I'm having trouble putting it into words, honestly. I will say that I did not find its sound to be noteworthy. Perhaps that's why I am hesitant to be more specific. I wouldn't bother pursuing it, especially due to its rarity and high power requirements.
And now it's time for one of my signature rants! :bigsmile_face:
Since sound is defined as "the sensation produced by stimulation of the organs of hearing by vibrations transmitted through the air or other medium", it is subjective by its very nature. The only way to really know how something sounds is by listening with your own ears. And that will only apply to your own circumstances: the music played, the components in the system, the volume levels, anatomy (the shape and size of your ears, for instance), biology (the chemical reactions in our bodies can change the way things sound to us at any given time), and so on.
Unfortunately, words can't accurately convey much at all pertaining to how something sounds. I could write hundreds of pages about how something sounds and not even scratch the surface of telling someone how the experience actually is. In the end, it's just a bunch of stereotyped terminology that often could mean anything to anyone. Take any audio product and you're bound to find any manner of conflicting opinions. I can all but guarantee the terms in an audiophile glossary like
this one have been used to describe virtually any audio product at one point or another. I can't tell you how many times my own experience has been vastly different from how others described it.
I've grown jaded by the audiophile hobby...
On a loosely related note... Ever since getting the JBL LSR305 (or rather, a pair of them), I've become one of those speaker elitists.
Although I'd heard speakers throughout my life (in music studios, homes, concerts, cars, etc.), I never gave them much of a chance compared to my headphone obsession. I owned five figures worth of headphones and auditioned five figures worth of others on top of that, so you could say I've gotten a good idea of what headphones can do, and up until recently, I preferred their more intimate presentation.
However...these $250 (I believe they were $400 for a pair when they first came out) speakers
completely outclass headphones. I
could say that I regret investing so many resources into headphones when they have been so utterly defeated by speakers that are many times more affordable...but I wouldn't have known that if I hadn't lived with all those headphones.
People like to say that headphones are more detailed, but I must challenge this assertion. I hear all the same details (and possibly more, depending on how you look at it) from the speakers (even compared to the most resolving headphones); it's just that they're coming from many more places, with greater depth and subtlety, whereas headphones position everything next to (or in) your ears, making certain details more apparent. But that's not how things are in real life. (The original performance, I mean.)
I think the "superior resolution and detail" of headphones is merely fake detail. When a harp, for example, is at the back of the stage and much softer than the rest of the orchestra, that's real detail, and speakers excel at emulating it; when it's right next to your ears and not much softer than the other instruments, but you can analyze it more clearly due to that, that's fake detail.
Most importantly, the overall sound of the speakers is
far more realistic, like having the actual objects in the room making the sound. It's not just soundstage and imaging that account for this, but everything else: timbre, tone, texture, transients...the list goes on.
Obviously, some of my statements here are ultimately subjective and just my opinion, so I have no problem with others disagreeing.
