Randy in Caintuck
Seasoned Member
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Tube be ... or not tube be ... it's a no-brainer.
Posts: 974
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Initial impressions .....
Last night, I spent about two hours listening to some familiar music via the new Fast-15 drivers that were mounted in some "quick and dirty" baffles that I threw together for testing purposes. I recently sold my personal F-15 baffles to a customer and haven't had time to build another pair .... so, I will have to make a similar pair of baffles for the F-15s to do a direct A/B comparison.
As shared by Kamran, my initial thought was that the bass was a bit "loose", however after the amplifier (my trusty and musical SE84UFO) warmed up, the bass tightened up considerably.
All listening was done with the W-15 bass baffle disconnected and the ZROCK2 was in bypass mode.
My experience with all other Lii Audio drivers is that they require quite a few hours of break-in to "mature" and sound their best ..... so I'm pretty sure that this will also be true of the Fast-15s. Most of the other Lii Audio drivers start sounding good after 100 to 200 hours of playing time, but one of my customers (who has good ears) tells me that his F-15 drivers continued to improve until they hit 500 hours.
I'm looking forward to the A/B comparison with the F-15s, but based on my (imperfect) sonic memory, the Fast-15 drivers are better in the following areas - Better high frequency extension Better detail ..... including "low level" detail Better separation and spacing of vocals and instruments A larger soundstage Deeper and more tuneful bass Improved "realism"
Translating from one language to another is usually an imperfect art, at best. However, here is the statement from the Lii Audio website concerning the Fast-15 drivers - "Since creation of F-15 we have always been thinking about all possible upgrades, after years of development and experiment, we can now proudly present to you Fast-15, a new member of Fast series. This model is optimized in detail and soundstage, giving a more present imaging and fuller sound body. The bass is deeper and more elastic that the energy can be released and pulled back quickly and easily. This model also has high end extension that rolls off up to 18kHz, giving a more vivid and swift sound experience. It uses the same basket as F-15 and can be direct upgrade by replacing the driver unit."
Based on my initial impressions, I can find no faults in this description.
I hope to have a pair of baffles ready for the F-15 drivers in a day or two and be able to share some additional thoughts. Although neither pair of drivers will be fully broken in, they will have enough playing time to be able to make a valid comparison.
Happy listening, Randy
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