If you have followed high-end audio for a while, the name Von Schweikert Audio probably triggers recollections of the large, expensive, “statement-class� loudspeakers that made Von Schweikert speakers a favorite among audio critics in the mid-1990s. At the same time, you might also think, “Whatever happened to that company? We haven’t heard from it in a long time, have we?�

The answer is that—after an auspicious beginning—Von Schweikert Audio suffered a serious setback when runoff from a toxic waste spill at a nearby industrial site flowed downhill, flooding Von Schweikert’s original upstate New York factory and forcing temporary closure of the firm. But Albert Von Schweikert is not one to collapse in the face of adversity, because loudspeaker design and manufacturing is more than his job and business; it’s his passion and labor of love—truly his calling.

After the flood, Albert Von Schweikert slowly regrouped, sometimes taking on work as a design consultant to other speaker manufacturers, and eventually re-established his own company in El Cajon, California. The renewed Von Schweikert Audio still offers statement-class speakers for those who want and can afford them, but now focuses on applying high-end design concepts and technologies to more affordably priced products. A prime example is the VR-2 “Reference-grade Tower Speaker� reviewed here.

At $2500/pair, the VR-2s are among the least expensive Von Schweikert models ever made, but their down-to-earth price does not in any way imply design compromises that will reduce performance with cost. To the contrary, one of Von Schweikert’s design goals for the VR-2s is to surpass the performance of a set of particularly well-regarded $10,000/pair British tower speakers. Can the VR-2 really play in that league? We’ll cover that point in this review, but first let’s look briefly at the speaker’s configuration.

The VR-2 is a 40� tower type speaker with a narrow and deep cabinet housing three forward-facing drive units and one rear-firing “ambience-retrieval� driver. The forward-facing array comprises two 6.5� composite-coned woofers (loaded into a transmission line ducted to the front of the enclosure) and a 1� fabric dome tweeter with soft resin damping layers and ferrofluid damping/cooling. The ambience-retrieval driver is a 1� soft dome mid/tweeter with a wave-guide housing mounted at the top rear of the cabinet. At the bottom rear there is a calibrated ambience driver-level control and dual five-way binding posts.

The speaker’s crossover, which Von Schweikert calls a “Global Axis Integration Network,� features polypropylene capacitors and air-core inductors, with crossover points at 200Hz and 2.2 kHz and fourth-order slopes achieved via cascaded first-order filters. All forward-facing drive units are connected in phase, while the ambience-retrieval driver is fed an out-of-phase ambience signal that, says the VR-2 manual, “is decoded by a special circuit (to recreate) the signal that the recording mic would receive (from) behind the microphone.� The VR-2s are offered in four different hardwood veneers (blond maple, dark cherry, black ash, and African hazelwood), and judging by my dark cherry review samples, the VR-2’s woodwork is exquisite.

At the bottom of the VR-2 enclosure is a sealed damping chamber, called the “Resonance Trap� that can be filled with lead shot. Finally, the VR- 2s come with flare-sided matte-black mounting plinths that bolt to the bottoms of the main speaker enclosures, and provide mounting points for the supplied hardened steel floor spikes. All told, the VR-2s look elegant and feel substantial, with each speaker weighing about 95 pounds once the recommended 25 pounds -per-speaker of lead shot is installed. On the surface, the VR-2s (VR stands for “Virtual Reality�) look like many other tower speakers, but they are designed in accordance with Albert Von Schweikert’s “Inverse Replication Theory,� which holds that “the goal of a speaker should be to behave as a microphone in reverse.�

Thus, the VR-2s are designed to emulate six essential characteristics common to high-performance microphones: 1) high dynamic range; 2) wide frequency bandwidth; 3) low distortion; 4) point-source behavior; 5) coherent driver integration—where all drivers in the array operate in phase and with less than 3ms of time delay in impulse response between the woofer, bass/mid driver, and tweeter; and 6) a microphone-like ultra-wide dispersion radiation pattern that even includes output to the rear of the speaker—output said to mimic “out -of-phase reflections coming from the back of the hall.� The VR-2 owner’s manual, which is one of the best I’ve seen, recommends a specific setup procedure that includes some steps that are out of the ordinary.

First, because the speaker is capable of prodigious low-bass output (and because its ambience-retrieval driver fires to the rear), the VR-2s need to be placed several feet out from the back wall of the listening room. Starting with the ambience drivers turned off, users are urged to try the VR-2s at varying distances from the back wall until an optimal level of low-bass balance is achieved.

Second, because the VR-2 crossover network gives the speaker a distinct “focal axis� (which lies somewhat off to the side from each speaker’s central axis), users need to experiment with speaker and listening-chair placement to achieve optimal imaging and soundstaging. When you arrive at the focal point of the speaker array, you’ll know it, because imaging and soundstaging quality (which is always very good with this speaker) suddenly becomes much better—taking on an eerily holographic three-dimensionality.

Don’t be surprised, though, if you wind up placing the VR-2s considerably farther apart than you would conventionally designed speakers (in my moderately-sized room, I’m using the VR-2s about 3-4 feet further apart than others I’ve auditioned). As a final tuning step, users adjust ambience-driver output to produce the most realistic reproduction of ambience cues in the music (and to match the upper midrange/lower treble power response to fit the room). Once setup is complete, the real fun begins.

