by ANTHONY H. CORDESMAN
Company Address: c/o Itone Audio, 3429 Morningside Dr., El Sobrante, Cal. 94803; 510/222-4276.
above: Seven drivers, laid out in a symmetrical array, are on the
VMPS FF-3 Front panel.
We should not let the latest developments in digital and audio/video technology blind us to other improvements in audio. Speakers, for example, are far better than they were several years ago. Although the improvements have been evolutionary rather than revolutionary, the benefits are usually far more audible than those in D/A converters and CD players, for example. Today's high-performance speakers have much flatter frequency response than their predecessors and offer striking improvements in dynamic range, resolution, transparency, bass power and extension, and sound-stage realism.
The VMPS FF-3 ($4,400 a pair) is a good case in point. This is a product in which evolution has clearly paid off. The FF-3 is a smaller version of the FF-1, which I reviewed in the June 1994 issue. However, the FF-3 has a completely new midrange driver that radically improves the speaker's smoothness and musical realism.
Its soundstage is even better than the FF-1's, and there's a smoother transition from the midrange to the bass. Similar improvements have been incorporated in the FF-1, but the FF-3 is a much better speaker than the original FF-1. In fact, a properly set up pair of FF-3s provides a remark ably realistic illusion that you are actually sitting in the middle of a concert hall.
The FF-3 builds on the strengths of the FF-1. Extensive efforts have been made to reduce cabinet vibration and coloration. The FF-3 is truly massive, weighing 265 pounds. As you might expect from its weight, the FF-3 is also large (although it is smaller than the FF-1); it is 63 inches high, 13 inches wide, and 18 inches deep. The front baffle is a 3-inch, medium-density fiberboard laminate, and it has 2-inch-thick sides and back. It contains large H-braces, and the cabinet's interior is coated with a heavy damping compound, Soundcoat. This borosilicate com pound was invented to control the noise in marine engine rooms; VMPS claims that it reduces panel vibration in the FF-3 by an addition al 10 dB over a relatively broad band.
The FF-3 is well finished, and its curved edges and narrow width do reduce its visual impact. Nevertheless, big is big! This is not a speaker for small listening rooms or those who want their audio equipment to be invisible. Yet size, like weight, has its advantages. It takes a large cabinet to produce bass that extends down to the FF-3's rated 24 Hz at-3 dB.
It takes a large front panel for the designer to be able to place seven drivers in a fully symmetrical array that enables them to act as a natural-sounding apparent point source. And it takes a tall front panel for the designer to place the drivers high enough from the floor so that they'll be at the optimum listening height.
The FF-3 has an unusually complex driver array. A 10-inch, slot loaded, down-firing passive radiator provides sub-bass. This passive radiator is mass-loaded and offers adjustable damping. A 10-inch, woven-carbon-fiber woofer is at the top of the front panel, and an identical woofer is at the bottom. These woofers have damped baskets and 3-inch phase plugs. The phase plugs, an unusual feature of VMPS speakers, are intended to reduce the amount of midrange information and distortion produced by the dust cap at the center of the woofer while improving focus and clarity.
The FF-3's most striking drivers are its two Dynaribbons. These new midranges, made by SFA USA and exclusive to the VMPS line, look like small washboards and have an unusual design. They have serpentine voice coils, and their flat polymer diaphragms, which are corrugated and dim pled for strength and rigidity, are suspended at the edges by a mechanism that provides damping and centering while allowing linear travel. A slotted, distributed, push-pull magnet structure provides equal drive force over each midrange's entire diaphragm. VMPS believes that these low-moving-mass midranges offer many of the advantages of ribbons, planars, and electro statics while providing more efficiency, linearity, and control.
