from Bound for Sound
The VMPS RM 40 Loudspeaker
by MGD

Speakers of this quality come along just about once every ten years. Or so that's the way I figure it. It was about ten years ago, take a year or two, when the Amrita Jovian Pillars graced the confines of the Big Rig and showered me in sonic delights theretofore unheard of. It's happened again. Not with the Jovian Pillars of course, no it’s a different speaker this time though in some respects the sound propagating techniques are similar in concept if not execution. It's the VMPS RM 40 loudspeaker. A speaker that, if you haven't heard about it on the internet or by word of mouth, is shaking up the industry with the quality of its sound as much as it is by the quality of its parts and construction.

Just so there's no confusing the point, I consider the RM 40 to be the sonic equal of any speaker made that moves an equivalent amount (or less) of air. The RM 40 breaks new ground in common sense ways that result in true sonic improvements, not merely in good ad copy. The improvements are real, they are tangible, and they are in many respects revolutionary. No speaker at this price point has ever sounded this good in so many ways. Call it a "Blue Collar" product with the finest in Blue Collar qualities if you will; it's a state-of-the-art product for the working audiophile. And it just happens to be one of the finest speakers money can buy. After careful set-up, I've yet to hear a speaker that can "light up" one end of a room in the manner that the RM 40 can. Bring anything and everything on!!!

Tale of the tape. The RM 40 is 66" x 12.5" x 17" (HWD), weighing at around 240 lbs. per side. Each speaker has two 9" woofers (actual measurement), four 3" x 6" foil planar drivers and two 1" spiral ribbon tweeters. Impedance is a "steady" 4 Ohms (3.6 minimum), and due to the ribbons, primarily resistive above the 166 Hz crossover point. Crossover slopes are 6 dB/octave, and efficiency is 90 dB. The caps in the speaker sent to me were the newest ones from Wondercap. They are "shaved" caps, having been tooled to exact (and I do mean exact) specifications by the manufacturer, a $1,200 upgrade by VMPS. The speakers do not
support bi-wire operation, though there is a second set of terminals for bi-amping, which requires the acquisition of an active outboard crossover and a second stereo power amp. All cabinet walls are a minimum of 1.5" MDF, with the top and sides being an inch and an eighth thicker. Rapping on the cabinets resulted in a lightweight "clack" that was at first somewhat unsettling, it didn't sound very rigid. Don't be alarmed, each speaker is coated with Sound Guard under the veneer which deadens the cabinet while making for a rather unusual rap for the knuckles. Frequency response is 24 Hz to 25 kHz (-3 dB), maximum power rms 500 watts, and loudness capability of 115 dB at 1 meter. A 4-way. Set-up. It needs power. Forget the high rated efficiency of 90 dB (a spec I'm sure it meets), the RM 40 is a true 4 Ohm loudspeaker that comes to life only with an amplifier capable of a high-current 100 wpc - minimum. Tube amps? Don't go there. While I've had this loudspeaker it has consistently responded well to solid state power amps in the 100+ power range, and we are not talking your wimpy 100 watter generally coming out of the Far East. The amp must have current capabilities, which usually means expensive. On the affordable side, one amp that worked well was the ME Sound 550 MkII with high current upgrade. That amp retails for somewhere under two thousand dollars. Other amps that worked well with the RM 40 included Pass X-250 and the Parasound JC-1 mono amps. The new Deletraz power amp worked well too, but had to be put in the 4 Ohm mode to be optimal. Note: At first I was concerned that the Marsh power amp and in some respects, the Parasound JC-1 didn't meet expectations with the RM 40. They are both very powerful amps, but sounded too lean and lacking in dimensional warmth with my new wonder-speaker. I almost wrote the amps off as component mismatches until I remembered that the speakers have tunable bass response. Adding mass to the passive bass driver warmed up the response with the high damping factor amps from Marsh and Parasound without making them sound loose. After some experimentation with a thumbnail or two of Mortite, both amps became much better performers with the RM 40 after the minor adjustment. (Unfortunately, I made this discovery after a number of persons heard both amps in the Big Rig and were unimpressed.)

