weakness:	Biwiring required, not quite as expansive-sounding as dipoles
Product Strengths:	Excellent top-to-bottom coherence and power, extended bass and treble response, good build quality, kind of attractive in a no-nonsense sort of way, reasonable price