After a quick peak under the speaker grills revealed that the foam surrounds appeared to be in perfect condition, I snapped them up. New, the speakers would have been $219 each according to Crutchfield. But, for $14 and tax, the thrift store gave me a chance to be a full fledged audiophile!
Of course, there are some minor caveats to my thrift store find. First, in the listening room of a 6500 square foot mansion with a big gate and stone lions, the Definitive Technologies speaker cabinets would be a perfect piano-finish ebony. In my local thrift store, the speaker cabinets had lots of little scratches. Perhaps the installer messed them up? Fortunately, the blemishes are of no consequence in my hovel. In the manor, the speakers would ideally be matched with a subwoofer, a center channel speaker, and a couple more bookshelf speakers as part of an exquisite surround system that would allow some busy executive to find inner peace in his office or listening room. I don't know about all that. But, in our spare bedroom/home office, the speakers instantly displaced those B652 speakers I wrote about in my last post.
My initial impressions are the they sound great for bookshelf speakers! I don't know that I am enough of an audiophile to use words like rich and full, etc. However, these speakers reproduce sound well and sound wonderful to my ear. Like most bookshelf speakers, these do give up some on the bass end of the spectrum. The frequency response is rated as 47 hz to 30 Mhz. These do provide better performance on the higher end than most similar speakers. Overall, these speakers are excellent. For less than $15, these speakers were an incredible find. You can also find them at current new prices on Amazon here.
