SAM effects

[GuillaumeB]

Many people have posted the thought that SAM will have a more of an effect with small speakers than with large speakers. I have experienced SAM with both large and small speakers, and yes, with a quick listen this assumption would appear to be correct. Performing a quick SAM on / off test with bookshelf speakers, and with SAM the little bookshelf speakers sound like floor-standers. Doing the same with my KEF Blades, and the difference is much less. But I would offer an opposing view to the SAM gives more with small speakers view. SAM does give an improvement with the Blades, the bass is better and goes even deeper, drum sounds are more realistic, and some of the bass with electronic music and similar sometimes sounds ridiculously good. One of the reasons I chose Blades was the accuracy and purity of the bass, there are many other fine attributes of the Blades to be sure, but the shear accuracy of the bass was the clincher for me. I was a little worried that SAM would in some way spoil this aspect, but it has not, the Blades now sound even more like Blades. Plus the improvement goes beyond just bass performance, I have also noticed an improvement with stereo imagery, I was not looking out for or expecting this, but it is definitely there. Stereo imagery is not exactly a week point with the Blades either. The new Blade 2 is actually a smaller version of the Blades, with smaller bass drivers. With SAM and the original "full size" Blades I feel a bit like I have new Blades, but bigger better and with larger bass drivers. I know that some have found some negatives with large speaker experience of SAM. I cannot comment on other large speakers other than the Blades, and other peoples experiences may be very different. (although I did have a quick listen of the Sasha 2's with SAM, which sounded very competent indeed) My point is that for me and the Blades, SAM does offer a very significant improvement, and with no downsides that I have discovered so far. Now if SAM can make a £2k bookshelf speaker sound like a £4k floor-stander, then that's a big improvement, say £2k's worth of improvement. But if SAM can offer an improvement to 20k speakers, then how much is that worth? I'm running a 250 and thinking of going for the £8k upgrade of a slave. I don't think the slave will offer the same improvement as SAM, but if any improvement is there, then it might be worth the money. SAM cost me nothing, but I'm thinking that if I had to, I would have paid quite a lot of cash for it. So in terms of monetary equivalent, SAM could be considered as having a much bigger effect with the bigger speaker. It's made me happy at least!

Great post!

Guillaume