Re: White Van Speaker Scams
I recently purchased a pair of the Blue Ridge Sound Eng. HR-1 speakers and I can assure you these are not "white van" speakers. I have a lot of experience with scam speakers having sold AV for 7 years (4 at Hi-Fi Buys in Atlanta and 3 at Pyramid Audio in Anchorage). Occasionally, I would have customers come in and tell me about their "great" speakers and, like many of you, when I heard the names I new where they bought them. But what really killed me was all the times I heard "Isn't Bose the best speaker?" As a matter of fact, as I was looking for a good pair of monitors recently for a second stereo-only system I stopped by the closest Tweeter (Winston Salem, NC) and asked what their best monitors were. After explaining to him that I was looking for speakers not flat-screens the salesman promptly said that their best small speaker was Bose. I immediately headed for the door. In the past, I have sold and been impressed by Monitor Audio, Celestion, Sonus Faber, Definitive Technology (Definitely Technology is a great name for a scam speaker!!), Mirage/Energy, Snell, Paradigm, and I owned a set of Magnepans for a year. I watched and bid on several older Celestions (SL600, SL700), Monitor Audio(Studio 10) but these, and of course the Sonus Fabers, were out of my budget range. As far as new speakers, I was looking at ONIX X-LS, EPOS ELS-3, or the PSB Alpha B-1. Basically, I wanted champagne on a beer budget. The most important thing for me was depth and soundstaging- I wanted the speakers to disappear. Since this was a second system with a Nakamichi receiver I didn't want to spend much money. After reading reviews and bidding on speakers out of my range (the Celestion SL700si went for around $1200) I came across the BRSE speaker. The first pair I bid on went to a higher bidder for around $650. The second set I won for $499. I was a little worried after reading this string but I hadn't heard anything negative from anyone that actually owned a pair. After I received them and opened the double boxes I placed them on my trusty 30" Monitor Audio stands (which are about 6" too high for these speakers). The speakers are very solidly built and passed the tried and true knuckle rap test. I haven't taken any drivers out to look inside yet but they appear to be made of standard 3/4 to 1 inch MDF with real wood veneer overlay. They are bi-wirable (which I use). How many "white van" speakers do you know of that use 5-way biwire posts? The drivers are recessed in the cabinet so they are flush with the baffle (again more expensive than scam speakers would use). Since they are not fully broken in yet and I haven't filled the stands with lead I don't want to go into a formal review yet (later on Audiogon and AudioReview) but I did do a few comparisons with my HT system speakers (Monitor Audio S8) on my B&K AVR307. At first, I thought the bass sounded weak. The S8 speakers go as low as 33hz so that was part of it. After a couple of days of burn-in I got my trusty Radio Shack analyzer out and used the on-board B&K tone generator and sure enough, the HR-1 goes at least as low as 42hz! The claimed freq response does seem unbelievably flat, but I can't verify that because all I have is normal living rooms. After several tracks of AB comparison (Steely Dan, MFSL AJA; Eric Clapton, MTV Live; and Peter Gabriel, SO & US) I noticed that the BRSE speakers are more open sounding with a bigger soundstage than the Monitor Audios. The highs are very good with excellent vocals. And on music I couldn't tell much difference in low freq loss. Overall, I am impressed. I haven't hooked up my Nak 2-channel system yet since we are renovating the only available room is being renovated and I haven't bought a wall mount for my turntable yet. I haven't taken any pics yet but will post some when I do.
