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Review 1 of 1
Price Paid:
$0.00 Summary:
These little monitors are easily the best monitors I have heard at any price. The first thing I noticed when listening to the Anima was how much depth there was in the sound stage. This depth is something I find lacking in some of my friends much more expensive and much larger speakers. The Anima produce remarkable highs and mids that are silky smooth. I would describe the highs as brilliant (a good thing, not to be confused with bright). These speakers are very polished and resolve an incredible amount of detail. Imaging is one of their strongest suits. Good live recordings and large sound stages really stand out played by the Anima. Bass is tight and accurate, but I have heard deeper bass from similar sized speakers. Remember these are monitors and as magical as they might sound they are still governed by the laws of physics, small cones just can't move as much air as big cones. Thus the Anima are probably best placed in small to medium sized rooms unless you sit close. Anyways, I would rather the bass be slightly lean than boomy and I find there is enough bass for my apartment. I place the stands toe-in about a quarter of the way out from the wall and find the bass best tuned in this arrangement.
The Anima are particularly well suited to any instrument made of metal like horns, cymbals, and steel string guitar. My guess is the aluminum drivers play a part in this. I particularly like the steel string guitar and horns in orchestral music. Vocals are nice too, especially in well recorded choir music and duets. I do occasionally miss heavy bass in my electronic music, but if I really cared about that I would have bought larger speakers. The acoustic bass and kick drums in most of my jazz tracks are well represented though.
The speakers come with some pretty heavy grills made of MDF covered with mesh, I remove the grills when I am listening because they interfere with the Anima's delightful clarity. There is a somewhat noticeable warmup period, about an hour is enough, but two hours is ideal. I have yet to hook these up to tubes, but my feeling is they are probably better suited for good solid state gear. Until I move to a single occupancy dwelling and have about $5000 to buy up I am keeping these phenomenal speakers.
Strengths:
Clarity, highs and mids. Soundstage. Classical, Jazz, Piano, and violin music. Weaknesses:
Not the deepest bass, but good for this size.
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