Sparsness revealed

Listening to Pat Metheny "Bright Size Life" I realize for the first time how sparsely 'populated' it is. Having never looked closely at the sleeve (I listened to it mostly - but not exclusively - in the car for some reason) I see now that it's a trio! Of course having Jaco Pastorius on bass helps give the illusion of many more people, but even so...   

So why does this matter? Well, that I noticed I think suggests that the MkIIs are reveling much more detail than the DM6s. When you're listening for differences it's not hard to imagine ones that sometimes aren't really there. But this time I wasn't; I just put on the disk for something to listen to and the instrument separation leapt off the page. They may not be perfect but they're good enough to keep.

One month on..

A month of living with the Mk IIs and I'm not disappointed. They're not as clear as perhaps they could be, and spatial separation doesn't leap of the page, but they do reveal more detail than the DM6s. This may be a function of reflection in a small room. Of course, you might rightly suggest that a pair of 40 year old loudspeakers is hardly the best benchmark. Not only is physical deterioration potentially a problem, but technology and design have moved on since the 1970s.

That being said, it's all I've got (other than a pair of Kef bookshelf speakers I bought in 1990 - which I don't know I can find anyway). So I'm going to use the staircase approach. The Mk IIs are better than the B&W. The Phase V should, if I get things right, be better than the Mk IIs.

Of course, I'm not entirely sure what happens when the next design is worse than it's predecessor. However, using better drivers (I have already bought the AC 250F1s for the woofers) in the Phase V should reduce the likelihood of that happening.