Vandersteen VLR Speaker Review

[Toni Mas]

Someone said on-axis errors are not important if off-axis is good. This simply is not the case. Due to precedence effect, we absolutely care more about on-axis response. Off-axis is supporting role, not primary. Maybe there are exception to this but it is rare.

But why do you insist in choosing on axis as your listening axis while your equipment can tell you which is the best reference axis for a given speaker?
Is there something ideological or religious in this?

 

[Tom C]

Yes heard this, been there, but still have not found anything sacred in any audio guru's (Toole, Geddes, etc...) bibles...

The most irritating statement is flatness on axis... What axis? Why such an obsession with one axis and make It your politically correct listing axis?

Average response is what matters, and what makes Klippels stuff useful... On axis in itself is widely overated and pretty useless

Some speakers lack flatness no matter which axis you choose. Others offer relatively flatter response. I would choose the axis with the flattest frequency response.

 

[Katji]

For anyone interested, it’s about a certain Vandersteen’s third leg (derde been).

uhh...you can probably see why Afrikaners call British-derived S.Africans soutie, short for soutpiel. Meaning we had/have one foot in S.Africa and the other foot in Britain.

 

[Toni Mas]

Some speakers lack flatness no matter which axis you choose. Others offer relatively flatter response. I would choose the axis with the flattest frequency response.

Sure... Some speaker are awfull on any axis, averaged, first reflections, PIR... They simply suck even if on axis acceptable...
Others strange animals look weird on axis, but not so bad overall, and hence quite worth listening

 

[Thomas_A]

Yes, some of these old school speaker companies could upgrade their designs by using REW and a Umik-1. The upgrade could be considerable. Not to mention if they then did outdoor ground plane measuring to get closer to accurate results.

Have you yet measured any speakers with 1st order crossovers that do well at all? I cannot think of any.

The Ino Audio pi60s preserves the waveform and does well but will most likely not be available for ASR to measure.

Stereo systems_2

 

[Toroid]

They didn't sound good because you didn't use Audio Quest cables. If you did it would have created a magical synergy. Very musical.

 

[sarumbear]

The KEF Q350s make use of a a first order crossover.

Maybe that’s why @amirm haven’t recommended it even though it measured better than most of his other recommendations.

 

[Weeb Labs]

Maybe that’s why @amirm haven’t recommended it even though it measured better than most of his other recommendations.

That wasn't really Blumlein's question but Amir simply didn't like the point source characteristic, which I am inclined to attribute to visual bias. The speaker is quite well behaved, with no real problems (directivity or otherwise) around the crossover.

 

[Spkrdctr]

I don't have any particular love for Vandersteen speakers, and those measurements sure look wonky. But perhaps we should be careful about judging their engineering skills based mostly on this product review.

This doesn't look so bad, as far as I can tell:

Vandersteen Quatro Wood CT loudspeaker & M5-HPA monoblock power amplifier Loudspeaker Measurements

Sidebar 3: Loudspeaker Measurements I used DRA Labs' MLSSA system and a calibrated DPA 4006 microphone to measure the Vandersteen Quatro Wood CT's frequency response in the farfield and an Earthworks QTC-40 mike for the nearfield responses. I left the loudspeaker's grille in place for the...

www.stereophile.com

I have seen other more expensive and bigger Vandersteens measure horribly. As far as I'm concerned all they produce is JUNK! These should get the JUNK rating from the Panther. When will people realize that these old school, high end audiophile speaker makers (not all) make junk based on 20 year old ideas and basically NO TESTING!!! My gosh Vandersteen stuff is garbage. I have yet to see anything from them that will measure better than a Polk ES20! Snake Oil Alert!! Run for your life!

Oh and yes, Amir is being VERY polite in his review of this speaker and the "Vandersteen" lack of modern engineering philosophy. That is why I'm stating it raw and unfiltered. Amir is sometimes far too kind to these old scam artists. But that is why everyone likes him. Me on the other hand, I get tomatoes thrown at me!

 

[orangejello]

I have had Vendersteen 1B speakers since the 1980s. I have never really liked them. I much prefer my DIY SEAS two-way monitors.

I remember auditioning the 1B and the 2Ce because Stereophile and TAS pumped the hell out of them back in the day. I remember thinking something like “who turned out the lights” when I listened to them. They sounded muffled and dead. They smeared details like nobody’s business, even with plenty of power. In addition, they had very poor imaging characteristic. I was always aware of the sound emanating from two sources. The sound never floated free of the speakers. But to give credit where credit is due, they forever made me distrust subjective audio reviews. So there is that.

