How Bleak Was My Puberty...

no, wait, that was Peggy Cass. I'm thinking bleak as in the weather-
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Bleak weather in the city often makes buildings visually pop, stand out in a different hue or angle, but in the country, bleak is bleak, like Thomas Hardy bleak. I often feel like Tess dragging her dress thru the muddy beet fields.
So what better way to counter that then to run inside and play with the newly adjusted Vandersteen Quatros, which bring a warm glow to any room-
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A pair of Vandersteen Quatros in walnut, here driven by an Audio Research REF75, connected by Audioquest WEL speaker/interconnect cabling.

and I'm here to tell you, properly set up, these speakers, starting at $13,900, are simply stunning. Admittedly, it's taken me a while to get the most out of them. I finally bought the original analog Radio Shack SPL meter -  the newer digital unit is miscalculated and not to be used- and what a difference it made in giving me the proper measuring of the 11 different frequency controls on the Quatro active subwoofer. It does take a bit of doing, yet once done, it's forget and enjoy. Unless you decide to move the speaker to a different wall or room, then it's back out with the SPL meter and more calculations.
Yet what large speaker can give you such an option? With most speakers you move the speaker around for the best bass, then go from there. Quite often where you want to actually place them for aesthetic reasons is not where your speaker will sound its best.
The Quatro is much more forgiving, since once you work on basic setup and have what sounds like a great mini-monitor, one then plugs in the subs and dials them in, and you have a very full range loudspeaker.