Any experience with Verity Parsifal monitor ONLY?

For what it's worth, the monitors are 100% upgradable to Ovation status, no matter the generation (although it may not be cheap...). The bass units, however, are NOT upgradable, because the volume of the enclosure changed from Encore to Ovation. Again, FWIW.

Strange that Julian is less interested in promoting the monitors these days. One possible explanation I can think of, however, is that between the Encore and the Ovation the packaging changed. As you may know, each set comes with those swell, metal flight cases that are essentially bomb-proof. Really nice to have. For the Encores (and before), the Monitors traveled together in one case, and the bass modules together in another case. (Pragmatically, this made for one manageable case, and one huge one that you really can’t handle alone. I’ve tried.) But for the Ovations, each stack now gets its own case. So, one monitor and one bass module per case. Whether this reflects a decision to focus on marketing the complete system or a simply an attempt to make two equally-sized and easier to manage cases – the fact remains that they now appear to be geared to making/shipping/selling the full set. Yes, pure guesswork....

@ Rx8man: I saw that one. I am not too familiar with all the details of this model so I may be wrong but I think this is NOT Ovation although it says it is.
If you look at the rear tag carefully, it does not say Ovation anywhere, not even Encore. To me this pair is the first Parsifal. I say this because I saw a photo of Ovation here:

http://www.robertoshop.hr/uplfiles/parsifal.jpg

Please someone correct me if I am wrong.

Here's a pair for sale.

Am I wrong when I say Verity Audio does not get raved enough in general?

@Bjesien Any luck trying them with the REL?

I finally heard them last week. They are gorgeous to listen to.
Voice is really unbelievable. The sound stage is great and the speakers just disappear.

I am not completely convinced that they are worth $10000. Though I have not heard too many 10K speakers to compare.

Very informative answers. Thanks guy!

I had been emailing Julien and he had been very responsive and informative until I asked him if they sell Parsifals as a monitor only. I don't know if he saw my email or not or do not want to promote the sale of monitors only. Weird.

Bjesien: I cannot wait for you to try. Especially since you have REL, my fav sub for music. Looking forward to hear your experience.

I have the latest Parsifal Encore with bass modules and a Rel Stadium III sub. I will play with the monitors and sub only and will get back to you. The Parsifal is a great bargain in audio. Most Verity product are.

I've had my P/E for almost 15 years and IMO they're actually pretty good as stand-alone monitors. I wouldn't call this the most neutral design ever, but most music sounds very, very good (to my ear) via the Verity P/E. The monitors, as stand alone speakers, have a satisfying octave to octave balance for most music (including IMHO most rock n roll), but the bottom 1 1/2 octaves are MIA.

The bass modules extend the bottom end seamlessly, but add a hump around the top of the lowest octave and (according to my ear and RTA) little real power much below 40ish hz. When mated to subs (I've tried Velodyne SPLs and Rythmiks) the bottom end sounds quite different than using the monitors with Verity's own bass modules. Given any particular sub vs the Verity bass modules, "better or worse" will be probably be all in the ear of the listener.

Some may prefer the subs (and my guess is that good subs will measure better), but I prefer the all Verity combo. As noted above, YMMV.

I have owned both versions of the Parsifal and have listen to just the monitors with each of them. They sound very detailed, have a very wide and deep sound stage thou deeper with the bass section. They also seem disappear as the music comes from all sides of the speaker. They also sound awesome when being used for near field listening. They have been sold as monitors for as long as I can remember. A friend purchased the monitors years ago first then later the bass section when cash flow got better. They do take time to break in, IMO around 500 hours.

Would love to hear more about this too.

Am also considering getting the Parsifal Monitors.

Not 100% sure they're currently selling them separately, but I'd be surprised if they aren't. If you pull the literature on the parsifal, you'll see it's always speced out for both the monitor and the full system, separately. And if you're patient, they come up here (and elsewhere) used as monitors from time to time. Think the retail is in the ballpark of 10k. I've got a "matching set" (for lack of a better word). I've often toyed with the idea of trying out the monitors by themselves, just to see/hear, but have actually never bothered to undertake the ordeal of moving the speaker cables an entire foot and a half. It being approximately as hard as tying a shoe is apparently too much for me.

I reckon you should contact the mfgr., they'll give the most up to date info...

-RW-