Well, they arrived about an hour after I left on Friday afternoon to visit my folks in the lakes, so they were sat in my neighbours garage for most of the weekend. So, is th wait worth it, well first thoughts were how the hell do these things work on an uneven floor, as far as I could tell without really looking or reading the manual I can't see that they are adjustable. I guess I am going to need to get a couple of large granite slabs, especially as the new house has carpets. They are also noticeably bigger than the Spendors, but similar weight. Nicely built, though not quite as hewn from a solid billet feeling that the spens have, but no complaints, as spendor speakers are probably exceptionally well made.
I started off listening to a playlist that I created when I demoed the amps a couple of weeks ago, billy burnette and fleetwood mac at 24/96, bit of Keb Mo, Madelien Peyroux and ACDC. Bearing in mind that the whole lot was powered down over the weekend, so the system was cold. My first impressions were a brighter sound, a sharper, livelier top end so cymbals had a biger crash and sounded more metallic; but not at the expense of smoothness, just more lifelike. As the system started to warm up, the sound became smoother, more punchy and detailed. The biggest are of improvement over the spendors is the upper bass / mid, there is a lot more punch which adds a lot more drive and impact. I think for me this is where the spens are weakest, not in the upper mid / treble; it's this upper bass / lower mid that influences the "polite" sound that dscribes spendors.
So 90 minutes in, and I am redicovering new facets, new nuances to all the tracks I am listening to. Separation of intruments is much better, and it's sooo much easier to follow a bass guitar line; on many tracks I would have in the past found it impossible to work out the bass lines to play along, but the D18s make it so much easier. I can see that some might find them slightly bass light, but I'd prefer real notes over chest thumping impact. So initial feelings are pleased that the differences are real and significant.
Definitely worth the upgrade, expecially at the price I paid for them. They actually look quite good in black ash too, better than I'd have thought, and thankfully the description from the shop was spot on, not a mark on them. If there is more to come from them from more running in, then the Caspian / D18 is going to be a pretty formidable combination; hopefully I won't need to change the analogue end of my system for a long long time. :dance:
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