The fact that I could adjust the bass damping was almost lost on me during amplifier changes during auditioning. Initially, I adjusted the speakers to the bass characteristics of the Edge M8. When Brian Cheney was here I had been compelled to insert the ME Sound 555 mk II in its place. Brian found it necessary to start adjusting the bass response again, which I initially thought was due to a difference in how we perceived the bass response. Now, I don't think it was so much a matter of perception between the two of us (in the bass anyway), as it was Brian noting and addressing changes needed by my substitution of amps the day before. The moral of which is pretty simple: The RM 40's bass response can be manipulated to adjust for the varying bass damping characteristics of different power amps.

While on the subject of setting up the RM 40, I noticed something unusual about these speakers that I can't explain, but can duplicate and then identify even under blind conditions. It likes fat speaker wires. Hey, watch your language - it's true. But there is some good news to this aspect of the story: The best speaker cable I've heard with this speaker will cost you about twenty bucks, depending on how long your run is. Like I said, I don't understand this but the best speaker cable for this speaker is 6 awg wire that you can buy at Lowe's. I had been using TG Audio and Audience speaker cables on the speaker with some pretty sorry results sonically. That was until I put in a set of 6 awg wires from Lowe's with a gentle twist. You'll need a positive and a negative for each channel (one leg run in reverse direction), and you'll want to get some spades that you can open up for the thick copper. Check for directionality, and let them burn-in about a month. You'll think that you died and went to a better place, it's that stunning.

The Lowe's wires don't work on every loudspeaker, but they excel in combination with the RM 40 - and they are cheap, no doubt about that. And if you have any doubt regarding what I'm saying, give Brian Cheney at VMPS a ring and ask what I was using on his speakers when he visited to hear them …then ask him if he liked the sound. In this instance they are phenomenal!

The speakers take some time to break-in. Yes, they sound real bad at first, but give them time, things will change in big ways. You will be listening one day, and out of no where the sound will explode, blossom and mature. It will be immediate and in some ways shocking, slapping you up side the head when you don't expect it - expect to listen all night the day that happens.

Also, follow the instructions in the Owner's Manual regarding toe-in, setting of the mid and tweet levels on the back panel, and removal of putty from the passive radiator. I didn't set the mid and tweet levels as high as Brian likes them. He suggests 1:00 o'clock and 1:30 (or thereabouts). I prefer things a little lower. There is some room for preference in the settings, just don't go crazy in either direction. After you play with them for a while, you'll acquire a knack making a change and hearing exactly what you've done. Go for an even and balanced sound that seems realistic. It's like making chili; small changes in the spices used can make an enormous change in flavor. So, follow the directions, but still flavor to taste. One thing you have to know right now; this speaker is directional, very directional, vertically. From side to side the sweet spot is sufficient for nearly a whole couch full of people. Vertically, the window is narrow. This narrow vertical window is the result of using the ribbon midrange panels and ribbon tweeter drivers. It's perfect when seated, out of this world actually, but if you listen standing up (okay, so you've got hemorrhoids) the highs roll off to near nothing. All of which meant absolutely nothing to me. When something sounds as wonderful as this speaker does when seated, you don't want to stand up. Mom, Dad, I'd Like You to Meet This Girl. Sometimes it's love at first sight. Other times it takes a while to make a decision. With the RM 40s it was mad passionate infatuation from the first moment after break-in was complete and the Lowe's wire was inserted. Thing is, even after more than four months of getting to know one another, I'm still madly infatuated with the sound of this speaker….call it love if you will.

I'll simply call it good timing. The RM 40 came to me at the very same time as several other outstanding components arrived: The MSB Platinum Plus processor came in a few weeks before (review imminent), and then power amplifiers arrived that were fully capable of extracting and revealing all the speaker was capable of (Deletraz, Pass and Edge). Then the Lowe's speaker wire was inserted, and I haven't looked back. The biggest problem here isn't letting you now how good this speaker is, it's where to start.

