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Review 1 of 12
Price Paid:
$650.00
from JSG Audio Video Summary:
The Sound Dynamics RTS-9, a floor standing "quasi 3-way" speaker, is a great product whose performance greatly exceeded its price tag at the time of sale and manufacture, and still does in 2006. These speakers have spent a little over six years in my listening room, and will likely remain there until Source Technologies speakers replace them. As with any speaker, when properly oriented and placed they yield their best performance. I have them spaced 8' apart, 14" off of the side wall, 21" from the front wall of my second story listening room with the listening position ~12' from the speakers.
I subject them to music from James Taylor to TOOL, from Mr. Bungle to Steely Dan, from Mozart to El-p, and find that they handle all of the aforementioned honestly and clearly.
My equipment consists of:
Sound Dynamics RTS-9s
Marantz SR 4200
NAD 2200 Amplifier
Marantz CD-63 SE CD Player
CAL Sigma Tube D/A Converter with Orion Tube
MIT Interconnects
Kimber Illuminati Digital Coax Interconnect Strengths:
The RTS-9 speakers do a great job of providing a deep clear sound stage for stereo listening, which to me is the most important quality.
For a poly cone and textile tweeter, they have a pretty natural tone to them, and are not excessive in the midrange as I found other poly speakers to be at the time of audition.
The bass is quite natural as well, which really surprised me at the time when I was comparing them to some speakers costing twice as much (or more) with much larger cones. The low extension of the speaker is great for listening to music, but for movies one may wish to supplement them with a subwoofer, depending on the size of the room, placement, and individual taste.
The power handling of the speakers is sufficient for me, although it wouldn't hurt my ears much to handle a little more, this coming from a percussionist of 22 years.
Weaknesses:
There is a sweetness in the high frequencies that is revealed by listening to vocal music or electronic music that could be considered a weakness. I have softened this up by adding a 4 ohm resistor to the tweeter and found that doing so added resolving power to the speaker and freed up some interference with the midrange. I also updated the capacitors in the electronics which further increased the overall resolution in the soundstage. Most people probably wouldn't go this far though, they are fine out of the box. Similar Products Used:
I auditioned:
Energy, Tannoy, DefTech, KEF, PSB, and probably several others - it has been ~6 years.
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