Cerwin-Vega CLS215 Speakers. Robert Greene Report

default -- Thu, 02/12/2009 - 14:42

Cerwin-Vega CLS215 Speakers. Robert Greene, thank you for the report in the March 2009 issue. It is fun to here about a $1000 per pair of speakers that have true full range frequency response and concert level output with low distortion capabilities! It sounded to me like your report would put them into the A category or maybe even A+ Class but I was not sure. Robert, would you or anyone else go that far, providing they were set up properly and maybe EQ'd down a little in the base? WOW, that would be a very strong achievement as there are not any under multi-thousands of dollars. As a long time reader/enthusiast, and I think for good majority of readers, we like to read about exceptional value! More like this please. Thanks...Skip Lowell: lowellskip [at] gmail [dot] com

regreene (not verified) -- Sat, 02/14/2009 - 14:08

Thanks for your interest. I am a little reluctant to assign something as one-dimensional as letter grading to something as complicated as speaker performance. But I can say that in my view, one can really get truly impressive performance from these speakers, impressive by any standards, provided one is willing to grant them their premises, so to speak. What this means is a combination of things has to be done.
First, you have to position them carefully. The axis on which they are quite flat is rather specific.
Second, in most rooms you have to adjust the bass electronically because otherwise there is going to be more whoomp, not so much in the deep bass but in the middle to upper bass, than one would want.
Third, one might want to pull out a little energy around 2k if one is a real “flat response” freak.
Finally, they are vertically height sensitive—you have to sit at the right height.
Of course some of these things(the first and last points) are true of most speakers!
But if you are willing to do these things, the sound is truly excellent. Very clean, very uncolored, truly extended at both frequency extremes, and really uncompressed dynamically. I think these speakers set up right and listened to without identification would shock most people as to how good they are. I really really liked them!
Two features of their sound are different from what people are used to ,however—different and to my mind actually better, but still different.
First, most speakers nowadays narrow their radiation pattern quite low down in frequency, starting somewhere around 1 kHz. The directivity starts to rise around that frequency. Now speakers for ordinary rooms ought, in my opinion, to have a good deal of directivity in the higher treble—otherwise they tend to sound too bright. But increasing directivity in the midrange is more debatable.
In any case, the CVs have more nearly constant directivity through the 1-5kHz region than do many speakers. This is associated to the fact that on and near the geometric axis, as opposed to the maximally flat axis(which is about 30 degrees off the geometric axis) the response actually rises.
The second point is that the speakers are quite directional. Set up “over toed” almost nothing is coming off the side walls in the mids on up. This is different from a lot of speakers and emphasizes focus over soundstage expansiveness of the kind that is generated by side wall reflections(as opposed to the kind that is really on the recording!)
Both these differences from ordinary speakers are things to my mind that are better than usual! But one has to note that they are there.
To my ears, the result is really gratifying and truthful to what is on the recording. But it is quite different from what one will hear from say a wide dispersion small monitor.

I hope this helps! Thanks again for your interest.