Time for initial impressions after 15 minutes of listening without any calibration or tweaking of any kind. This is a temporary set up in my average-sized living room. Eventually this entire system will be moved to the man-cave

I am astounded with the walnut natural satin (low gloss). The finish is absolutely stunning. I can really appreciate this finish after being around so many vinyl-clad speakers all my life. I can't wait for my peeps to see them in person. One of my peeps is getting the M5 in the same finish and I know she'll be overcome with emotion when she sees them.

The DSPs and 1000-8 were easy to set up. I made the RCA and speaker connections one channel at a time and documented my amp wiring and set it on the 1000 for future reference. As I connected each channel, I listened to it. It was a strange experience listening to each driver array by its lonesome.

I am using my Pioneer A9 to drive the woofers. The A9 is good for 70W average into 4 Ohms. My Chromecast Audio is connected up directly to the DSPs. While this provides high enough volume for most tunes, there are songs with high dynamic range that could benefit from more gain. For this reason, I will likely connect the Chromecast to the Pioneer and the Pioneer to the DSP. I will use another ADA to drive the woofers.

As soon as I listened to the active LFR bass, I realized what every other speaker I've ever listened to has been missing. The transient response is a thing to behold. It's like my Pioneer has this incredible grip on the woofers and will not let them misbehave. With bass like that, subs are definitely not needed for music unless you're into pipe organ.

The mids and highs are ridiculously clear and dynamic. I expected them to be far more dispersive with a wider soundstage than the M5 and M100 but have not found that to be so.

Along those lines, I expected the depth and width of the soundstage to be much larger than the M5 and M100 but it's not. The width is the same and there isn't as much depth. I tried all the positions on the BGC control but I hear nothing but more or less volume - no difference in soundstage. Toe in of varying amounts also doesn't help. As you can see by the photos I posted, my room is nowhere near damped. While this is disappointing, I realize this journey has barely started.

My system is plagued by noise which is very audible on quiet passages from my 10 foot MLP. I noticed this as soon as I connected the mids and tweeters. My interconnects are bottom of the barrel quality so I do suspect those. I have a couple of higher quality pairs so I expect to get to the bottom of this quite quickly.

Summing up my initial thoughts, impeccable appearance, incredible clarity and dynamics, the jury is still out on the LFR aspect which is supposed to result in deep and wide soundstage.

House of the Rising Sone
Out in the mid or far field
Dedicated mid-woofers are over-rated