Hi all -
I’m considering making the move and at least trying out the FR20’s. I’d like to hear from those that have, and what their prior speakers were, and how they differ.
Thanks so much in advance.
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I have had the FR20 over a year and a half, and if you’re thinking about getting them, just get 'em.
By far one of the best audio decisions I have made.
My previous speakers were the Sonist Audio Concerto 4’s. The midrange and upper frequencies of the FR20 are especially nice, clean, open, wonderful. I was surprised that the bass was much cleaner also versus the Sonist speakers. The Sonist speakers had a ton of magic, and once I finally found the right location for the Sonist speakers, I bought the FR20. It did take some time to get the FR20’s positioned just right, and I am not using speaker feet on them to keep the elevation of the tweeters even with my ears. (the 1st & 2nd photos are older photos)
I also have a pair of Magnepan LRS+, which sound suprisingly good from the sweet spot, but when I reconnect the FR20’s I am reminded of just how good the FR20’s are.
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Sonist Audio makes nice speakers.
Yes, they did, as in the past tense
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I like this question and I am looking forward to the answers.
Should be interesting…
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Wait, how about FR 30 owners? 
just kidding, but I 
FR30, and my previous speakers retailed for $50k.
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I had talked to Paul about the FR30, and he felt for my size room that the FR20 would actually perform better.
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If you didn’t get the vibe from my last post, the FR20’s are fantastic. 
I do have a subwoofer that I use with them, allowing me to place my FR20’s out in the room for best imaging.
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how would you have compared your Sonist speakers with b&w 802d’s?
I recently listened to some music that I am familiar with on the 800D4 driven by McIntosh gear, and I much prefer the FR20’s at home. While music sounded better with the FR20 on my system, music still sounded very good on the B&W.
Comparing the Sonist to the B&W, the B&W sounded much cleaner at the time, though the B&W was driven by cleaner solid state amplification. Though with the Sonist, musical instruments sounded real.
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I have the 1st generation Diamond, the 802d, but have spent time listening to the 802d3, and found them very irritating. Even the 8001d3 with McIntosh gear. Both myself and my son felt you could hear the individual drivers, woofer, midrange, tweeter, and not the music. Have not spent much time with the 800 d4 series.
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The flat panel ribbon midrange and tweeters are why I purchased the FR20, and are the reason why I have no desire for other speakers.
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I had Vandersteen Model 5 (original version) for about ten years prior to getting the FR20 eleven months ago. I haven’t listened to the Vandersteen’s since, so can’t give a detailed comparison but even new with zero hours the FR20 sounded better than the Vandersteen’s. In the ensuing time they only gotten better. They have a nice natural sound to my ears. Surprisingly good bass considering the Vandersteen’s have a built in subwoofer and very detailed and clean mids and highs. The Vandersteen’s were great speakers in the early 2000’s but the planar midrange and tweeter drivers in the FR 20 are much better. And I really need to do something with the Vandersteen’s, they’re in a closet right now.
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Hello, I owned the Thiel Audio CS3.6 for 25 years until I replaced them with the FR20s.
Somehow, I like Passive Radiators.
I remember when I placed the FR20s and started to listen. Everything is “upgraded”. Deeper and tighter bass, wider/deeper soundstage and so on. More natural, realistic sounds. Is that what we call “organic”?
I loved the Theil speakers so much hence I kept them for such a long time. But FR20s are simply better speakers, IMHO.
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Greetings…
I received my FR20’s about 10 days ago. Kudos to PSAudio, I ordered them on Monday morning and they were set up in my studio by noon on Thursday. Amazing service. This will be a bit of a long post because I’d like to pay back to this forum with as much information as possible for those of you who are on the fence about spending $20K on a pair of speakers you have never heard. I’ve been following Pauls journey to get these speakers to market for years now and I decided to give them a chance. I figured he must know something about speakers judging from his involvement with some of the best in the business. Worst case I’d be out around $800 to ship them back.
First I should just chime in with adifferentpaul’s posting of just get them. Yeah they are great and just get them, provided you can easily afford them. Remember they are just speakers no reason to go into debt to buy a pair.
With that said first a history of my speakers so you get an idea of what kind of sound I favor:
AR15 (10 years) → Celestion SL6 (15years) → Elac Avant (1 year fatiguing but work well in my TV surround sound system) → Magnapan LRS (1 year) → Buchardt S400MKII → PSA Aspen FR20. I tend to chose carefully and then stick with my speakers. At this point I believe the Aspens will probably be my final speakers. I will not likely go into the crazy stratosphere speakers that start in the $50K range and go into space from there.
So with the exception of the Maggie’s I favor the sound of closed box aka acoustic suspension speakers. I will admit the most memorable speakers I ever heard were a pair of the original Quad Electrostats. These newer sealed box speakers that use passive radiators IMHO have similar sonic characteristics to the original acoustic suspension speakers.
OK so if you like the sonic profile of a Buchardt or Celestion closed box speakers you’ll love these. The Buchardts are no slouch but if you compare them to the Aspens everything is bigger, better, wider, more open and just really excellent. Of course the FR20’s are over 7X the size of the Buchardts. I regularly think about the 20’s like they are the monolith from 2001 space odyssey. Yeah they are pretty big. I have well over 100 hours on them so far. I did the first 100hr break in period running them 24hr/day playing a steam train 3min loop, I have for sleep background, when I wasn’t playing music. They are still getting better so not sure how long this will continue. I know it can take a new acoustic guitar over a year to fully open up so who knows for sure.
