In my quest to find “the perfect speaker”, my listening room has seen many speakers come and go. Big, small, expensive, exotic, anything under about $70k was auditioned. Then I found a very rare pair of Reference 3A Serie Master speakers (made in France) for only $5000. Just for kicks, I connected them to my primary system to compare against my (very expensive and exotic) benchmark speakers. MY JAW DROPPED!!! I couldn’t believe my ears. I spent the next three months trying to find a flaw using every recording I had. No speaker is absolutely perfect, but damn! The Serie Masters has amazing imagery, perfect tone, musical balance top to bottom. They melt into the background immediately and I find it difficult to walk away from them when they play. The bass is deep and full down to about 45 hz. I hear mid-range details like never before. Singers do not mumble. The sound is scary-real. I attend CES every year just for fun. Overall, I think the Reference 3A Serie Master is the finest speaker I’ve heard at any price.

Open, accurate, great bass, absolutely no distortion ............the list just goes on

NONE

Well it has been almost a year since getting these speakers and I can say that I am more impressed today than when I first got them. As I said in my first review I traded my JM Labs for them. On playing them for the first month or so I found them to sound incredible one day and horrible the next. I took them to my tech in Windsor and he found the problem. Some one had upgraded the speaker terminals and wire to Cardas however when they installed the wire they didn't know that Carda has a coating on it that has to be removed. After properly installing the wire on ALL terinals the speaker has sounded great EVERYTIME. This is my last speaker I'll ever own. I have played every kind of music with these and everything sounds amazing and the louder you play them the better they sound.

I can't believe that there are so few reviews on these speakers.

Similar Products Used:

JM Lab 926's, micro utopia's, totem mani 2's,Living Voice, Thiel, Celestion,

Best bass I have heard out of any bookshelf.It is the most musical speaker I have ever heard. No fatigue at all when listening for hours. Great soundstage. The speakers really do just disapear.

None

I just traded away my lovely JM Lab Electra 926's last week that I have owned for about 2 years now.(a record for me). I traded them for a pair of Reference 3a Royal Master's that I was told they were about 7 years old. I found out that they actually are about 10-12 years old. They also were not in anywhere near the shape that my like new JM Labs were. I thought at first that i got screwed.
After listening to these speakers, almost right away i knew that they were special. I can now say after a week of steady listening these speakers will be my last speaker. They are AMAZING. No matter what kind of music i play I just can't turn it off. Just one more song. Well maybe ONE more. Several hours later.
In the last 15 years I can say that I have owned some pretty nice speakers.
Thiel,Totem, Focus Audio, Celestion,Living Voice, Micro Utopia's,and the list goes on. These speakers are without a doubt the best I have ever had in my system.
At first I thought that I was the loser in the trade that I made for these speakers.
I now realize that from a musical standpoint,the other guy got an inferior speaker.
After all it really is about the music isn't it

Similar Products Used:

Too many to list or remember.

EVERYTHING

None

I have heard a lot of different speakers in the 15 years that i have been into audio gear. I have owned totem,JM Lab electra and utopia,Celestion,Focus Audio,Living Voice,Thiel, and the list goes on. I thought that I had heard everything. One week ago I traded my JM Lab Electra 926's for Reference 3a Royal (control) Master bookshelf speakers. For the last week I have probably heard more music than I have heard in the last year. I just can't turn off a song until it is finished and then just one more song. These speakers are just absolutely incredible. Now I understand why these speakers have been in UHF Magazine's reference Alpha system for quite a number of years now. I couldn't begin to count the number of speakers that i have heard over the last 15 years but I can say that these are the finest speaker that I have ever heard. These will be my last speakers. I spoke to Tosh at Divergent Technologies and he told me that although older speakers and no longer made in France, that they can still repair or rebuild to exact original if needed which was important to me if I wanted to keep them until i can't hear anymore and then hand them down to my kids.
My system is YBA separates, Modified Shanling cd player(amazing ) Modified SAE FM Tuner(also amazing) Audio Power Wedge conditioner, all Cardas interconnects,XLO Type 5 speaker cables.

Similar Products Used:

too many to list

musical credibility

needs extremely heavy and rigid stand to really sing

OK. Thought that Sonus Faber Electa Amators were my audio nirvana. Small, dynamic, open and full of musicality. Had not heard Royal Master II:s yet. The only pair of those corian-cheeked wonders in my country - dealer is out of busines -came in for an audition and that was it. From bottom to top: astonishing weight and control in the bass, liquid and natural mids, open and airy treble. But that was just the beginning of the story. Properly set up - thank You Mr. Goka from Divergent Audio -the soundstage opened up and I was able to see through my record collection. Talking about visual aspects of audio, have never experienced the "vanishing effect" so strongly as with the Reference 3a:s. The loudspeakers don''t exist! Only the music plays. Of course You need decent system to achieve such a illusion of realism. The sensitivity and friendly impedance curve make things easier for a man of tubes and tubes You gotta have for digging out the best RM II:s have to offer. 40 watts class A NFB seems to work out fine in my 90 cubic meters room. Is it the exotic carbon fibre woofer with no filtering, internal Siltech wiring or multilayered and sturdy box construction? Or is the secret hidden in the papers of the designer, Daniel Dehay, who has decades of experiece in going his own way. Don''t know and don''t care. The sound is the thing that matters and that sound is music, nothing more, nothing less.

Similar Products Used:

are you kidding

Sound! Stage, authentic, control, precise, bass (for this size incredible!)

None, Or maybe the price is a bit high for the ordinary audiophil, (normally about $3.800 in Holland) but in that case try to find a used pair, like I did. Or maybe it''s a bit hard to find.

First of all: I can''t imagine there are no reviews upon this speaker here. Am I the first one on this planet to dicover this miracle? This really is an incredible masterpiece a fantastic speaker! It''s "compact" but very heavy. The most important is of course it''s sound and I can use all the audiophil phrases to praise it, but I''ll just say one thing: go out to your local dealer and listen! Probably he will look at you as if he hears "thunder in Koln" as we say so in Holland. But insist and when he''ll look in his database he''ll find it. I think it''s at: www.Reference3a.com I used it with my Marantz PM 16 and CD 16 with Audiotruth (audioquest) Forest speaker cable and Siltech interlinks.

Similar Products Used:

B&W Nautilus 805, JBL Ti 2 K, Chario Academy Millennium and 3, Sonus Faber Elekta, etc.