Has anyone heard the new Spendor A4 speakers??

My Spendor A6 were damaged. Replaced the drivers but still having issues so the crossovers must have been damaged as well. Thinking about starting fresh with the A6R but saw the announcements about the new A4. I could certainly use to save a few dollars since I already sunk money into trying to repair the A6's. I haven't seen any reviews of the A4's yet and local dealers (NYC) don't have them. Wondering if anyone has heard them. Thx

 

It looks to come with the newer wide-surround tweeter that they use in the Classic line, which IME is excellent.

 

I have been looking at Spendor speakers and it is strange their own website does not show the A4. I am intrigued by the A5R which is a sealed small tower with two 6 inch drivers and the new tweeter. Has anyone heard the A5R?

 

Are you still considering the SpendorA4? I am interested in them too. I am also interested in the A5R but strangely it isn't even shown on Spendors website now. I wonder if they are still in production. WhatHiFi just gave the new A4 a great review online. They claim it is better than the A5.

 

The A4 will have to go a long way to "better" the A5r. This is just Spendor incrementally updating a model line to freshen its market presence in the price bracket.

 

I ended up cracking open the piggy bank and got a new pair of a6r in cherry. Very happy

 

Congratulations! I would love a pair myself but they are well out of my budget. I am still interested in the a5r but due to budget constraints may have to settle for the S3-5R2 which I believe are half the cost of the a5r.

 

I wonder if they already replaced the A5R in the product line with the A4? I believe they are very similar in size and price. I don't think the A5R have been out for very long but it's strange I can't find them on Spendors website now. Maybe I need to ask a dealer.

 

Spendor seems to keep its high end speaker (e.g., the D series) models in the lineup longer than the less expensive lines. The A5r was released in July 2015. I've had them since January of this year. They're terrific - a real homerun for Spendor as far as I'm concerned. I have no idea how well the A5r has sold though, so maybe they're releasing new models because too few customers liked the phyiscal appearance of the A5r and A6r? It's sure not because of sound problems - again, the speakers are wonderful. Anybody in the market for a pair of floorstanders for critical listening in a small to medium size room should audition A5r before they're cleaned out of the distribution channel. The A5r sounds D7-like to me, with the obvious concessions to smaller cabinet size, somewhat less costly drivers, and a somewhat different crossover. Nevertheless, an A5r pair that has been set up well in a vaguely decent listening room provides an audiophile listening experience - detail, impact, balance, imaging, musicality. I auditioned the D7 repeatedly during 2016, but when I finally got around to auditioning the A5r I thought it was close enough to the D7 to make great music in my main listening room.

 

I had a short audition with the A4s a couple days ago. They were paired with very high end sources, so maybe not the best assessment, but they sounded great. The dynamics, imaging, and detail were excellent and of course, best of all, their tone is unmistakably Spendor- as natural as it gets.

 

I would like to audition the A1. The couple of reviews I have read claim that it improves on the S3-5R2 and has better bass extension. I think it is rated down to 55 Hz whereas the S3-5R2 was around 70. I really wish it came with grilles though. My place gets pretty dusty and I don't like my drivers exposed to all that dust all of the time with no covering or protection. A4 sounds nice but are out of my price range.

 

The S3/5 is rated at 75 Hz "anechoic." Spendor recently quit citing anechoic specs in their data sheets, probably because it can mislead the uninformed to believe they have lesser bass extension. I'd bet the typical in-room response is very similar for those models.

My SP2/3s are only rated to "63Hz anechoic," but they have useful extension into the mid 30s in my room. I've also had Harbeth C7s in this room. Their bass extension is quoted as -3db at 46 Hz. The Spendors dig deeper. This is perfect example of why manufacturer-published specs are of little value.

 

One of my dealers was telling me people were looking for a sub when listening to the A4...the bass was that solid. Was that your impression? That was with Parasound electronics I believe.

 

No, but a friend of mine has and he raves about them.

Also - check into the new Proac DT8.

 

In my opinion they better have good bass for $3500.

 

They have great bass for a small floorstander, but whether they negate the need for a sub will largely depend on listener preference and room size. I heard them in a well treated room- approximately 13 x 20' - that had bass traps in each corner. I didn't feel they needed a sub, but I'm not a bass head. Fans of home theater and waking neighbors would likely want a sub.

 

How about the A2s?

 

I haven't heard any Spendors for years, but the A4 won best floorstanders in the £2000+ category in the 2017 UK "What Hi Fi" magazine annual awards - over here the full price retail is £2195 (I guess about $2900 equivalent). The award review is probably on-line.

 

Seriously considering the A4's for a smaller room in my house. Approximately 10 x 14 with low ceilings and bass traps. I had to remove my Harbeth C7ES3 as I found the space limiting (and yet they flourished in another larger room.) The A4's seem to be a rethinking of the A5r and with presumably an uptick in performance. They appear to have eliminated the A5r's 2.5 way design and increased the single bass driver size in the A4, redesigned the crosover to a 2 way and ported the cabinet as opposed to the sealed enclosure. Tweeter appears similar.

Has anyone directly compared the A4 to the A5r? Additionally perhaps in comparison to the Harbeth line with regards to bottom and top end? @Agitater , good lord man, do you actually still own all those wonderful speakers?

 

I've got a collection of eight or ten pairs of speakers right now (including the Spendor A5r). It changes every few months as I audition, return, purchase, trade or sell. I tending toward smaller standmounts right now. More square footage in a new condo (should be a very long-term move for me), but more individual rooms too, hence smaller individual listening spaces and the need to work on the the best possible near- and near-midfield listening setups.

 

I've heard both the C7s and A4s rather extensively, though not in the same rooms and with different upstream gear. The A4s definitley have greater bass extension and dynamics. Of that I have zero doubt, regardless of the room - it's just obvious that Spendor tried to incorporate some ProAC and Epos-like dynamics in these new models. The tonal balance is warmer than the C7s but without any loss in resolution. I think the A4s are also superior regarding the ability to disappear. Whether they'll output too much bass for your room is hard to say. Their rear panels were ~36" from the forward wall where I auditioned them, in a slightly larger room with a high ceiling.

 

My new-to-me SP3/1R2's were rated down to "65Hz anechoic." I see that the updated SP3/1 Classic is now rated down to 40Hz in Spendor's marketing brochure, which seems more accurate to what I'm hearing.

 

I believe my 2/3s are rated at something like 63Hz, but I measure useful bass into the high 30s, and that's in a fairly large room. Gotta wonder how many sales they lost to the competition due to that rating practice.

 

I'm seriously considering replacing my standmount speakers with a pair of the A4's as I'm looking for more bass and a hopefully large soundstage, but still a balanced/neutral sound. Would you think they would be a good match for my Yamaha A-S1100?

I mainly listen near field. I've only ever had smallish standmount speakers before. Would the Spendors be 'too much' for nearfield listening? My room is actually quite long, about 25ft, but only about only about 8.5 feet wide, and I have my system set up at one end of this room with the speakers about 6ft apart currently.

 

They would be an excellent match, especially given that both produce amazingly natural timbre.

I heard SP100s and the A4s in the same room. The soundstage of the A4s was 9/10ths of the SP100s.