 

[sarumbear]

That wasn't really Blumlein's question but Amir simply didn't like the point source characteristic, which I am inclined to attribute to visual bias. The speaker is quite well behaved, with no real problems (directivity or otherwise) around the crossover.

+/- 55 degrees is a point source?

 

[thewas]

The KEF Q350s make use of a a first order crossover.

Just the electric order of the crossover doesn't tell anything about the directivity behaviour, the total acoustic (= electric crossover + mechanical driver) slope is what counts.

Also by making the slopes less steep you can usually get better horizontal directivity blending at the expense of worse vertical directivity (lobing) on conventional loudspeakers (and of course worse maximum SPL/distortion), on coaxials this problem of the vertical directivity doesn't exist, so it really needs large design errors to get it as wrong on a coaxial with shallow slopes.

 

[Weeb Labs]

+/- 55 degrees is a point source?

The beam width has no bearing upon whether it is considered a point source (coaxial) design.

 

[Holmz]

The impedance sweep suggests there is a series capacitor (high value) in series with the woofer, probably deliberately to prevent LF getting to the driver.

It was probably a good idea if the testing actually extended down to 2Hz.

 

[Holmz]

Just the electric order of the crossover doesn't tell anything about the directivity behaviour, the total acoustic (= electric crossover + mechanical driver) slope is what counts.

Also by making the slopes less steep you can usually get better horizontal directivity blending at the expense of worse vertical directivity (lobing) on conventional loudspeakers (and of course worse maximum SPL/distortion), on coaxials this problem of the vertical directivity doesn't exist, so it really needs large design errors to get it as wrong on a coaxial with shallow slopes.

Do coaxial designs generally have a lot of that lobing happening?

 

[sarumbear]

The beam width has no bearing upon whether it is considered a point source (coaxial) design.

Every speaker is a point source in a certain frequency band. Do you mean someone may prefer if the sound source moves a few centimetres up and down when the frequency band changes but not prefer when it doesn't?

 

[thewas]

Do coaxial designs generally have a lot of that lobing happening?

No, the lobes happen due to path length differences or conventional multi drivers where at multiples of the half wavelength (1/2, 3/2, 5/2, etc) there are cancellations.

Source of the image: https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/an-exploration-in-eliminating-driver-lobing.189549/

 

[Holmz]

Every speaker is a point source in a certain frequency band. Do you mean someone may prefer if the sound source moves a few centimetres up and down when the frequency band changes but not prefer when it doesn't?

Maybe let’s just stick to the cross over freq.
Then there are two point source, which doesn’t make it more of a point source… it makes it less of one.

A panel speaker could appear as a point source, out at infinity. And a curved one might be focused a bit closer.

 

[Blumlein 88]

The Ino Audio pi60s preserves the waveform and does well but will most likely not be available for ASR to measure.

Stereo systems_2

That step in front of the tweeter bothers me. I'd like to know the smoothing in the graph of response. Most 1st order speakers can do pretty good impulse, step and even square waves at some point in front of the speaker. The problem is you are guaranteed severe lobing off axis. Plus you don't get that great impulse response all over just in one area. I also don't know that such an impulse is important so that by itself isn't a negative. The off axis lobing is.

I've listened many hours to Vandy's and Thiels, and their good designs can be quite good. Both shared the characteristic of being very picky about setup. Probably due to the off axis lobing. Here is the horizontal Stereophile measure of the Vandersteen 2Ce. We now know such off axis uneven response is a problem. On axis this one does a great step, impulse and passable square wave.

Here is the vertical response.

Here is the 2Ci impulse and square wave.

For comparison horizontal and vertical response of the F208 Revel.

The F208 is much easier to get sounding good and sounds better than any of the Vandys or Thiels I've heard. They use 24/db/octave or 4th order crossovers.

 

[CDMC]

Owned several pairs of Vandersteens, 2c, 1c, 3a Sig. They were really great in the 80s- 90s and a fair value (1c were about $900 a pair). Not perfect, but overall good compromises. The biggest issue I found was the head in a vice sweet spot. Careful setup with tilt and toe and they were fabulous, outside that window, dead sounding. Somewhere in the early 2000s, Richard seems to abandon value and design quality and moved in the more expensive market. Every time he came out with a more expensive speaker, they sold like hotcakes. Now he sells really expensive amps that are “matched” to his speakers.