Any in depth Reactor reviews or users here?

[ogs]

You cannot compare a mono reactor to a stereo pair of gold !

Which is exactly what I said on my post. The amplitude balance of Reactors may well be similar to it's bigger siblings, but my main point was that quite a bit of mid range was coming from the woofers not the front driver. This tells me that cross over is fairly high to compensate for the fact that the front driver has too little capacity in lower mids.

[Jean-Marie]

Jean-MariePersonally I would do the opposite. Sure if I can in a near future afford a second gold, I could opt for a single gold for a while instead of a stereo reactors, but if it is to last, I would favor a pair of reactor in stereo over any mono speaker.

Mono speakers playing stereo program, no matter how smart they are, is always a big loss compared to stereo.

Jean-Marie
PS, although my system is not based on phantoms nor reactors, I have listen extensively to golds in stereo as well as reactors in stereo, and I honestly consider that a pair of reactors is as good as my current system (which costs 5 times more) except in one compartment: bass extension where the reactors are beating my speakers hands down.

Same experience here. My old system is based on two Prame high efficiency horn speakers with dual 30 cm woofers in two separate cabinets and a horn speaker for medium and highs in between them, with a tube amplifier (2A3 tubes) to drive them. When using spotify connect in best quality with this system (with chromecast audio and a good Musical Fidelity DAC), I get roughly the same sound as with a pair of 600 reactors connected to the same digital source (spotify), (with no need to add cables, DAC, or amplifier).  
My old system has speakers as high as me, they must weight 20 times the reactor's weight, and the reactors (in stereo) sound so similar, it is hard to distinguish which system is on with your eyes closed if the volume setting is the same. I have never heard any lack of medium range in the reactors used in stereo. In fact the measures made somewhere else on this forum show that frequency response is basically flat from 20Hz to 15kHz. People are not used to hear a flat frequency response down to 20Hz from speakers this small, they just think there is less medium range because they hear the higher bass output they never hear with shelf speakers or small columns. But a deeper bass does not get in the way of a good midrange response, as you can hear from a huge horn speaker with large dual bass woofers. 
Those reactors in a stereo setup are truly revolutionary, and also much easier to carry, set up and use than the phantoms premier, silver or gold. They beat any speaker in their size and price range, in my opinion.

I cannot agree more.

Phantoms are somehow bringing in the same benefits of High Efficiency Systems in terms of dynamics and SPL in a form factor that is smaller than most conventional Low Efficiency speakers...

Quite a feat in my humble opinion.

Jean-Marie

[petrik]

I have had a pair of Reactor 900s for a while now. I can mostly agree with the comments above that these do sound very, very good in general. They sound is smooth and pleasant all the time. The most surprising thing definitely is that these do generate a lot of bass for their size. My Reactor 900s are located in a quite big room, roughly about 40 sqm and away from walls, and I think that these still do generate too much bass in this room. They sound a bit heavy and slow because of this reason. I wish there would be a parametric EQ or some similar solution for doing the room correction as I prefer a flat frequency response in the bass. Therefore I would say that the bass, one of the biggest strengths of the Reactors is in the same time its biggest weakness. This of course depends on your personal preferences regarding the SQ, room acoustics and where you place these in the room.

I have asked from Devialet's support if there would be some way to adjust the bass but unfortunately their answer is 'no'. Here is the message that I got from them:

We didn't add EQ setup to our Speaker because we don't want to adjust the sound quality or change it but, we would like to keep what the musician produced and all the adjustment that the've done.

It's just the fact that I'm not getting "what the musician produced" because of the room acoustic issues and there is no way to do the room correction with the Reactors...

I have compared these directly to the Genelec 8330 speakers that have a built-in room correction making it possible to get a flat frequency response to the listening position. The biggest difference between the Genelec 8330 and the Reactor 900 is definitely in the bass. The Genelec 8330s aren't capable of doing the bass below 45-50 Hz but they still happen to sound very involving and exiting to listen to. Reactor 900s sound a bit smoother, maybe also slightly darker, and definitely more like a full range speaker as they go down to about 25 Hz in my room, but in the same time the Reactor 900s generate too much bass in my room and probably this makes the sound a bit boring and slow overall when compared to the Genelec 8330.