The remaining drivers in the VMPS FF-3 are two Vifa 1-inch metal-dome tweeters and the same leaf-type ribbon super-tweeter used in the FF-1. Unlike the FF-1, however, the FF-3 has an internal crossover. This crossover uses top-quality components, including Wondercap/Hoveland Musicaps, Solen polypropylene capacitors, and bobbin-less coils. The midrange and treble wiring is silver-plated, solid-core, and Teflon-insulated; the wire to the woofers is 8-gauge. The crossover's basic design is a quasi-second order filter with 6- and 12-dB slopes. Two sets of input terminals enable biamping or bi-wiring.
The FF-3 offers an unusually wide range of adjustments. Separate midrange, treble, and super-tweeter level controls are on the back, but you must use them judiciously.
Minor adjustments make major differences in sound; the recommended settings VMPS has marked on the back panel may well be the best in most setups. The FF-3 is also de signed so that you can adjust the damping on the passive radiator, a feature likely to be of considerable value to many people.
Slight changes in bass damping can help in getting the most extended deep bass and best transient response in a particular listening room and location. This makes the FF-3 an exceptionally good buy for audiophiles who want deep bass in a mid-sized listening room.
One thing became very clear during my extended listening sessions with the FF-3. Once it was properly placed, adjusted, and broken in, this speaker was capable of producing a remarkably natural concert hall sound, and it reproduced the natural sound of acoustic instruments with extreme accuracy. Its soundstage was highly detailed without being over-precise or unnatural. The FF-3 is the first VMPS speaker whose midrange and resolution equals the quality of its bass and dynamic range, which have always been the strength of the VMPS line.
The FF-3 was remarkably free of audible deviations in frequency response and timbre. Its overall spectral balance was slightly on the soft side, in the sense that its upper midrange and treble response were closer to the overall balance of speakers like the Quad ESL-63 than to the frequency response of speakers like the Thiel CS7. The FF-3 also reproduced dynamic transients in ways that were closer to the performance of the B&W 801 Matrix Series 3 and Quad ESL-63 than to that of the Thiel CS7 or Apogee Studio Grand. The FF-3's overall character was similar to what you'd hear in the middle of a well-balanced or slightly warm concert hall than the more forward sound of the Thiels and Apogees. It's the difference between sitting in rows D through F and rows M or N.
The FF-3's resolving power was excellent. This impressive speaker did an excellent job of revealing musical nuances and differences between associated components. It clearly revealed the sometimes striking differences in the deep-bass energy and transient response of different digital signal processors and in upper midrange and treble harmonics.
More important, the FF-3 did an excellent job in reproducing the full range of solo piano, violin, and other instruments and in delineating voices. The difference between different makes and types of instruments was exceptionally clear, yet there was no highlighting of any part of the frequency band or shift in sound character according to loudness. Some top speakers make instruments seem slightly more live, but the FF-3 never made a natural, high quality recording of solo instruments or voice seem unnatural or unreal. As an example, play the voice and musical instrument tracks on Alan Parsons' and Stephen Court's Sound Check album (Mobile Fidelity SPCD 015).
The VMPS FF-3 provided very realistic bass. It had most of the energy and deep bass extension of the FF-1, and it's one of the few speakers that can really deliver the bottom of the bottom octave. The FF-3 favors realism over the emotional and musical impact of most previous VMPS speakers I've heard. It did very well with bass spectaculars, but there was no overhang to boost the impact of the bass. Detail was very good, and the transition from the mid-bass to the midrange was very realistic. (This may not always please rock and synthesizer fans, but it helps yield excellent reproduction of organ music and drums.) The FF-3 could handle extremely demanding organ recordings, such as the Dallas Wind Symphony's Pomp & Pipes (Reference Recordings RR 58). I suspect that most audiophiles will find their listening rooms impose more coloration on the bass they hear than this speaker does.
The FF-3's midrange was exceptionally clean and far closer to the neutrality of the best electrostatics and planars than the midrange of any previous VMPS speaker.
