The other evening I had the pleasure listening to the 7th Veil speakers that Steve has recently launched. Steve came over to my place in order to experiment with various crossover frequencies courtesy of the ever adaptable TacT RCS2.2X. I hope that the excercise was of some use, what it did do was to give me the opportunity to hear the Nonsuch/Awesome combination. before saying anything, please bear in mind that whilst we used an excellent transport, the Dac and amps value would have totalled about £100 max! SO you have to make allowances for that. Regardless of the poor signal, the 7V speakers have some qualities that will endear them to a number of critical listeners. the overriding impression was one of coherence, along with a total lack of boxiness that bore comparison with many of the panel speakers I have heard. Once we had played around a bit, they exhibited excellent loudness capabilities as well, which was a pleasent surprise. Some have said the treble is rolled off. This is not the case. Rather there is a lack of artificiality in that region which is typical of a traditional dome tweeter. Call it energy if you like, even ML have fitted such a unit to some of their new range to spice up AV. For music listening however, they are best left off. The measurements showed and impressively flat response from 1khz up to 18khz above which the Bandor's cone breakup becomes identifiable. It is certainly not rolled off. In absolute terms, the area below the upper mids was a couple of db up, this leading to the laid back midrange typical of BBC type monitors. This lends a relaxing smoothness to the overall presentation which particularly suits female vocals and small ensembles. Overall, I'd say they are a very viable proposition for those beguiled by panels but hampered by space constraints. I cannot make a definitive judgement, as things such as imaging specivity and transparency were largely restrained by the appalling electronics used. I would have liked to have heard them with suitable ancillaries. For those who have heard them before, a change in crossover frequency really did bring body and warmth to the sound without losing that elusive panel like coherence. I believe Steve is close to finalizing the filters now. If you get the chance, have a listen. You might find yourself in 7th heaven! BTW, they sounded great when room corrected;)
