New Mordaunt Short speakers on the way....

[frenchmon]

I took my rig over to the audio dealers home and this is the place where I want to break in the speakers. I will drop in on them to give a listen while visiting instead of always listening to them here. Hopefully, I will be better able to detect any changes in tonality, timing, etc.

My impressions: The woofer is very "tight". I think the speaker is going to need 6-8 weeks to break in the woofer correctly. I was getting a lot of upper mid bass and not much else from the woofer. Visually looking at the woofer while playing I was seeing the woofer excursion fragment and this was with pretty good recordings where the bass should have been more prominent.

With regard to bass notes and timing....the only thing I found different from the What Hi-Fi review is when I put on truly excellent reference recordings ....example, Patricia Barber 3-disc remastered set, there was no problem with woofer excursion and bass timing was as it should be. With lesser quality recordings the bass lagged enough to notice it and was not as crisp as the M.S. 902's.

The overall tonality is great and much like the M.S. 902's, however, due to the larger cabinet and larger woofer the AV2's are sounding more mid-range centric and the tweeter at this point is not as extended as the 902's. The one thing I noticed right away is the spaciousness that is commented on in What Hi-Fi review. The AV2's have great lateral imaging from the get go and there is very good separation of voices and instruments just like the M.S. 902's.

Know that the speakers had only been playing for about 5 hours before I got there and I listened to them for about another 4 hours or so. I will probably drop by my audio dealer's home this upcoming Sunday evening to give them a second listen and let you know what has changed...if anything.

Take care and Happy Holidays.

LeRoy

LeRoy...I'm sure the new speakers just need to be broken in from what you are discribing. Once they do you will really enjoy them. Did you leave the 902's connected to the second system? and if so, did they start sounding better?

frenchmon

[LeRoy]

LeRoy...I'm sure the new speakers just need to be broken in from what you are discribing. Once they do you will really enjoy them. Did you leave the 902's connected to the second system? and if so, did they start sounding better?

frenchmon

I played music through the 2nd system today...spun about 5-6 CD's one after the other...and no the system does not sound any better at this time. Once I get my rig and new speakers in the house I am going to hook up the X-Ray to the Rega Brio 3 just to see if it's the NAD 545 that's making the system sound so drab.

LeRoy