Article: AXPONA 2019 Best of Show

[ednaz]

I got a set of Gradient Revolutions back in late 1999, when I was sent over to live in Asia for a couple years (so had to leave my US current components in storage at home.) Triangular shaped tower. The woofer is suspended, open air, in the bottom segment. The mid and tweeter are in a separate unit that mounts on the woofer unit, and has a cardioid radiation pattern. (speakers are forward facing, with the other two sides of the triangle open, so that there's some sound radiation there.)

Got them for the reason I think the Rossi speakers sounded so good to you... that open woofer/cardioid mid and tweeter makes the speakers fairly independent of the qualities of the room. Our apartment in Singapore had hard plaster walls, with a wall of windows on one side, and marble floors. The living room dining room was two stories high on one end. The echoing was so bad that when I took a mobile call in the place, the person on the other end literally couldn't understand me.  When we moved in we did what everyone does there - lots of rugs with thick padding, and we hung rugs here and there as decoration. While it made it possible to make phone calls, the place was still WAY too live.

 

At one audio shop, I picked out a couple amps and speakers I wanted to try, and was telling the owner about the awful acoustics. He burst out laughing, and said he'd come by that evening with speakers - the ones I thought I wanted would sound horrible, all room coupling and muddy. Showed up with the Gradients, set them up near the wall at one end of the room, where you'd logically want them... and they sounded amazing. Then he moved them into different placements, and they really didn't sound much different no matter where. He then hooked up a set of more traditional speakers he'd also brought (that cost twice what the Gradients did) and there wasn't a placement that worked. Muck and boom no matter where. He was right. The Gradients stayed.

 

I've had them in several very different rooms since then. Some well damped, some almost as bad as the Singapore place. They always sounded great. The Gradients are a bit bass shy, as the woofer is much smaller than what Rossi's using. In well damped rooms, I added a sub for the last octave.

 

I was excited when I saw the Rossis, since speakers don't last forever and Gradient no longer has a US distributor, until I saw the price...