As I mentioned, the FF-3 did not appear to have quite the dynamic speed and life of the Thiel CS7s and the Apogee ribbons, but this is not a criticism. Anyone who has ever changed positions during a live performance has heard similar differences in sound, and it is very difficult to determine what sound is "right"--if such a term can be applied at all.
The balance of recordings, electronics, interconnects, and speaker wires I used played a large part in my reactions to this VMPS speaker. I found, for example, that the FF-3's midrange did a very good job of matching the sound of Classé Audio electronics but did less well with Krell electronics. Likewise, the FF-3 did much better with cables that emphasize flat, fast response than some of the high-end wires that claim to smooth the upper octaves or sound more tube-like.
The FF-3's upper-octave balance was slightly softer than I remember the FF-1's as being, but there was a very realistic match with the sound of the Dynaribbon drivers.
In fact, you should not boost the treble control of the FF-3 much beyond the manufacturer's recommended setting. As with every other speaker I have auditioned that has treble and midrange level controls, you should set the treble energy to provide the most natural overall musical sound after you have achieved the best midrange set ting, not vice versa.
The FF-3 provided an unusually natural balance of upper-octave energy at my listening position. This balance, by the way, may not suit audiophiles who are more into sheer sonic detail than musicality. But I was struck by the fact that high-frequency harmonics were natural in terms of their energy and their impact in defining the soundstage. In particular, the VMPS loudspeaker did an exceptionally good job of reproducing higher frequencies of the violin on Arturo Delmoni's Bach, Kreisler, Ysaye (Water Lily Acoustics WLA-WS-07).
The FF-3 not only reproduced the upper octaves of solo instruments well, it also revealed the kind of detail in orchestral and complex musical passages that require good resolution and a musically realistic frequency balance. The FF-3's treble and upper-midrange dispersion provided very good and stable reproduction of the direction and placement of instruments and voices.
The FF-3 is a speaker that combines excel lent focus with a relatively wide sweet area for listening, and it did an exceptional job of making small musical groups seem like they were really in the room. To hear this effect, listen to Gary Shocker's album Flutist (Chesky CD 46) and the Newman & Oltman Guitar Duo's recording Passions (Sheffield Lab 10058-2-F).
Like the original FF-1, the FF-3 handled dynamic changes well, from the softest shifts to the sharpest peaks. This is a speaker that can play cleanly to the limit of what any sane listener could ever want. Once again, however, I should stress that the FF 3's transient reproduction was slightly less fast or live than that of some other speakers.
This is not to say that it did not have a high degree of transparency; it did. But the FF 3's transients and dynamic nuances were more like those you'd hear sitting in the middle of a concert hall than the more up front sound of some competing speakers.
The FF-3's soundstage was remarkably coherent and exceptionally wide; it neither lost depth or natural detail nor created a hole in the middle. VMPS suggested that these speakers be placed very wide apart and angled to ward the listening position. With this placement, I could hear about as much soundstage detail as orchestral recordings can provide without stretching or distorting the sound of solo instruments, voices, or small jazz groups.
This integration of soundstage detail, dynamic nuances, and accurate timbre with its middle-of-the-hall sound is one of the FF-3's many strengths. It is one of the few speakers that can get the best out of recordings of massive works, such as Mahler's Eighth Symphony.
The FF-3 is a major step forward for VMPS. It has the most musically realistic balance of any VMPS speaker that I have heard, and it is one of the best monitors available in its price range. It is also a speaker that audiophiles can integrate into their systems and get a consistent level of musical realism. With the right source material and electronics, the FF-3 can provide an exceptional sense of sitting mid-hall at a live performance-regardless of whether that performance is solo instruments, jazz, a rock band, a full orchestra, or grand opera. High fidelity is always a matter of creating illusions, but the FF-3 is further proof that to day's best speakers are making the illusion seem increasingly real.
(Audio magazine, Mar. 1997)
Also see:
VMPS Super Tower/R and Tower II Speakers (June 1989)
BIC America Venturi V-604 Speaker (Equip. Profile, March 1997)
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