Other questions I had before getting them:
- How big is the base footprint: 17”D X 15”W. The feet are approx 1 5/8” wide and sit about 1” centered from the outer edge.
- Would my system drive these speakers: Well the sensitivity is about the same as the Buchardts. I run the following signal path: (Note my listening room doubles as a home recording studio so all my equipment is fully balanced. The system makes NO sound at all when a signal is not present. So I don’t do cables better than Mogami Quad balanced cables that are some of the best studio cables available.)
— AMP: an Orchard Audio Starkrimson Ultra+ full dual mono with the added capacitor bank. Can drive 500W into 4 ohms all day w/o even getting all that warm using class D GAN FET technology. Most excellent very fast neutral amp with plenty of power and very low power usage overhead. Build the kit if you have the chops, it’s a blast and you save $1K.
—PRE: Shiit Audio Freya+ with the 6SN7 GTB tubes. Adds a bit of sweetener to the signal.
—12 channel mixer Alesis 12R for collecting all the signals from the balanced patch panel.
—DAC/Audio interface RME Fireface UFX+ This unit does a lot more than just act as my D/A converter. Full studio quality recording system. I see no reason I need better equipment than is used to record the stuff I’m listening to.
—Streaming: From a Mac Studio (Currently using Apple Music and Amazon HD)
—Vinyl: From a Technics SL-1210GR running an Ortophon Blue cart and into a Radial J33 studio phono pre-amp that converts the signal to a balanced signal
—CD: From Tascam BD-MP1 that can play anything on a shiny 5” disc.
- How to attach your speakers to the floor: First few days use the excellent big slider discs that come with the speakers. They make moving the 130lb beasts a breeze. (Note just stick a short piece of 2X4 under the end of the stand to change out the feet) You want to wait on final placement for at least the initial 100hrs. I started with them in the same location I had my Buchardts. Well inside the room 5’ from side walls and 3’ from wall behind them. I found two different locations that gave excellent but different listening experience. The original location presented a more head phone like experience. I have had great success with the 83% rule of arranging your listening position so that the distance between the tweeters is 83% of the distance between your ears and the tweeters. I had a buddy come by and we tried a more straight on arrangement wider apart with maybe a degree or two toe in. This gave a much wider sound stage that is not as much in your head. The other benefit the sound quality is quite excellent throughout my room not just in the sweet spot. That is something the Buchardts can’t do. OK about how to attach the speakers to the floor once you are happy with their location. My room has carpet so I first tried the spikes. The sound was good. I’d had run across a lot of rave review regarding isolating speakers using IsoAcoustic feet. But $800 for speaker feet? Who are we kidding (Yeah I said that after shelling out $20K for a pair of speakers). I did find some mention of using Sorbothane discs under the feet. 2 sets of 4 discs (2.25” W X 0.5” thick) a bit over $50 on Amazon. Much better and they work great! So I’m leaning towards isolation for now. That is how the Buchardts are attached to their stands BTW. It’s kind of cool how these 130lb speaker float on the discs. You can push the speakers and they wiggle a bit until the dampening stops them. As always YMMV.
Well that pretty much covers it. Very pleased with my FR20’s and I hope this posting helps anyone who is trying to decide on whether to pull the trigger on a pair.
Enjoy…
bch2
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I forgot to mention subs:
I have a pair of REL TX7 subs in my system. They give that little bit of lower punch and bring the FR20’s to probably what the FR30’s sound like on the low end with the added bonus of being able to place the subs in more optimum location in the room. I’m sure once Chris finishes his subs we’ll be hearing about how well they pair with the 20’s an 30’s
Enjoy…
—bch2
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Congrats on the speakers!!
I was happy with the sound of my FR20’s and thought it could not get much better than it already was, then I borrowed a Grimm MU2 DAC/streamer/preamp. The sound improved dramatically, and the sound, which I thought was open, completely opened up with the much better MU2. The better dac brought a new level of smoothness that my cheaper dac simply did not have in comparison.
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Glad to hear your Grimm sounds so much better than what you were using before, congrats on a great find!!
Well for me, much like cables and preamps tubes vs transistors. They all can sound different and better to an individual. Since my RME is designed for studio work it can do a lot more than just a DAC can. Pretty much anything you can do in a studio, like that used to make the original recordings. I get into the weeds when pre/amp/dac starts heading to $10K or a cable costs many thousands to do what I can just move a knob in my parametric EQ and/or other tweaks in the RME TotalMix system. If I really want to I could also run the signal through Logic and that would open just a crazy number of tweaks I could do with plug ins. I’ll leave that to the recording.
I guess what I’m saying that I think I can be very happy with what I have for some time now. Any refinements at this point will cost a LOT of money and that extra 5% is just not in my plan at this point. Also there is that issue of there being way too many great DAC out there and the quality is tricking down year to year. I have my woodworking hobby to feed as well. Mostly hardwood for a table I’m about to launch on because the shop is kind of finished, (yeah I actually have enough clamps) as well… LOL too many hobbies.
Enjoy…
—bch
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You are correct that improvements may cost $$$, but good components like an MU2 will elevate a system to a whole different level, much more than just a minor 5% improvement.
You could certainly be ok with your system as is (I was with mine (classical and jazz in particular) until I heard MUCH better systems), but I would not intentionally discount the improvements that better electronics would have, as the level of refinement of the FR20’s is off the charts good.
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Thanks for this great and thorough review! Enjoy.
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