Nine boxes of Decware goodness just showed up at my office: six boxes for the speakers, and three containing the pairs of the grille-tops, spikes and capacitors/resistors. In person, this group is bigger than they seemed in the abstract. And yes, they appear packed for a shuttle launch. Bob's packaging appears designed to laugh at UPS!

Lon, or anyone else, what is the best way to empty the box? Is it safe to open it at the top, and then tip it over and slide the styrofoam case out?

It's funny, but getting them out of the boxes helped a bit. Will post some pics soon.

Ha. It will take a couple of trips I suspect. Here is what 6 ERRs wrapped in cellophane look like:

Pale Rider,

My cell number is on the labels....you could have called if you had any questions.

The wife and I were on the road today heading home....got bored with  driving so we stopped for the night.

It looks like they all arrived safely, thank goodness.

Can wait to get back the the house to listen to some tunes....

ZYGI

Congrats, Pale. Let them time to sound right. Don't judge them until a 300 aprox. hrs of break-in or so. I even thought I would have to return them back. Glad I didn't. Nevertheless, I find them a bit "shouty" and probably is due to my pair specifically. Bob and I are dealing with it.

Their effortless and charming presentation, very natural tonal balance, articulation and imaging are top notch in my opinion. Nicely detailed too. You are gonna love that.  ;)

But maybe you're gonna miss the more "direct sound" type of presentation sometimes though.

Alright! Glad you got to hear a pair finally! They're just going to keep getting better and better. Give the bass a few more days to bloom, a week or more for the full-blown bass to be there. You're in for such a treat when you get the Ultra and the Torii in play!

Thanks M. No worries on either score. My positive reaction on first listening is solely a confirmation tha I am pleased with the first listen, zero buyer's remorse. I fully expect the speakers to change significantly, especially when the Toriis and Ultra are applied.

JA: I tend to set a low expectation framework, especially when I am enthusiastic about a purchase. Sounds contradictory, I suppose. It's my own version of Ben Franklin's "I am a pessimist, so that I am often pleasantly surprised." I didn't expect the ERRs to blow me away, and so their relative smoothness and quickness were quite pleasant to hear. And while the imagery and sound staging are hyped a bit much on the web page, I was not prepared for just how good they are out of the box on mediocre equipment. Knowing they are going to bloom is a real reward. "Horrible"? I suppose, depending on one's reference point, that could be true, but not in my case. I have spent way more for a pair of speakers than I did for all three pairs of ERRs (and what I will likely spend on the WO32), and gotten less.

You'll appreciate the humor here Lon: my Ultra and first Torii are ready to insert in the system, but I have no ICs! I have been running off HDMI here at home for long enough that all I have for ICs are a few junk Radio Shack cables, maybe an old Monster, and they all look like they have oxidized. I don't even want to let their "syphilitic white trash selves" near my Decware. So, I may have to break down and buy some cheap ICs to tide me over until my Decwares are built.

Lon, you are a gentleman, and very generous, but no need. Thanks much, though; you proved again what a great little community we have here.

Pale, I agree with you. I think it is hyped on the webpage, specially in terms of room treatment. These speakers need a really good sounding room like a conventional speaker to sound at their best. Nevertheless, they are quite easier to set up to sound right, specially in soundstage and stable imaging, that is absolute true and I agree with that.

You've intrigued me, Pale. Which were those expensive speakers you owned for much more? Just curiosity.  

M, I want to be clear: I think the ERRs are everything they are hyped to be. Most things in life do not live up to their hype. Sex, well, let's be honest, sex lives up to its hype. And so do the ERRs, at least IMHO. I am absolutely thrilled with the speakers, and I haven't really put them in harness yet.

My wife, who has younger ears with no tinnitus, thinks they are stunning. While they are of course affected by the room and their placement in it, I find they have a huge sweet spot, and are less affected by such factors than other speakers I have heard.