How 'bout the tweeters? Two per side, these "spiral ribbon" tweets are the very same one used by Genesis in there top-of-the-line units - pretty much. Brian found out that the drivers as provided by the manufacturer to Genesis were terribly over damped, so much so, that the damping material behind the diaphragm was scraping the ribbon at it moved. He's doctored the drivers up (removed some stuffing), and in the RM 40 he crosses them in at 10,000 Hz - yes, super tweeter range. He doesn't have to bring the tweeters down any further than that due to the high frequency capabilities of the planar midrange drivers. As a result, these tweeters are seldom stressed, but they still get a work out. I like these drivers as they are applied, however, I wish they could be used at a little lower frequency. These drivers are particularly adept at providing the harmonics and air for fundamentals below the crossover range of the tweet -very sweet. For you see, the tweeter is a bunch quicker at 10 kHz than is the planar midrange at the same frequency. If we could fudge the tweeter down just a tad in frequency, I think that the entire design could sound even more articulately right. Problem would be the loss of some power handling.

The midrange, ahhhh, the midrange. The mids with this speaker are covered by the planars from 160 Hz to 10 kHz - that's a lot of range to roam. These special drivers are hand assembled and specially designed for VMPS by Dragoslav Colich in Canada. Utilizing Neodymium magnetic structures and foil planar panels (weighing no more than 1.25 grams), the drivers have no stray magnetic field. Having planar magnetic drivers, many simply assume that the speaker is a dipole, it's not. The speaker is enclosed and the rear wave is absorbed. Sonically, this is a pretty remarkable device. With four planars per side the speaker does move some serious air in the mids, which adds to the ease of reproduction. Music simply comes off as more realistic when the driver area in the mids is on the large side. Witness the success of the Maggies all these years….the popularity of which hasn't been due to speed and resolution in the mids - it's the ability to energize air that's kept that company in business!

When done right, with drivers that move air quickly and accurately, the sonics can be breathtaking as they are in this case. Having those drivers in a vertical array helps stabilize imaging in the focus department, but it limits vertical dispersion as discussed before. Anyway, when the sonics of this speaker are discussed from here on out it will be in reference to the speaker with the listener in the vertical sweet spot.

The sound doesn't come out of little holes anymore. This speaker images high and it images wide, a continuous curtain of energy without holes or hotspots. It will even image behind the speaker itself (at hard left and hard right), a feat so seldom heard done right that I can't remember the last time I heard it done at all. But what good are images that appear all diffuse and washed out? That's how most speakers sound in comparison to the RM 40, all washed out and lacking true palpability and tactile immediacy. For you see, this speaker (be it the drivers, the layout or the incredible capacitors) can recreate a sonic space like few others. Not only is the imaging superb, but the little things such as low level resolution and transient accuracy are here in abundance - all mixed together for the purpose of replicating the original event. It has an immediacy and sense of being at the microphones that audiophiles dream of, are told about, but never really hear.

Immediacy? I said immediacy, did I not? To hear what the microphone heard without it being up front, in your face, or too large is immediacy. Immediacy is being intimate with the music played back without the music taking the upper hand in the relationship. It's a presentation that lacks the artificiality that results in a note sounding hi-fi-ish, while still being real to the point of demanding the listener's immediate attention. Immediacy is being flashy during a Hendrix solo, and sultry as Norah Jones wondering why she didn't come. It's communication between the artist and the end user without the middle man. It's minute changes in tempo that before went unheard; it's a squeaky bass pedal in a jazz band; it's the crick in a singer's voice when she believes a little too much in the lyrics being sung; it's the sound of a callused thumb on a bass string reminding you of how your fingers sound when you play - the RM 40 is these things and more.

This is where I am compelled to mention that having no crossover in the midrange pays big benefits in terms of immediacy and proper presence. Most speakers are compelled to break up the music somewhere in the mids with a crossover. A 2-way might crossover at 2-3 kHz. A 3-way may be a little less intrusive having its crossovers centered at 250 Hz and 3 kHz. But few speakers use a single type of driver from 160 Hz to 10 kHz, each filter being centered at least three octaves from the real meat of the music. When one can keep the filters so far from the heart of the music there are a multitude of positive side effects; things like purity and coherence, a oneness of character that keeps instruments from sounding like a chameleon in the middle of a change. Drivers have different propagation abilities, and they will handle harmonics differently. Having one type of driver handling the critical mids and then some, ensures continuity across the spectrum as long as it is a good one. This is a fine driver.

