Stereophile review of Escalante Fremont


Has anyone read Stereophile review (Feb '08) of Escalante Design Fremont spkrs ?
Reviewed by Larry Greenhill & measured by Jon Atkinson .

How come they make a review of the spkrs without proper setup :
- LG didn't attached the stand spikes because of his new wood floor & put some bad comments (nasal / coloured tonal).
- JA measured the spkrs with above condition .
- No information if the spkrs burned-in

In my experience , result could be very sensitive for full range spkrs setup ( freq. resp : 18 hz - 50 khz ) .

How can such a great magazine editor allow to publish review with above condition ?

Really different with Positive-Feedback (by Greg Weaver) & Stereo Times (by Dave Thomas & Greg Petan) reviews .
This three reviewers has bought Fremont after made the review .

Seems our international respectable Stereophile magazine has a lot of degradation in their quality .
Is there politics inside this magazine ?
What a waste review ... i think ...
riwin_h
Not the same designer as current Talon Reference series. He did work with Talon for the early speaker designs, all of which are no longer in production.
I heard the Fremonts at HE2007 in Sound by Singer's top system & thought they had a somewhat pale, old-fashioned reflex-sounding bass. However the large room full of people was not good conditions for a fair audition.

In the Feb issue of Stereophile it was refreshing for once to see reviewers omit the usual superlatives & take several extremely high-priced products to task for small imperfections.
What make me dissapointed is why a big magazine not to have proper setup before published a review .
The review become not so accurate .
A good or bad comments should be acceptable if they did proper setup as factory's recommends already .

IMHO , I don't detect any nasal problem with proper setup on Fremont. I used Audiopoints between stands and spkrs .
Few milimeter positioning could be a big difference (could be soundstage collapse or big hole on center ) .
The most interesting for me is its PRAT , musicality and organic tonal feel .
Few weeks ago two of audiophiles friends who is a bassist & a drummer give comments if really has live feeling & has life alike tonal character .
Not hifi-ish terms , just pure music .

Undertow :
Could you let me know what spkrs that you are using ?
It could be very interesting for me as well for future upgrade .