Order a pair, you will fall in love. I only wish I had two separate rooms for HT and audio. If I did, I would have ordered 4 pairs of ERRs.

P.S. Juan, I have owned a number of more expensive speakers, including Acoustats, Ohms, Infinity, Martin Logans, Carver Amazing, Quads, and Jack Caldwell ribbons ( my faves until now).

Mac5u, the hyperbole is a bit deserved, not totally, but well. You will need treatment for the bass and highs as any other boxy speaker to have very great sound, that is unavoidable. Are the ERR's better for the average room? I'd say yes, of course, in terms of soundstage/imaging only.

I don't have multiple set of omni's but It seems to be the best option and far easier to set up multiple speakers to create an ultimate HT though. It's what Pale has done. Just having a single pair I can perceive that these speakers must be extremely terrific in a surround theater set up (4.0 or 5.0). The location and 3D sound in a movie must be thrilling.

As Pale says, order a pair, don't worry. You have to know that the sound is very laid back. The sound is never coming to you, never in your face. It's all there and deep between the speakers, behind the speakers, rendered ambient sound coming from everywhere (sometimes even behind you). It's a bit rare at the beginning, you will understand easier the instrument placement if you close your eyes. No matter if you approach to the speakers very near, the sound is never in your face and claustrophobic.

They are warm and don't expect them to have tilted-up highs, just the opposite. The highs are flat and correct, but I think they could be a little more extended, I perceive them to be a bit rolled off in the very top end. I don't mean they can't go very very high, I just mean that some very high sounds need more dBs in that range. That is my own perception.

Pale, having owned those hi-end brands tells a lot about the high value of Decware. A very good feeling to say the least.

Thanks, JA.  I should have written above that I realize there isn't a single pair of speakers ever made that could not benefit from some form of room treatment.  For me, the issue has always been how much, and to that end, omnis -- Decware, Ohms, etc. have always appealed to me because I think I value imaging and soundstaging at least as much as I value rich mids and good bass.

I rarely listen for extended periods in any sweet spot so the diffuse-sounding nature of the omni is very desirable.  

JA -- what kind of music and listening levels are typical for you?  How do they sound at either low volumes or really high volumes?

So yes, I need to try a pair.  Ideally, I can have both Decware and Ohms concurrently to compare side-by-side.  The difficulty in that scenario is the power requirements for those two are significantly different.  While Ohms can probably be driven fairly well with tubes, they really deliver when feed high current, or so I have read.  So maybe it will come down to a choice of amplification?

PR, what version of Ohms did you own?  As always, I anticipate reading about how your multi-ERR/Zen Ultra story unfolds.

I had the F. Like Lon, I value low level quality, and I also like to crank them up. The ERRs are very nice either way.

Juan,

Yes, my girlfriend is a wonderful latina of Mexican hertage (though not a native Spanish speaker, she does speak some Spanish) and one of my very best friends is of Mexican heritage, a wise young-old man who speaks Spanish fluently. I can toss off a few Spanish words and appellations correctly. . .but I can't speak Spanish. Maybe one day I'll learn. My girlfriend talks about learning more Spanish and my learning with her. If only she wouldn't spend 50 to 60 hours a week at work! It's hard to believe she retired once four years ago. . .but was asked to return to her job and stayed away only 30 days!

I love the different sounds of Spanish (depending on the speaker's place of origin). I studied French for years in Africa and when I returned to America, but haven't had a lot of speaking practice in decades, which is a shame, so much of the language has disappeared from my brain. It helps a bit with Spanish, but doesn't help in some instances (for example in French I've always heard "mon ami", not just "ami.") Anyway, I love cultural diversity. Learning other languages and customs and manners is very appealing to me.

Greg, it may be the Denon but your ERRs are going to need about 300 hours total to begin to sound as treble-grain-free as they can be.

Still, yeah, at very high volumes I imagine in a quartet the ERRs could be very over-powering. Still, working with resistors you could get them pretty much just right.

