Audiophilepure

Acora SRC-1 Speakers

Practicality aside, the SRC-1s are beautiful. Not entirely as black as the Spinal Tap album cover, they still have some detail in the black, looking absolutely beautiful when light hits them. They are austere enough that they should work within any décor, though they probably lend themselves to a more modern room. As does everything black. The amount of time and precision to cut granite to this level of accuracy should not be overlooked either. The cabinet joints and driver cutouts are perfectly executed.

Again, the GoldenEar BRXs sounded quite different in that room. With the subwoofers, the BRXs really let go of the music. They sounded big, powerful and decidedly full-range. Compared with the Triton References, the BRXs sound a bit more laid back, not nearly as forward, and dang it, I preferred them to the big $11K/pair towers.

So what were the lessons learned while listening to the GoldenEar BRX monitors with several different systems over long periods of time? This opens up a Pandora’s Box for high-end audio reviewers, because my findings suggest that you’ll never quite know the true nature of an audio component unless you listen to it with everything under the sun. That’s it, time to pack it up and go home. We reviewers sit on a throne of lies.

It’s funny, because we just received a comment from a reader who dismissed one of our amplifier reviews because any sonic differences are due to the loudspeakers used, or something like that.  Both Grover Neville and I responded with nearly the identical opinion that we can always hear what the amplifier is doing–through the speakers, not because of them. In my days as an exhibitor, we used to call that “hearing through.”