Grant Fidelity Audio - Read Only

[solidstate9]

I am helping Ian by breaking in these beauties. They are a stand mounted 2 way with a Morel main driver and a 1st order crossover.
The pair I am using has a light wood veneer with a glossy coat the pictures in the website give a good view of the colour but they don't really capture the size of these babies.
I hooked them up in my 2 channel room and played all day. On the 24" Skylan stands the tweeters sit 3" higher than my Epos ES30 floorstanders. This configuration sounded good right away and the speakers did not sound out of place at all.
They have most of the soundstage at the plane of the speakers like a wall with good left/right and vertical extension beyond the speaker boundaries. The instruments are clearly separated from each other in the soundstage. I thought that the drum beats came from distinctly different parts of the drum, so great imaging.
The Bass is really full for a two way especially the mid upper 60-120hz range and my listening room really is full of "warm" sound. My room is trickey in the bass and the left hand side is boosted from the near wall reflection. This was especially prominent in some mid bass heavy Cd's Keb Mo, Sade Lovers rock. Because the tweeter and woofer sit higher than my Epos gear my sofa which acts as a bass trap was taken out of the equation. Basically the sound was left side loaded i tried to plug the port on the left side and that seemed to help but my room is the problem.
Maybe Ian will have to design a port plug to tame the bass for some rooms.
I have a picture that I will post later.
John

[igrant]

Hi John, thanks for the feedback.

Here is probably what you need in to tame your room:

http://grantfidelity.com/site/BT-12_Bass_Trap

Do you have them fairly close to the wall? I like them at least 3 ft from the back wall so that the rear soudstage can develope. I aim for a soundstage 3/4 back, 1/4 forward and 1/4 to the sides and can easily achieve that 3 ft from the wall. I also recommend pointing them (and most speakers) at your shoulders

Bass port plugs, new pairs or stinky used ones OH and that is why time is needed with power to the woofers, they will drop an octave at some point bringing the bass extension down. Ask Rod at General Audio, he's been thru it too with Morel drivers.

Cheers,
Ian
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[solidstate9]

My room config is 3 feet from the back longwall and open on the right. the left side is 2 feet from the side wall and that is where the low bass works the best. When I had the speakers closer together ie: left 4' for instance I had a bass null and that is no good. So I was looking at the bass traps on the GF site and one in the left corner should help alot.
I put my Epos back on and I can tell the RBS-1 speakers are very different (efficient) in sensitivity more output same volume. The RBS are not recessed like my Epos so they are more forward but probably more accurate. I could clearly hear some chimes on Jesse Cook "Closer to Madness" on the RBS-1's that are buried (but audible) in the background on my Epos. So I had never really heard the chimes before till Monday.
When I listened last night In the home theater setting my observation is the better your electronics source the better the RBS-1 sound. So if you have modest gear don't assume the speakers will make it sound hifi. They probably will make it sound better than before.
These are very fun speakers to play with and the 24" Skylan stands work perfectly.

Good work on the design and sound Ian.

[igrant]

Why don't you drop by and grab the bass traps before Rachel sells them, see if they fix up your room or I can bring them over and check out your rooms and systems.

Cheers,
Ian
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[solidstate9]

The RBS-1 in my 2 channel den/computer room in Calgary.




My electronics
Sim Audio/Moon Evolution P7,W7, Supernova CD
Hitachi tuner
Grant P307, Music hall MM5
OPPO 970HD
Adcom GCD 750 CD player
My Epos ES30 are behind the RBS-1’s

They sound really good in this set up and I would be happy to have them in my house.
[/img]

[igrant]

Really missing my bass trap here, just having one in one corner kind of sucks in my room and no place to centre it. Also the bass magic I had here is kind of diminished. How did the bass trap work out for you John? Did the frugalphile fix do the trick?

Nice to have my RBS-1's back.

Cheers,
Ian
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[solidstate9]

Yeah the expensive bass trap works and I only need one for my room I haven't had time to try the frugalfile bass trap yet. Sorry about your room Ian.
I will bring the Shengya woody's back sooner as they are not as impressive as the RBS-1's. Basically in my room the RBS-1's are the speaker to beat. OOps! I need them back now to try them with the bass trap.

[igrant]

The hornies may need some placement tweaking to perform properly, I've found that toeing them straight forward, then toeing in until the bass, then soundstage comes together works best over my my typical point at shoulders.

But, great to hear you like my RBS-1's better These are my babies, that and the MBS-1's. The hornies aren't going to be for everyone, that's a given and will have system synergy issues (like a tube amp being a good idea or the Jungson SS amps), where the RBS-1 and MBS-1 should please almost everyone's ears and gear.

You can pick the RBS-1's back tomorrow if you want, the frugalphile fix doesn't work too well for me and the Opera Phonostages arrived, so time to do some turntable testing

Cheers,
Ian
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[solidstate9]

I am trying a single bass trap to compensate for the left hand side boost in my room ,see photo above.
There does seem to be some improvement in the "balance" between left and right. The left hand side sounds fuller on most music with my Epos but became overpowering when I had the RBS-1's and no trap. I have been using Santana Supernatural and Tracy Chapman 1st (both vinyl) to check bass response in the speakers and the room. I cant't change the right hand speaker so I can only work with the left hand side.
By the way the RBS-1's and Epos just disappear in this set up, if you close your eyes you can't point to the speaker. The shengya's needed some tweeking to disappear there seemed to be beaming from the tweeter.
In the sweet spot the center image is right about where the sailboat is on the picture above.

[r3cc0s]

[igrant]

I have the V-518's on now and am switching back and forth between the RBS-1's and them. The V-518's sound great in my room, guess they are breaking in, the bass isn't going to develope properly but it is definately balanced and deep, the RBS-1's are richer sounding, but the balance detail, imaging and soundstage of the V-518's is amazing. I'm only using the Sheng Ya A-S90 receiver to drive them and everything sounds great on both speakers. Bass from the RBS-1 also develops with no problem in my room, except for only having one bass trap where my setup requires 2

Really hard call for me if I had to choose between them, the RBS'1 are from my efforts, but I'm also a 'horn' guy, both are amazing.

Cheers,
Ian
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[igrant]

Now have the GF LS3/5A's running, same music and amp and they are cool. These have maybe 10 hours on them, so will run them over the next few days with different amps. While very cool, they aren't as much fun as the RBS-1's or V-518's. I think Paul will like them and will be interesting to hear what he thinks compared to the Arrows.
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[r3cc0s]

[igrant]

Photo's are all done, so you grab the LS3/5A. Me thinks the RBS-1 still need some pounding on woofer. Been thru this many times, sound great new, then the woofer's 3" voice coil starts loosening up but it's frequency centre is still an octave higher than normal. The other change in my room is my missing bass trap. Need to get that back. Besides that my room is back to reletive normal.

Cheers,
Ian
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[igrant]

StereoMojo review of the RBS-1's by Lorin J. Elias.

http://www.stereomojo.com/Grant%20Fidelity%20RBS-1Speakers%20Review/GrantFidelityRBS-1SpeakersReview.htm

Fun read,

Ian
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