I haven't found there to be a big difference between live and recorded material, though much of the live material I listen to is very simply recorded, a lot of unofficial recordings with just one or two microphones and little "production". . . that may be a factor.

Lon,

I just want to warn you. Spanish is quite difficult, more than english. We have a lot of conjugation of the verbs. English is extremely easy on this. The past of a regular verb is just by adding "ed". The articles, the adjectives, the verbs, ... they include gender female or male, if it is singular or plural. We can omit speaking an article "She, he or the" in a sentence because the rest contain all the info of the gender and number and who we are talking about.

A very simple example of this magnitude is the article "the": we have "la/el/lo/los/las". It contains the gender and number of the following name. Contrary to english, things have gender too, not only persons. Like french or german. So if you learnt french while ago as I did (I did it at school for a few years) you know what I am talking about.

Now I am gonna see what I can do with german. I hope to learn a lot.

"I love the different sounds of Spanish (depending on the speaker's place of origin)"

hehe, the spanish of Spain is quite different sounding from the spanish of America. They have variants, written mistakes and weird words that almost destroy the original language we shared to them, depending on the place, of course. It sounds quite weird to us as well. We speak the real orthodox spanish (the original), which the margin of difference is quite higher than the difference between british english (the origin) and american english. Yes, british has a different accent and certain different words but to me it's quite similar overall compared to american. American english sounds more natural than british in my opinion. I hate trying to follow the very hardest british accents of a speech when the plosive sounds are exaggerated, very short vowels and very quick decays. On the contrary, the hardest american accent with very nasal sound is not as difficult to the ears.

Of course I know that american english has multiple of different accents, like in the UK, like in Spain and like in Latin America. For instance, scottish has a bit similar accent to the spanish of Spain.  

Apart from that, It's sad that people generalize so much with cultures and promote racism. For the color of the skin, eyes, facial features,...

I've a little knowledge that even there's the ignorance that "spanish" or hispanic means automatically "a bad amerindian guy with dark skin" or so. Because that is far from the truth. OK, generally Central America is well know to have conservative original amerindian genetics (darker skin and indian facial characteristics). There's way less genetic mix of Spain. Then, there is south (Argentina), white skinned, very occidental facial characteristics, very accentuated colonization mainly by Italy and Spain. Therefore, there's also blue/green eyed, blond/brown haired genetics. This is just an example in general.

My cousin and I, for example, are night and day. He is black haired, brown skinned, almost black eyed. I am blue/green eyed, dark/brown haired with a hint of blond, white skinned. When I was a very young child a little blond haired. It is simply that my father is completely blond and my mother changes in the hair to dark only. Past origin similitudes are identical (to my knowledge).
In general, we are like italians, there's blond genetics of central europeans, there's muslims genetics too, blah, blah, blah.

Anyway. The point is that it's so wrong to generalize and judge people by their skin. What matters is the person itself. I know a cuban guy (african genetics) that is much more educated and culturalized (geography, languages, history, ...) than many more people I'd like to count.

Apart from that, I don't know why the hell you name it soccer instead of football. You know, american football is played mainly by using the hands to take the ball, contrary to "soccer", played by the feet literally in every sense of the word, that's football, man, not soccer. Rugby makes more sense than football, hehe.

Apart from that super offtopic:

My experience with live recordings have been that. It depends on the own room too. The ideal situation is just hearing the spacial info where the recording was recorded. Add your room acoustics and you just destroy it. Recordings are recorded differently so some live ones sounds just great. Others, like this famous one, Jazz at the Pawnshop, I find it weird and lacks coherency, for example:





As an example, the Mike Oldfield's Music of Spheres both Live and studio sounds great:

Lon,

I'll respond later (maybe this weekend). Quite busy here.

