Big thanks to Anirudh and his family for hosting me and my gear over two listening sessions.
OP's dad is a music aficionado who has been in the hobby for many years.
It was nice to hear about their journey into music, music systems, home theater, et al.
While the listening experience is fresh in my mind, let me pen it down.
This one is not a critical review, just my observations.
Coming to the speakers themselves:
- They are big and stand tall; 3 woofers (6.5" each), a 4" mid, 1" tweeter are quite intimidating to even look at
- Then come the published physics & electrical specs; 90dB SPL (real world), 4 ohm nominal and 4 ohm minimum (but I guess they dip below 4 ohm)
- Spec says the can go down to 30-35 Hz; they probably do
- They are power hungry, but when given a tap, boy they can sing
- Seems like they are a bit finicky on placement; OP has had it for a few days now
The room (and positioning):
- It is a squarish untreated room (approx 12' x 14') ; room boom is evident
- OP will have his work cut out to tame the room or tame the content
- Thankfully there are multiple port bungs to play with and attempt to tame the troublesome LF range
- The bungs do mitigate boom to a certain extent
- We tried a bit of push pull, straight up vs toe-in; a bit of toe-in works well
- In the listening sessions, we just left it at about 3 feet from back and side walls
- The distance between them was about 7 feet
Listening session 1 (and my observations):
Source was a PC running foobar or Amazon Music.
First we just played them out of the AVR (Onkyo NR818). Even though spec'd at 135W (FTC method), the AVR clearly struggles.
Next up we connected the monoblocks (Outlaw M2200) to the AVR. The Outlaws are spec'd at 200W at 8 ohm, 300 at 4 ohm.
We assumed, this will provide the necessary headroom, heft, "wazan", whatnot. They did not. This left us really puzzled. The OP said it may be because the AVR pre out is not high enough; very possible as we needed to turn up the volume making it just loud. We decided to eliminate the AVR and bring in a different element; an IA (with pre-amp support). Unfortunately, we had not brought this unit. So we decided to try it out the next day (today).
Listening session 2 (and my observations):
Enter Schiit Modi-2 Uber + Marantz PM7001. Source was the same (PC); USB mode on DAC. We hooked up the speakers to the IA and voila they started singing. The IA is spec'd at 100W at 4 ohms and Marantz claims it can source up to 25A momentary current. Still being cautious we had the volume control between 9 o'clock and 11 o'clock position. I have had the Marantz for 12+ years now; below 9 o'clock it doesn't come alive; quirky box, that's all I can say.
We threw in a variety of tunes; luckily the OP's and my music tastes overlap quite a bit.
A bit of rock, metal, piano, violins, guitars, vocals, the works. Marantz handled them with relative ease. The typical Marantz analog signature was there, except that room-boom was sometimes the nasty goblin. On less demanding tracks, the vocals were smooth, the lows there and the occasional sparkle at HF. All in all, a satisfying show by the speakers and the IA. Is Marantz the right pairing; maybe if you like its presentation; but it can be better.
Listening session 2.5 (and my observations):
We decided to bring in the monoblocks in the chain. I have had this combo for about 9 years now. As I told the OP, this combination loses a bit of finesse but sets the mind at ease with no real worry of low impedance challenges. The Outlaws brought presence to the listening area, kinda like "I'm there. Go about your fidgeting and fiddling".
We threw in some of the tunes from before, and a whole lot of new ones. Genres now expanding to Indian/Western classical, Hindi music (old and new). The speakers were happy at the fact that they could sing at will. In many tracks, close your eyes and the speakers disappeared. Instrumentation was nicely separated, yet cohesive enough. No real dismemberment on most tracks, if any they were probably due to the room.
I was pleasantly surprised when we played a few old Hindi film tracks. Remember these are not "great" recordings, many of them just plain old dual mono.
Impressions:
With Synchrony Ones, I would say one could easily:
- spend a nice relaxing afternoon dozing off listening to soothing Kishore/Rafi/Hemant/Lata/Asha
- have an engaging evening with a beer (or more) listening to some good old rock/pop
- analyze the intricacies of western classical music
- have a date with Mary Jane and float away with blues or psych-rock
These speakers will cooperate and indulge you completely to the point of almost spoiling you to become a couch potato. In conclusion, these speakers, if paired with a warm (yet lively preamp) and a neutral high current capacity power amp will set the scene for many years to come. Depending on where you are in life, they could even be an endgame setup.
Disclosure:
I was happy that my gear could drive speakers a couple notches up in spec/design, finesse and cost to reasonable satisfaction.
My hearing is not really great these days and I am not a discerning listener, more of the right content guy rather than "sound of music" type.
Footnote (and a petite surprise):
The OP is a good guitar player. He played some of his recordings. They sounded really good.
He would be in a better position comment on the rendition as they are his own recordings.
Also his sense of hearing is definitely better than mine.
Cheers,
Raghu