Jeff Adams
Screenwriter
- Joined
- Dec 13, 1999
- Messages
- 1,549
Hello all. I know some of you have been anxious for me to give my impressions on what I thought on these speakers and the wait is over. I actually didn't have to wait long at all for my purchase to arrive. I ordered a set of towers from Eric on Monday morning and received them yesterday. I would have got them on Thursday however my city got hit with a major blizzard that day and UPS couldn't get them to me. That figures.
Anyway I got them late last night so didn't have a lot of chance to play with them too much.
I'll start out by saying, Eric has been a great guy to work with, very helpful and made my purchase a breeze. Great customer service, especially when ordering on line is huge for me and so far I have been very impressed in that area.
Packaging.
They came in the original Premier Acoustic packaging, no repackaging or anything like that. The boxes were perfect, other than them being a little dirty from shipping. They weren't smashed up or torn up.
The speakers were wrapped in plastic and there was styrofoam blocks in there to prevent the speakers from shifting around during shipping. Again, impressed with how they were packaged.
Appearance and build quality
I have had black speakers for over 10 years now. PSB Stratus Silver I's, piano black finish, PSB Image 6T's, black wood and my latest SVS SBS-01 black. I decided this time to go with the cherry finish and I can say that I am very glad that I did. They look very nice and adds a touch of warmth and class to my room. And the wood is real. What also add's a nice classy touch is the top of the cabinets are finished in a piano black lacquer finish. Very nice! This is a very good looking speaker. Each tower is pretty heavy too, they are built very solid. I gave both towers a thorough visual inspection, looking for any nicks,gouges, chips,scrapes, basically anything not pleasing to the eye. I found nothing,they were flawless.
The binding posts on the back are also solid. No spring loaded connections here. I have always gone with bare wire and I used some very thick and expensive monster cable speaker wire to hook them up, the wire went through the binding posts and I was able to secure them down without any problem.
Set up.
I moved my SVS SBS-01's to the rear for a complete 7.1 surround set up. I still have the center channel speaker from the SVS system in place and PSB image left and right surrounds. Talk about mixing and matching. However I feel the rears and surrounds are not as big of a deal to match as the front soundstage. All in due time will the entire setup be Premier acoustics.
I recalibrated my system and set my Marantz SR-9200 receiver to THX specs. This receiver is one sweet receiver and really the pride of my entire system, it sends out 140 wpc x 7. So all speakers are set to small and everything below 80hz goes to my AAD C-10 sub.
Listening test.
Okay, okay, so now to the part everyone wants to know about. How do these things sound? Simply put, amazing. Absolutely amazing.
I always start out my listening test with my receiver set to two channel, source direct mode. In this mode I get a pure audio signal with my subwoofer shut off. This gives me a good indication on how pure a speaker can sound by itself with no help. That was what I had my receiver set to most of the night. I played a couple of my favorite cd's and ones that I am very familiar with. Ben Harper, Both Sides of the Gun and Chris Botti Night Sessions.
Both cd's are very musical and give you a wide variety of instruments.
These towers gave me a huge soundstage with a great deal of imaging. I sit about 11ft back from the speakers. Ben Harpers vocals were right in the middle of the room, even when not sitting in the sweet spot, the imaging was still there. Chris Botti's trumpet was clean clear and crisp. The tweeter in this tower was smooth and detailed. It was not bright or fatiguing in anyway. Also the towers gave me a tight punchy mid bass that I have been looking for.
Mid bass was produced with some kick and sounded defined. Not boomy or distorted. I really didn't get a lot of time with them nor did I really push them hard at all. I think the highest I had my receiver turned up to was about -25. I want to give them a chance to break in before I really give them a workout and a full review. But from what I have heard and seen so far, these things are winners. And hopefully some of you will hear them for yourself. At the price these are going at, there isn't anything even close that can touch them. So far I am one very happy customer and look forward to adding the rest of the system to my home. I have listened to a variety of different speakers as of late and these so far have impressed me the most, especially when it comes down to price. I have listened to speakers costing four times this amount and the Premier Acoustics sounded just as good as those and in most cases a lot better.
I will give a more in depth review in a couple of weeks.
