System Chain:
   
Hard drive - M-Audio transit usb - Dayton glass optical cable - Altmann Attracion dac (fully loaded) - Decware DSR II.5 - Altmann BYOB amplifier - Decware Zen Styx (8 ft.) - Decware Rl 1.5 speakers

    I got this system up and running a few days ago after receiving the rl 1.5's. I was using the the rest of the components for about a month with some mid-fi bookshelf speakers. Initial impressions were that the speakers imaged well and the tone was a bit on the warm side. Bass, while lacking just a bit, sounded very real.
   
    I spent a couple of days experimenting with speaker placement and letting the speakers break in a bit. Now I was hearing sounds coming from above, behind, and beyond the speakers. I realized why the bass seemed so real. Regardless of what the room nodes are doing to the bass, you can always feel the bass thanks to the bottom-firing passive radiator. There is a basement below me and I'm sure that helps.
   
    Things were really starting to sound good after a couple of days, but some vocals seemed  just slightly muffled, as if a bit too pronounced in the midrange and the sound was a little too warm in general. I tried lowering the value of the tweeter resistor (which was 6 ohm), and that helped with the overall frequency balance, but I realized the crossover point was too high to help with the vocal issue. I decided out of curiosity to measure the frequency balance at my listening spot using 2/3 octave filtered pink noise. I wasn't surprised to find a smooth peak centered at about 1K. I imagine this might change somewhat as the driver breaks in but to what extent I don't know. Just for fun I punched the corrective values into a 2/3 octave linear-phase EQ that I found online as freeware. I am using it as a VST plugin with Winamp media player. The speakers really didn't need much in the way of correction and I want to stress that things were sounding very good at this point even without it, but it was about to get even better.
   
    Now with the eq running and some more burn-in time, I'm hearing incredible depth, width, height, speed, timbre, and with perfect frequency balance! Maybe eventually I will lose the desire to use the eq plugin but right now it sounds so incredible I just want to stop fooling around a listen to music.With my eyes closed, these speakers completely dissapear with certain recordings and I am transported to the recording location. The bass is wonderful and I have no desire to fuss with a sub. It's not the loudest system, but even when set so as to never clip, it's plenty loud for my taste. And that's with about a 2db average loss due to the use of the eq (I only made cuts and didn't apply any makeup gain to ensure no clipping at any frequencies). I can't express in words how enjoyable this system is. It makes stunningly beautiful music and I couldn't be happier.

Thanks Lon! I'm very much looking forward to it.

Well, I would have expected just those changes!  :)

Makes me want to hear RL1.5s.  Welcome to the Radial club and keep spinning music!

Gmad wrote on 08/04/07 at 22:43:33:


Hey Gmad, can you give me the link to the freeware stuff to generate the pink noise??  Glad to hear you are liking the new sound!!

At this point though, I think I'm through using any eq at all. It was helpful when the drivers were stiff but now the sound is just more pleasing without any "correction". It seems with this level of resolution, any corruption to the signal is objectionable. The sound quality just degrades in direct proportion to the level of correction used. The worst sound I achieved was with room correction software. I ran it with a close proximity mic and the corrected sound was just awful. I won't even mention the results I got when the mic was in the listening spot. Anyway I absolutely love the radials and anyone skeptical about digital or solid state should hear this rig.