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JA Perspecitve Stereophile review

Just read the review and am scratching my head a bit so wondering what you guys think. Although Atkinson recommends them in the end it comes with some big caveats in terms of less than stellar bass and a boost in the presence range that he termed "hot." Looking at the frequency response graph it does show a boost in that region on the graph and relative to a couple other speakers, but I've listened to many JA speakers in many settings -- including the Perspectives -- and "hot" is not a word I would attribute to any of them so I find this very curious (nor can I recall any other review of a JA speaker where they're called hot or bright sounding). I know it's relative and personal preferences, etc., but still. Also, not too much said about imaging/disappearing, which I've always found to be a competitive strength particularly with JA speakers so surprised that wasn't more of a standout although he does generally find imaging to be a positive.

Also curious is that Atkinson is usually pretty good at providing direct product comparisons and given he just had the Vandersteen Treos in house I find it strange he didn't compare the two or compare anything else to the Perspectives directly (although I guess we could infer the Treos or maybe the Giya G3, but I'd find direct comparisons much more useful here). What's more, he mentions stiff competition from several other speakers he lists in the conclusion section (including the Treos) and all of them are 30% to 60% cheaper than the Perspectives. Taking all this together and reading between the lines as we must do when reading these reviews, I can't help but view this as a backhanded slap against the Perspectives.

Lastly, I have to say while I generally respect Atkinson I sometimes wonder if his measurements sometimes bias his findings. Don't get me wrong, I think he's probably writing what he hears, but you can almost look at his graphs and predict a good bit of what he'll find upon listening. Obviously measurements matter but the skeptical side of me just finds the correlation a bit too tight.

Anyway, I just found the review a bit surprising and disappointing given my past experience and just looking for some other, er, perspectives on this. And no I don't own JA speakers (although I'd love to) and no affiliation with JA whatsoever.
soix
soix OP
2,133 posts
 
It just clicked that this kind of incongruity with general experience happened once before relatively recently with Lichte's follow-up review in 2010 of the Totem Forest speakers:

"But while the Forests' imaging greatly improved with the addition of ballast, I never got them to create the truly holographic soundstages LG wrote of. Sound tended to lump up around each speaker instead of being spread evenly between them."

This is exactly the opposite of any experience I've had with Totem's speakers (and apparently LG's too) and seems eerily similar to the incongruity I'm sensing now with the review of the Perspectives. That Atkinson was also not overwhelmed with the Josephs is definitely a concern, but I'm wondering if there may be something with Eric's setup that just doesn't work with certain speakers. Very odd indeed. I'm not at all looking to defend the Perspectives here, but something just seems a little weird here. Looking forward to more opinions/experiences.
mikey8811
194 posts
 
FWIW, I think it's all subjective and in the context of a system and room they are played in. My friend has a pair of Pulsar's which he raves on about and I heard them in a showroom driven by Theta solid state. I found them pretty bright and grating but don't think my friend has tin ears.
viridian's avatar
viridian
4,184 posts
 
As far as the accentuated presence range of these speakers goes, Jeff Joseph is a canny listener, if not a canny designer, and no doubt, matches his speakers with complementary gear at shows and comes up with a very fine sound.

Reviewers must slot a product into their existing system architecture and this can lead to a less than favorable result. That's really pretty simple.

The fallacy here being that a given component has a sound, when it only has a sound within the context of a system. And that context can make it sound favorable or not so wonderful. Very few components will sound great in every context.

As far as this whole imaging/soundstaging thing goes, if stereo reproduction is a parlor trick, then this imaging thing is a parlor trick within a parlor trick. IMHO, it is more an artifact than anything concrete. Concrete as in stereo, meaning "solid".
jmcgrogan2's avatar
jmcgrogan2
6,346 posts
 
I lost respect for JA many, many years ago, when he was pimping the hell out of ML gear. Every unit I tried sounded awful in my room to my tastes. I think he should just stick to measurements, I think he's deaf.
jafant's avatar
jafant
10,525 posts
 
An audiophile friend has both the pulsar & perspective JA speakers. He uses Octave V110 integrated amp on them. The sound is very good, not outstanding, as these speakers are missing the bottom 2 octaves (no pun) of bass. Nothing that cannot be corrected w/ a small subwoofer (like REL!).
IMO.

I do want to audition the Pearl 2/3 series. Anyone have a local dealer/retailer that actually has them for audition?
All The Best.
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