Its been baking for a few days and I tried a piece. Tasty!

The best way to describe the changes may be to compare it to the prior towers. They were Mordaunt Short Mezzo 6s. I was expecting a massive change moving to the new super towers, but all the improvements, across the board, were incremental. I haven't had time to test with multichannel content, so impressions so far are 2.0 music in 2.0 listening. I am running them full range without subs for stereo use.

The most interesting change to note is how they interact with the room. LFR owners take note. The open back midranges resulted in changing the room treatments slightly. The SBIR traps located directly behing the old towers had to be removed. With them installed the midrange energy was decreased to a point where the upoer bass was perceived as heavy. Once removed the midrange balance improved considerably. I would suspect removing all surrounding absorbtion would further improve overall balance and spaciousness at the expense of clarity. Based on this experience I would suggest NOT treating immediate areas around LFR towers with absorption. It will cause a frequency imbalance not intended by the designer's DSP/crossover network.

The overall balance of the new towers is a 7db tilt up towards the bass region roughly hinged on 250hz. The measured -3db point in room was 18hz without sub assist. These are true full range'rs. Above 250hz the response is very flat with a couple db reduction per octave above 4khz until almost 20khz. This is a marked difference from the old towers. They did not exhibit much bass energy below 40hz and rolled off sharply after 12khz. The new towers exhibit more "air" and extended decay or sustain of cymbals, strings etc. They also handle low frequencies without the aid of a subwoofer and sound extremely tight and natural when doing so -similar to applying Socketman's dsp antimode 8033 in my experience. Bass is enveloping yet does not bloom. This is an improvement for music when compared to the old towers/sub combo. There is also a stronger definition of tones within the overall bass note. Further textured bass.

I was expecting the new towers to be a "thor's hammer" experience when it comes to their presentation. Not so. They are incredibly tight and precise sounding over most of their range without being overbearing. The exception is on recordings with sustained droning bass. Peter Gabriel's "blood of eden" begins with an enveloping, but heavy and sustained bassline. It was this track that highlighted the need to remove the SBIR traps to improve the balance of midrange to upper bass energy. You have to be careful about these towers' surroundings. They dont need help to make bass. M100 owners can probably relate.

The new towers have no volume limit, at least with my amplifier. It can now play painfully loud without sounding strained. The old towers would start to exhibit a tonal shift and the soundstage would collapse when pushed really hard. These dont. I have to be mindful of this as I increase the volume to feel a bassline -which is now possible at upper bass frequencies. Fun.

The overall soundstage/spacial impression of these towers is comparable the the towers I moved from. The difference with the larger towers is images are larger, broader and have more perceived physical presence. They are slighly more tangible but never a "sound ball". The nearby QRD diffuser prevents that sort of presentation anyway.

More thoughts once I get into multichannel content. So far so good. The old towers aren't going back in. wink

SUCCESS!