I’d like to talk about four specific “signature� characteristics of the VR-2s— positive qualities I think would impress any listener first encountering the speaker. First, this speaker makes tight, powerful, and wonderfully extended low bass that reaches right down into the mid-20Hz region. To appreciate the sheer value of this speaker, understand that it makes low bass as good as or better than some subwoofers that cost more than the VR-2s do! However, there are two “catches.� First, you must fill each speaker’s “Resonance Trap� with 25 pounds of lead shot, and second, you must be sure to use the provided steel floor spikes.

Straight out of the box, the speaker’s mid-bass can sound slightly loose and overpowering, but after the shot is installed and the floor spikes go on, the mid-bass tightens up beautifully, leaving you free to enjoy all the clarity, impact, and extension the Von Schweikert bass drive units have to offer. The VR-2’s fine bass is something you can appreciate not only in recordings where low-frequency instruments are prominent, but also in unexpected places where clean low bass suddenly makes the music sound more alive by letting you hear background hall sounds or the quiet, forceful pulse of a foot keeping time as in the “Tears in Heaven� track on Eric Clapton’s Unplugged [Reprise].

Second, the VR-2s have a level of dynamic responsiveness that is really quite extraordinary, and that makes you instantly aware that most speakers are guilty, at least to some degree, of compressing the signals they are fed. The VR-2 handles both subtle and dramatic dynamic shifts in music with unflappable ease, and in a way that conveys the sheer liveliness and power of music. A musical example will illustrate the point. On the “Gentle Shifts South� track of Jason Moran’s Modernistic [Blue Note Records], the VR-2s reproduce the attack and decay of Moran’s piano in a way that makes you remember how truly touch-sensitive the instrument is— capable of so many different voices within voices.

What the VR-2s get right, and many speakers do not, is that exact and critical moment when the hammer strikes the strings and the note is born. The VR-2s reproduce the sharply rising edge of each note without any compression I can hear, and without apparent ringing or overshoot. On many recordings, you may almost have the sense that they remove an unwanted “compressor� from your system, allowing you to hear dynamics as they were meant to sound.

Third, imaging and soundstaging with this speaker are excellent, though with the minor qualification that you must take the time to find the focal point of the speaker array to achieve the best results. As I mentioned in discussing speaker setup, you will likely find the VR-2s sound best when placed quite far apart, and the Von Schweikert manual emphasizes this point, stating, “In general, the sound stage will be constrained to the distance between the speakers, so if you have the VR-2s only six feet apart, you will hear a small sound stage� (italics are mine).

When seated at the focal point of the array, you will hear instruments and vocalists presented with a convincing, full-bodied three-dimensionality, where each instrument and performer occupies a believable space within the soundstage. Admittedly, part of what makes the presentation so captivating is that you find yourself gazing into the wide, empty space between the speakers while marveling at the vivid, finely focused sonic images that emanate from that space. A good example would be the Modern Jazz Quartet’s The Best of the Modern Jazz Quartet LP [Pablo], where the shimmering, radiant sound of Milt Jackson’s vibraphone seems so real (so downright tactile) that you almost feel as if you could get up from your chair, walk between VR-2s, and touch the instrument.

Finally, the VR-2s do a wonderful job of capturing ambience cues in the music, a characteristic I attribute both to the speaker’s very wide dispersion to the front, and to its rearfiring ambience driver (whose output users can adjust to taste or to fit room characteristics, or even turn off completely). If you tend to be an audio skeptic, you might wonder whether Von Schweikert’s ambience driver isn’t—bluntly—a gimmick, but I’m pleased to report that it’s not. On the contrary, used judiciously, the ambience driver helps provide a subtle and completely natural sounding ambient context for the music.

By “ambient context� I mean those myriad small reflections and reverberations you hear at a live musical event that form the slightly diffuse, enveloping setting within which performers are heard. What intrigues me is how seamlessly ambience-driver output merges with output from the forward-facing drivers; it never sounds like an artificial sound effect, nor does it in any way disrupt the speaker’s imaging precision.

Surprisingly, though, the ambience driver does enable listeners seated to the side of the “focal point� to enjoy decent imaging and soundstaging, and the driver also helps you tune the speaker’s upper midrange/ treble power response to fit the room (more output for “dark,� heavily damped rooms; less output for “bright,� live-sounding rooms). There are only a few minor drawbacks to the VR-2 design. One is that the speaker is not very tolerant of recordings where instruments have been hard-panned to the left or right channel.

On such recordings, the VR- 2’s wide separation (normally an asset) suddenly becomes a liability, as the three-dimensional image temporarily collapses and offending instruments seem to get flung to the far edges of the soundstage. Generally, this won’t be a problem with good recordings, but the effect can be a little unnerving when it does arise. A second shortcoming is the speaker’s relative sensitivity to toe-in, where it pays to remember that when you use toe-in to point forward facing drivers inward, you are also pointing the rear-facing ambience drivers outward (potentially creating an audible “hole in the middle� in the ambient soundfield).

After experimenting extensively with varying degrees of toe-in, I concluded the speaker sounded best in my room with no toe-in at all. Apart from these two points, the VR-2 is a trouble-free design that is a joy to use. Von Schweikert’s VR-2s deliver great value for your money, offering holographic imaging and soundstaging plus an uncanny ability to convey the sheer drama and excitement inherent in music.

To borrow Mencken’s phrase, it would be “simple, neat, and wrong� to summarize a speaker like this with a well-intended list of audiophile virtues. After the virtues have been noted and cataloged, the really important point is that Von Schweikert’s VR-2 is a $2500/pair speaker that at times gives you vivid glimpses of what live music sounds like. And that is why, whether you are shopping in this price range or not, the VR-2 is a speaker you’ll want to hear.