For reference this is what I have auditioned as of late,
Klipsch RF-82's
Era Design 4
SVS-SBS-01
Mirage Omnisat V2
Monitor Audio Silver RS 6
System Audio, forgive me, forget the model. $2000 set of towers though.
Infinity Beta 50's
Anyway I got them late last night so didn't have a lot of chance to play with them too much.
I'll start out by saying, Eric has been a great guy to work with, very helpful and made my purchase a breeze. Great customer service, especially when ordering on line is huge for me and so far I have been very impressed in that area.
Packaging.
They came in the original Premier Acoustic packaging, no repackaging or anything like that. The boxes were perfect, other than them being a little dirty from shipping. They weren't smashed up or torn up.
The speakers were wrapped in plastic and there was styrofoam blocks in there to prevent the speakers from shifting around during shipping. Again, impressed with how they were packaged.
Appearance and build quality
I have had black speakers for over 10 years now. PSB Stratus Silver I's, piano black finish, PSB Image 6T's, black wood and my latest SVS SBS-01 black. I decided this time to go with the cherry finish and I can say that I am very glad that I did. They look very nice and adds a touch of warmth and class to my room. And the wood is real. What also add's a nice classy touch is the top of the cabinets are finished in a piano black lacquer finish. Very nice! This is a very good looking speaker. Each tower is pretty heavy too, they are built very solid. I gave both towers a thorough visual inspection, looking for any nicks,gouges, chips,scrapes, basically anything not pleasing to the eye. I found nothing,they were flawless.
The binding posts on the back are also solid. No spring loaded connections here. I have always gone with bare wire and I used some very thick and expensive monster cable speaker wire to hook them up, the wire went through the binding posts and I was able to secure them down without any problem.
Set up.
I moved my SVS SBS-01's to the rear for a complete 7.1 surround set up. I still have the center channel speaker from the SVS system in place and PSB image left and right surrounds. Talk about mixing and matching. However I feel the rears and surrounds are not as big of a deal to match as the front soundstage. All in due time will the entire setup be Premier acoustics.
I recalibrated my system and set my Marantz SR-9200 receiver to THX specs. This receiver is one sweet receiver and really the pride of my entire system, it sends out 140 wpc x 7. So all speakers are set to small and everything below 80hz goes to my AAD C-10 sub.
Listening test.
Okay, okay, so now to the part everyone wants to know about. How do these things sound? Simply put, amazing. Absolutely amazing.
I always start out my listening test with my receiver set to two channel, source direct mode. In this mode I get a pure audio signal with my subwoofer shut off. This gives me a good indication on how pure a speaker can sound by itself with no help. That was what I had my receiver set to most of the night. I played a couple of my favorite cd's and ones that I am very familiar with. Ben Harper, Both Sides of the Gun and Chris Botti Night Sessions.
Both cd's are very musical and give you a wide variety of instruments.
These towers gave me a huge soundstage with a great deal of imaging. I sit about 11ft back from the speakers. Ben Harpers vocals were right in the middle of the room, even when not sitting in the sweet spot, the imaging was still there. Chris Botti's trumpet was clean clear and crisp. The tweeter in this tower was smooth and detailed. It was not bright or fatiguing in anyway. Also the towers gave me a tight punchy mid bass that I have been looking for.
Mid bass was produced with some kick and sounded defined. Not boomy or distorted. I really didn't get a lot of time with them nor did I really push them hard at all. I think the highest I had my receiver turned up to was about -25. I want to give them a chance to break in before I really give them a workout and a full review. But from what I have heard and seen so far, these things are winners. And hopefully some of you will hear them for yourself. At the price these are going at, there isn't anything even close that can touch them. So far I am one very happy customer and look forward to adding the rest of the system to my home. I have listened to a variety of different speakers as of late and these so far have impressed me the most, especially when it comes down to price. I have listened to speakers costing four times this amount and the Premier Acoustics sounded just as good as those and in most cases a lot better.
I will give a more in depth review in a couple of weeks.
For reference this is what I have auditioned as of late,
Klipsch RF-82's
Era Design 4
SVS-SBS-01
Mirage Omnisat V2
Monitor Audio Silver RS 6
System Audio, forgive me, forget the model. $2000 set of towers though.
Infinity Beta 50's