Vandersteen 5a vs. B&W 802D vs. Maggie 3.6 vs.?

I dumped my 802D's and got the 5A's. The Vandys are much more musical, have greater air, depth, clarity, etc.etc. There is no comparison. The 802's were stodgy in comparison. You should have all the ancillaries in place, or any speaker will not work well.

Well, after reading everyones input........and thank you one and all..........I've decided to make the necessary trips required to listen to my choices. I am also adding the new Harbeth 40.1's to my list. The overwhelming feedback has been for the Vandersteen line. I actually had a knowledegable dealer recommend I stay with what I have and make some adjustments and xover changes. His advice has helped my system. I have spoken with a couple of dealers that sell all of my choices except Harbeth. Two dealers sell them but did not mention them in our conversations. The positive press and some feedback on this site has opened the window to me listening to the new Harbeth 40.1. I am a little tentatibe here as my speakers just prior to the Vandersteen 3A's were Spendor SP100's. Very pleasant but also very bland in my opinion.

To hear all I need to travel to Indy and Chicago. The good news is I can tie in my listening in Chicago with the Chicago auto show! Not a bad way to go!

I remain a bit perplexed in that I think that the Vandersteen 5A's will provide what I am looking for but I have a strong distaste for having to rely on a dealer for set up. I have always set up all of my own systems and don't like having to rely on any dealer for this. I think Vandersteen is missing the full market by not allowing owners to have his set up discs and instructions. I understand he like to protect his dealers and I appreciate that but his end consumers should be the highest concern. Just my opinion and I would probably feel different if I had a local dealer.

I'd love to hear more from others about the Harbeth 40.1's and how they compare to my other choices as well as the Spendor SP100's.

Again, thanks to all!

I can't say enough good things about the Harbeth's. I owned a pair of Compact 7's for a long while and loved every minute with them. I also owned a pair of Spendor S-100's a while back--also a very musical sounding speaker. While I've only heard the Monitor 40 briefly (not the new 40.1) it struck me as more transparent and revealing than my old Spendors with much greater inner detail and better imaging. There are many similarities as well--the boxes are about the same size, as is the driver configuration. Both have the same BBC house sound with the slightly recessed midrange and lightly rolled off treble (though the Harbeth not so much). I'm a big fan of the M40 though with the current exchange rate and innovative design features I think the Vandy 5A would be my choice in a head to head. (Again, I haven't heard the new 40.1) I just think you get more speaker for your money with the Vandy--one that can adapt to any room and one which pushes the limits of what a dynamic speaker can do. I think it would be interesting to compare the two and would encourage you to do so. I would, however, again suggest you check out the Daedalus Audio Reference series Ulysses or new DA1.1. Either will rival the Harbeth and certainly give the Vandy a run--for less than half the money.

Hey Timball, if you want to sell your 3a sigs, I may be interested. How old?, what town/state?
[email protected]

I have reset up my 5As a couple times with a Stereophile test disk (1/3 octive bands) and a Radio Shack meter. A little time consuming but its not that hard. Trick is to run through the adjustments a couple times to smooth out the overlaping interaction of the eq bands.

The dealer who had to travel a ways to deliver and then again to adjust the bass eq brought a disk with tones and used the same meter. I was a little underwhelmed and my subsequent adjustments sound a tad better to my ear.

I think it could be done better. Have not doug too deep but I think there is free or cheap software that one could use to create a test disk with test tones centered on the 5A eq bands. And there are better sound meters that one may be able to buy, borrow or rent. I have read claims that Vandersteen provides/uses such a custom disk while others say thats not true. One can call Vandersteen.

Each time I make adjustments (done it 3 or 4 times) I feel that I can tweek a slight improvement based on measurements and what I have been hearing.

Even if I am only 80% of the way to being fully optimized using the eq, my system is much better through out the bass than my previous Dunlavy SC4A/REL Stentor III combo.

If you tackle the eq process with a RS meter be shure to go to the AVS subwoffer forum and find out about the bass frequency adjustment tables for that meter. It under reads the level at very low frequencies, e.g. if you get a 0 db reading at 20 HZ you need to add a several dbs to that reading to estimate the real level. How many db depends on which version of the meter you have.

Terry