Tim:

Welcome aboard! Always nice to see another radial fan. I am afraid I won't be a good comparison point, because it has been a long time since I had my Ohms. But I do believe Steve and Bob are on to something with the ERR driver structure. Sound is very open and transparent. As you may have read here, I first listened to the ERRs through my Denon receiver, and was struck by how good they sounded. Yes, the Denon sounded flat, etched, but detail was well-presented, and soundstage was pretty good in 2 dimensions. In one sense, the ERRs are quite "forgiving," but as you put better stuff on them, they will show it. I had a brief listen on a 2-channel output from my Oppo into the first Torii directly, and it was quite extraordinary. My second Torii arrived yesterday, and my Zracks are on the way [I literally have no place to put this stuff safely]. Once I get the racks, and everything else set up, I will report back. The plasma comes off the cabinet this weekend, and on to the wall. That will mean I have credenza style cabinet to at least place the amps until the racks come in. Until then, I won't bother with center channel.

P.S. Fit & finish are superb. They are lovely. Bob's approach to shipping can only be described as "best practice."

Thanks for those that have replied, all interesting. From a construction point of view on the ERR's, is the bottom of the cabinet ported in between the plinth? What is in the cabinet-stuffing or is it open, just curious. These just look like another great design, and I am really going to have to take a listen to a pair at some point.

I do love my Ohm's too, the styling is also a thing that I like and the ERR cabinets look very good too. Just a very timeless styling in my opinion, beats the typical boxes.

Has anyone else used these with solid state gear? I sure wouldn't be opposed to going tube at some point, but the ERR's would more than likely come first if I did like them. I have enjoyed my ARC gear for a long time and really am in no hurry to change that part of the system. Will continue to read and watch this forum.

Thanks again for the welcome! Tim

Lon, your Proton brought back some very fond Proton and NAD memories. Well made, high value equipment. Considering the price range, they did very nice work with solid state. I was especially fond of my NAD FM tuner.

My 84ZS shipped today. I am closing in on bringing it all together.  I have been breaking the Ultra in with the same tubes Steve specifies, but with NOS ones that I bought specifically for it. In the "back row," that means NOS Sylvania 0A3 tubes, that glow a very nice soft orange. Just for fun, I lined up an 0A3, 0B3, 0C3, and 0D3.  Pretty slick. My daughters voted in favor of the fairly bright purple 0C3. Perhaps I will try out a full quad. I have some nice Raytheon JAN 0C3s.

Quote:


PR, with the plasma going on the wall, what direction will the tweeters on the dual center speakers face:  Toward the wall or out into the room?  If the plasma is up high enough, facing the tweeters toward the wall should work well enough.  It will be interesting to see how this works out.

Well, today was the day. I got the plasma on the wall, and while my ZenStyx and ICs have not arrived yet, I went ahead and hooked the Ultra and the first Torii up to the Oppo. OMFG.

We (my two younger daughters and I) started out with Nina Simone's Feeling Good, followed by Thrice's The Artist in the Ambulance, Kate Bush's Running Up That Hill, and then Dire Straits' Brothers in Arms. At some point during Thrice, something opened up and the bottom fell out. Or in. Okay Bob, I surrender, on music, a subwoofer is superfluous. Even my daughters asked "what just happened?" This combo produces tight, well-defined, extremely fast bass. So, then it was time for the 1812, Verdi's Requiem, and Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven off the How the West Was Won DVD-Audio. Just effin' wow. Have some hum to deal with when there is no signal, though it is unnoticeable during music.

Even more compelling is the depth. This must be what Steve means when he talks about holographic imaging. That and the detail. On The Man's Too Strong, you can hear Knopfler's fingers on the strings of his guitar quite distinct from the music. When it's so good your kids can tell it's better than what was playing before, you know you are on to something.

Solved my hum issues. My amp is dead quiet but, heh, my cheap sh!t zip speaker cord and the tangle of wires around them are not. Once the racks and cables are here, I expect to have even fewer problems and more grins.