[fgleason]

I have had a pair of Reactor 900s for a while now. I can mostly agree with the comments above that these do sound very, very good in general. They sound is smooth and pleasant all the time. The most surprising thing definitely is that these do generate a lot of bass for their size. My Reactor 900s are located in a quite big room, roughly about 40 sqm and away from walls, and I think that these still do generate too much bass in this room. They sound a bit heavy and slow because of this reason. I wish there would be a parametric EQ or some similar solution for doing the room correction as I prefer a flat frequency response in the bass. Therefore I would say that the bass, one of the biggest strengths of the Reactors is in the same time its biggest weakness. This of course depends on your personal preferences regarding the SQ, room acoustics and where you place these in the room.

I have asked from Devialet's support if there would be some way to adjust the bass but unfortunately their answer is 'no'. Here is the message that I got from them:

We didn't add EQ setup to our Speaker because we don't want to adjust the sound quality or change it but, we would like to keep what the musician produced and all the adjustment that the've done.

It's just the fact that I'm not getting "what the musician produced" because of the room acoustic issues and there is no way to do the room correction with the Reactors...

I have compared these directly to the Genelec 8330 speakers that have a built-in room correction making it possible to get a flat frequency response to the listening position. The biggest difference between the Genelec 8330 and the Reactor 900 is definitely in the bass. The Genelec 8330s aren't capable of doing the bass below 45-50 Hz but they still happen to sound very involving and exiting to listen to. Reactor 900s sound a bit smoother, maybe also slightly darker, and definitely more like a full range speaker as they go down to about 25 Hz in my room, but in the same time the Reactor 900s generate too much bass in my room and probably this makes the sound a bit boring and slow overall when compared to the Genelec 8330.

I also have my Reactors in a small room and the bass is a problem.  I see you have Roon also. I used REW and the instructions on the Roon site to measure and create Parametric EQ settings to reduce the bass until it is as near flat as I can get it.

[petrik]

Thanks for the help @fgleason! That would definitely work but I don’t use Roon with the Reactors so much. I use Reactors mainly with a television (using digital input on the Reactors), and sometimes I use also AirPlay. I think the Reactors would be almost perfect speakers if they would have a built-in room correction.

[RMK]

I love the bass!

[fgleason]

Thanks for the help @fgleason! That would definitely work but I don’t use Roon with the Reactors so much. I use Reactors mainly with a television (using digital input on the Reactors), and sometimes I use also AirPlay. I think the Reactors would be almost perfect speakers if they would have a built-in room correction.

Oh yes, I am also trying to find a solution for use with a television.  One possible solution which I have not tried is the DDRC-22D with Dirac Live from miniDPS (https://www.minidsp.com/dirac-series/ddrc-22d). It has optical input/output and a universal power supply. It would not help with AirPlay unfortunately.

[eniriop]

I love the bass!

Me too ! If you listen to modern music, from jazz to pop, rap or reggae, it is the bass that makes the music exciting, that makes you tap your feet and dance, because the rythm section of a band is all about the bass line...If you listen to classical music, chamber music, baroque music, of course you don't need a lot of bass... Just go to any rock, pop or jazz live concert and compare to what you hear at home on most small speakers the size of the reactors: the difference in "excitement" is huge because small speakers don't do justice to the bass line...except for the reactors of course   .   People have adjusted to and have get used to the lack of bass in their home set up (except those that can afford huge speakers with several big woofers).  When they hear the kind of bass of a live concert at home (even when listening at low volume) they are shocked (and  their neighbors are shocked too ).
Go to this spotify playlist:
https://open.spotify.com/user/21tt2txesm...hqwQk7nx_Q

[eniriop]

   

[petrik]

That's why I said that it depends on your personal preferences regarding the SQ

I just don't happen to like bass boosted frequency response because I have got used to having a flat frequency response in the bass. It has nothing to do with how low the speakers can go. The Reactor's bass response is not flat in real rooms as we can see from @eniriop 's measurements and that is completely as expected since there is no room correction feature in the Reactors. That is totally fine if you happen to like that kind of response. It's just not my cup of tea and therefore I'm trying to figure out some way to get a flat response.

I guess I didn't expect that the Reactors would have this much power in the bass. So much power but no way to control it.