Audition Spendor D7 and A7 in/near Texas (Houston)

Not a single Spendor owner in Texas can shed some light?

I can’t help you with audition ideas in TX, but I can give you my impressions after spending an hour listening to A7 and several hours listening to D7, which I eventually purchased that exact demo pair.

I went in with 5k budget. A7 was good. I liked it better than $5k speakers from Bowers/Wilkins, Focal, Paradigm, Goldenear, ML, Rega, Maggie, Dynaudio, and others I had listened to. Electronics I believe were Ayre integrated and a CD player that I forget, perhaps Rega.

Then I heard the D7 in same setup and it was immensely better in every possible way. I knew instantly my budget could not remain 5k after hearing the D7. I waited 6 months, saved up, and along the way auditioned everything I could under 7.5k and even some up to 10k (804d3), but I kept coming back to d7. I own that demo pair now and every day I listen to them I think, damn these things are sooo good.

To be honest, at 5k the A7s would not have been a runaway winner for me. Focal and Dynaudio were right there and I can’t say for sure which I’d have gone with. I didn’t need to make that decision because the instant I heard D7 in side by side I knew I could no longer restrict myself to that budget.
At the 6.5k level the D7’s were runaway winners for me. Dynaudio and Vandersteen were runners up for me. And as I say I dared listen to things up to 10k (BW, Paradigm, others) but D7 was the bomb.
As to what differentiates it for me, I feel it was the proprietary LPZ tweeter. Make sure what you hear is broken in because new they can sound a bit hot but once broken in oh my gosh it brings the laidback reputation of Spendor and kicks it into the ditch and for me it is the magical perfect balance of amazing mids, excellent base, and airy sparkling highs.

Yeah I love D7 : )

To give a sense of my preferences (though you can probably figure it out from list above), I prefer a neutral speaker, and if I have to slide toward warm or bright I’ll slide toward warm.

By comparison, Paradigm and Bowers/Wilkins (to list just two examples) sound more forward than Spendor D7, and Vandersteen (to list just one example) sounds more laid back. I suppose the A7 sounds just a touch more laid back than D7 as well.

Goes without saying these are just my impressions.  Some others would no doubt disagree.

@kren0006 Thanks very much for your detailed thoughts, it's helpful to hear from someone with first hand experience. What amplifier did you use when comparing the two? In your 6 months quest to hear everything you can, did you hear Proac or Tektons? If so, I'm really interested in how you thought they compared.

I'm also surprised that Dynaudio was so close in the comparison, I have had the Focus 380s before and they sounded box in and constrained, maybe it was just that one model. Which model impressed you on the Dynaudio side?