Intuitive Summits & R.S. Audio Sasons?

I believe Dale Pitcher, the Intuitive Design owner and designer, will have the Summits at the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest in October, and is planning a trip to tour his facility in Wyoming. This may be a good place to hear the Summits and some of his newer designs. I personally have not heard the Summits but have a lot of his other, amazing equipment and am looking forward to hearing them.

I own the Sasons and love them, but have spoken many many times to Dale about the Summits too. They are, as you said, both very very good speakers with very little ad or review momentum, and the designers are top notch customer-focused folks. RSA's Steve Rothermel set mine up at my house and although they take literally weeks (45-60 days of constant signal) to break in (and sound like crap unitl then), they sing from 35hz and up, and are the most transparent transducers I've ever heard. The lowest registers are dialed in via a Velodyne SMS-1 and a PAradigm Servo 15. Steve and Robert have plans for other speakers in the line, inclding a sub someday.

What is your system made up of, and room dimensions? The Sasons would love to have considerable room from the front wall, and breathing room from the sides is beneficial also. Dr Hoover has his Summits closer to his front wall and his getting great results. Now that mine are well broken in (October 06), I may experiment with putting them closer (but I'll mark the floor in detail before I do...they are great in their current spot 7 ft out into the room).

Ted

Thanks Ted,

I feel both these speakers have so much more to offer in musicality than all others I listened to (maybe the Avalons and Veritys come close)

Rig consists of CEC TL-2X, Museatex Bitstream into Audio Horizons TP 2.0 to VAC 220 Standard Sig monoblocks.

A "pair" of Def Tech Super Cube 2's (8" drivers) are in my current setup with Kinima HG-1 monitors.

At the moment, I'm in a smallish room 13x14x8 (nearfield at low volumes) till my living room is finished.

I spoke to Doc Hoover and Dale Pitcher at length about the Summits of course, but would love to hear BOTH speakers somewhere (closer) ?

As a owner of the Sasons myself, I cannot speak highly enough about them. In my experience they are the most transparent 2 way speaker I've heard under the $25k mark. They have bass that just doesn't seem possible for a speaker of their size sounding very full into the lowest 30 hertz range making them much more of a full ranger than the majority of other two way speaker offerings.

Although I have yet to hear the Summits, from a technical analysis they seem to be couple notches below the Sasons. For instance, the Sasons have - Cryoed tweeters, Ultra high end cryoed and impedance matched internal wiring that are matched to each driver, flow compensated front internal baffle ribs that eliminate sound re-entering the back of the woofer cones, no binding post metals whatsoever with a direct wire to crossover direct connect inteaad, rear user adjustable custom tunable ports, custom magnetics on each of the drivers and the obvious front baffle diffraction facets and full granite cabinetry.

IMHO only the Kharmas and Magicos speakers seem to come close to the Sasons in using many of their design implementations, yet even those "uber speaker designs" are missing more than just a few of the purist design elements incorporated within the Sasons. The designers seemed to have rasied the bar of a "designed to perfection" two way speaker, where their goal was to completely excise all of the traditional "weak links" that would otherwise keep a speaker design from being truly transparent.

Rx8man, I would like to spend my two cents. I have owned the Sason's for about 45 days. I can tell you they are in every sense of the word outstanding. I wrote a little review on these 6 months ago after I heard them at RSAD's place in LaPorte. I have owned two different pairs of Avalon's in the past and without a doubt feel that the Sason's are in a completely different league. I have also owned the Sonus Faber Amati's which do not come close to the Sason's ability to render you to musical nirvana. I strongly disagree with Ted's statement that they need 45 to 60 days of continuous play or they "sound like crap". I have 580 hours on mine and they continue to mesmerize me everytime I am in the sweetspot. It is true that they need a significant amount of break-in, however 500 hours gets you very close to their capabilities. The Sason's also do amazingly well in a wide size range of listening rooms. They are chameleon like in that regard. The sound room at RSAD is only about 12' wide and they sounded incredible in the narrow room. I have been in this crazy hobby for about 30 years and have been a musician for 35 years and can honestly say the Sason's sound like music. They provide that rare occurence of really connecting with the performers and the musical presentation. They are the most transparent design I've listened to, and their imaging and soundstaging capabilities are phenomenal, actually spooky. They are lightening fast and extremely neutral top to bottom. I owned the Sason's for a week and realized that my Vandersteen 2WQ subs and MH-5 crossovers needed to go. One word of caution- if there is a deficiency in your system, room or whatever, the Sason's will reveal it without mercy, they are all about the truth.