Unpacking and Initial Setup
Uncrating the Aquilas wasn't nearly as bad as I had expected. There were a few humorous moments brought on by the sheer absurdity of something this large and heavy being muscled around within the confines of a packed living room... my personal favorite was tilting the speaker back in order to get the dolly under it only to find that I had one foot planted on the concrete floor and the other on a drop cloth. As one foot started to slip I had to make a choice between doing the splits or letting the speaker go.
The crates are assembled with bolts rather than nails or screws so it was simply a matter of removing a seemingly infinite number of 10mm hex head bolts in order to free the top of the crate and one of the sides. The aid of my handy Snap-On 3/8" cordless impact wrench was much appreciated!
With the panels removed the speaker and its packing could be "rolled" out of the crate and onto the floor. Care must be taken so as not to crush toes or any curious pets.
Mistake #1: Crate was too close to the back wall so there was some difficulty in completely separating speaker from crate. If I had about 6 inches behind the crate I could have pushed it free.
In the photo the base of the speaker is furthest away.
Once free of the crate one person needs to lift the bottom half of the speaker while the other removes the foam. Since we were doing this on hard floors we inserted a could of folded up towels under the base of the speaker in order to avoid damaging the finish.
A little less effort is required to remove the top foam and plastic. From there it's pure muscle to tip the speaker upright so that it's resting on its base. These things are really heavy, but the weight wasn't the big concern. I was more worried about the wrap ripping and causing me to lose my grip. Fortunately everything held up and with some effort it was upright and ready to move.
Rockport recommends teflon carpet glides under the base in order to move these, but Andy admitted that hard floors can present a problem. His solution was to use a couple of carpet remnants as runners that the speaker could be slid on. I took a different approach....
Since I'm a geek and had lots of free time on my hands waiting for these to arrive I went looking for the ultimate speaker dolly. A regular 4 wheel furniture dolly would work, but would require the speaker to be tipped quite a ways in order to get the dolly under it. The fear of the speaker sliding off during that stage eliminated that option and I wasn't going to consider dead lifting the speaker onto a dolly.
Instead I found the "Karry King File Dolly" from Raymond Products.
http://www.raymondproducts.com/products.asp?prodID=340
Their site doesn't give very good info on how this works, but I did find some other pictures out on the net. Of course I can't find them now.
Basically it's a dolly specifically designed to move file cabinets. The cabinet is tipped up and this low profile dolly is slid underneath. The location of the wheels allows the dolly platform to tip which requires a minimal amount of movement of the heavy object in order to insert the dolly. Since the front wheels don't swivel the load is stable as the dolly is tipped back down. As a bonus it's vinyl-coated which makes for a good non-slip and non-marring surface.
In other words, it's perfect for moving really heavy speakers.
At this point I tipped the speaker forward and my wife placed the dolly. Aside from nearly singing soprano (see above) this was a completly painless process. Once on the dolly the speaker was easily moved into the listening room.
Speaker #2 generally went without a hitch other than the fact that the crate needed to be moved from the entry way to the living room. The crate is really, really heavy and was a bear to move, but once that was done the unpacking was straightforward.
Once both speakers were in the room I removed the last of the packing and placed them in roughly the same spot that had worked for my Vandersteen 5As. This put the tweeters about 58" from the front wall and 26" from the side walls. I didn't go crazy with measurements and just eyeballed everything. I set a very slight toe-in angle.
Once everything was cabled up I loaded a CD, noted that they sounded nice, and then went to have some dinner. I knew that they weren't going anywhere and at that point I really needed a break.
Around 9:00 I returned and started in with some more serious listening. I didn't want to get all stereo OCD so I listened to some well-known tracks and made some very minor adjustments to positioning. I found that I was able to get them a few inches closer to the side walls and that more aggressive toe-in was needed.
Interestingly enough I found that changing toe-in had a very profound (and positive) effect on sound stage depth as well as 3D image. With slight toe the imaging was very good, but also very flat. With the speakers pointed a a point a few feet behind the listening position the sound stage became very deep and individual instruments gained some meat on their bones. I also noted that as toe increased the bass response became more linear (as if the room effect was being removed from the equation).
I didn't play with positioning much as I was having so much fun listening. All of my initial impressions from the audition held true and I was very pleased to find that the Aquilas weren't overpowering my small room (this was a big concern for me).
Overall everything is better than what I've had before. Tonal balance is very natural. Bass is extremely linear (with measured in-room response down to 20Hz). Sound stage and image are all first rate. Detail retrieval is simply amazing. Easily the best sound that I've ever had in my system. This is espeically encouraging given the fact that the speakers have less than 5 hours on them, aren't spiked, and haven't had their position dialed in. Given that they will only get better with time I'm thrilled.
Didn't get to bed until 2:00AM (with a 5:30 alarm) so they must be doing something right!
Tonight I'm going to need to make the tough choice between catching up on sleep or listening into the wee hours again. Hmm, If I can just make it through the week I can sleep in on Saturday