I'll start off this post by quoting from Pink Floyd's The Wall... "
Is there anybody out there?"...
So, I have been listening to these 18+ year old Monitor Audio Silver 3i monitors for the past few days, and I really like what I'm hearing. With a little placement tweaking, I'm getting pretty decent imaging and soundstaging. These C-CAM tweeters deliver just as much air and spaciousness as the Sonus faber Venere 1.5's, but they do it with a lot more refinement and cleanliness. Not necessarily warmer, just richer.
Today, along with doing a bit more position tweaking, I also decided to remove the cheap homemade 16awg Monster Cable speaker wire jumpers. In doing so, I had to swap out my AudioQuest 72 volt DBS CV-8 speaker cables for my Wireworld Aurora 7 bi-wire speaker cables.
This did a couple things for me...
1) It better translates that warmish "tube sound" of my NuPrime STA 9 amps to those wonderful gold C-CAM tweeters, now giving them just a touch of warmth, yet still remaining airy, extended and refined.
2) With the bi-wire cables, I now have quality cable feeding the mid-bass driver as well instead of that cheap little wire. This produces a fuller, more open, more natural upper bass and midrange that really gels with the tweeters and give real "body" to both male and female vocals. Cello's and viola's have more of that woody sound to them. Piano has more heft and texture to it.
I am utterly shocked at the amount of performance I'm getting from these little monitors. They even do a much better job of blending with the dual JL Audio subs. With acoustic recordings, electronic recordings and speech alone, the blend of the monitors and subs is pretty much perfect.