Quote Originally Posted by heywood
Just got a used pair, excellent condition. But here goes, These are in my 24 year audio experience the worst speakers I've ever owned. I hear bass, treble, no midrange presence. Midrange suckout galore. I hear a smoothness I guess, but lacking transparency, inner detail, slow, veiled. Everything upstream equipment wise is fine. I just got rid of my Dynaudio monitors and boy what I wouldn't give to get them back.

I've tried every speaker position short of hanging them from the ceiling with fishing line.

I know I'm stepping on sacred toe ground here, but when is the last time Vandersteen 2ce owners that rave about this speaker went to hear live music. Cause I'm not hearing anything close to it.

Sorry Vandy guys following, just my opinion here!

Ok, fire away.
The Vandys are different than what you're used to because they are designed around a very different set of design parameters than other speakers. I'm not a fan of the Vandys either, but I've heard them enough to note that they are near the top of the class in some very specific areas, namely their imaging coherency and how well they fare in a multichannel alignment. Out of the 5.1 setups that I've heard, the Vandersteen setup is probably the best imaging multichannel speaker setup I've tried, with a masterfully designed center speaker that blends in with the mains better than any other center speaker I've heard.

Fans of Vandersteen swear by them, and a lot of magazine reviewers use them in their reference rigs. It really is a love it or hate it type of speaker. The Vandersteen adherents will tell you that the timing and phase accuracy of the Vandys creates a truer sound reproduction.

To me, they were a frustrating speaker to listen to because their tonal characteristics to my ears sounded bizarre, yet I could tell how exceptionally well they "disappear" and create stereo images. Overall, they did some things better than just about any speaker I've heard, and did other things in such a way that I eliminated them from consideration fairly early.

Sorry to hear that you tried 'em and left 'em. But, as someone else mentioned, they hold their resale value very well and you should have no shortage of takers if you want to unload them.