Vandersteen 1 in the nearfield, for rock music?

5' isn't much. Your room might be small for the Vandersteens.

Bond,

You mentioned the DCM Timeframe series, are the vandersteens similiar to these speakers? I bought a pair of the Timefrom tf400 from a local swapmeet for 30 bucks and thought they were awesome, especially for rock music.

Please forgive me if I'm jumping ahead of Bond here. The DCM's had similar goals as the Vandersteen's, but Vandersteen comes much closer to hitting the bullseye.

Dave - DCM is not, AFAIK, the same company that made your swapmeet speakers. The current DCM builds more conventional tower speakers. Although they claim that the x-over makes them phase correct, I would not say they immitate Vandersteen's designs. I only mentioned them because of how impressed I was by the DCM TFE200s at the HE2007 show in NYC. They are priced right at the same price as the 1Cs (you NEED the bases for the 1Cs), and to my ears, sounded really smooth. I did not, however, directly compare them to the Vandys. I think I generally prefer larger, soft dome tweeters to metal domes like the ones Vandersteen uses. Personal preference, YMMV.

  I just bought an 8/10 of Vandersteen 1c locally with the original boxes and sound anchor stands for $125.00!  My musical taste has matured somewhat since I'm 34 now, but still listen to rock on a regular basis so I'll see how these speakers do for that type of music. I rarely listen to Iron Maiden and Metallica like I did when I originally posted this.