The RM 40 allows one to hear how a recording was made. For example, parts of some Par Lindh recordings are mono mixes with stereo tracks laid over them. Some amplifiers confuse this information, but it was the RM 40 that showed me exactly when and where the mix was straight stereo or a mix of mono and stereo. And discerning such subtleties were not the result of tenuous listening sessions that went on for hours looking for flaws in recordings - they were instead heard in the natural context of the music being played back. Because of that, the sound wasn't distracting or overly detailed when compared to the sounds of everyday life. This speaker does the spectacular in nonchalant ways. It's like the Olympic athlete setting records with ease as the competition struggles to come in second - the performance is amazing with a seeming effortlessness. The RM 40 is like that.

It will also sound incredibly mundane in a system of under-performing components or where the set-up is in the dictionary under "mediocre." This speaker models its output to its input in exceptional ways, which is a wonderful, but it can portend some frustration when you feed it a lousy signal. The RM 40 does not "reveal all" in ways unnatural or in an overly etched fashion. Some speakers have attained a status as "extremely revealing" and "accurate" by hyping the upper mids as some sort of psychoacoustic parlor trick. Those type of speakers never sound very good, usually being described as "detailed but fatiguing." Natural detail is not fatiguing regardless of how ruthless it may seem to be. Liking a speaker that covers over some level of detail for the sake of "musicality" is like asking a doctor to remove your ear's ability to hear detail because it makes listening to the world around you tiresome or fatiguing. A speaker needs to reveal all the detail possible. The important thing is that the speaker not overemphasize the scale or amount of detail present. It's a scaling thing. And that's what's so impressive with the RM 40s. It's detailed like all get out, but the detail is placed properly within the context of the event itself - it's natural, so it sounds right.

And it all comes together in the mids….with superb energy retrieval. I've related this to you before, but in a different context. The Par Lindh recording "Bilbo" has a short battle scene where swords and men come together in combat. Toward the end there is a blast (the dragon breathing fire, perhaps?) that seems like a white hot hole opening up in the soundstage just right of center - you can almost feel the heat of the exhalation on your face. It's a stunning experience.

In the mids, and this is in some ways related to the bass response of the system, the speaker plays big, while being able to play small equally well. Whether it be the small scale precision and intricacy of a Cat Stevens acoustic ballad, or Michael Murray performing a Bach Toccata and Fugue, the speaker excels at both. (In this regard, the speaker really shone when used with the Pass X-250 power amp and TG Audio SLVR power cord. Hair raisingly real.) In spite of my praise for the design, I have some reservations with Brian taking the planar magnetic drivers up to 10 kHz. Metal impacts sound clean and crystalline, but going up a little higher in frequency some cymbal crashes sound more crashy than clean. What I ended up doing was backing off the planar drivers a little bit while bringing up the super tweeters an equal amount. It was a nice compromise for the situation.

Going down in frequency, see the large driver at the top of the cabinet? It's a midbass driver that acts to connect the bass woofer (lowest driver) and passive radiator (inside the rectangular opening). It goes up to 160 Hz, assuring adequate air energizing power at a frequency range where size really does count. The cone is made of a hard textured poly that easily spans the frequencies called upon to reproduce. And it crosses over to the planar drivers at a frequency where neither should get into trouble. The result of utilizing the driver in this fashion? The RM 40 speaks with an authority that only the mega multi-driver designs can equal.

Going lower and covering the bass frequencies only, is the woofer at the bottom of the cabinet. Unlike the midbass driver at the top of the cabinet, the true woofer is optimized to work in conjunction with a similarly sized passive radiator loaded by the rectangular opening at the bottom of the enclosure. Brian suggests that NO spikes or footers of any kind be used under the speaker. I feel that Brian wants to control the distance of the port from the floor, and that that parameter is more important than stabilizing the speaker on the floor via a pointy interface. Against all my audiophile instincts, and an almost irresistible urge to stick some pointy things under the cabinets….I have refrained. It seems that the sound has not suffered. (Which doesn't preclude putting something sharp under them at sometime in the near future.) On the other hand, in spite of the speaker being rated at minus 3 dB at 25 hz, the bass did not go as low as the Epitome MkII with extra woofers from Osborn. So, if you are wondering if the RM 40 can benefit from the addition of a subwoofer, preferably two subwoofers, the answer is yes. Not dramatically so, but there is something yet to be gained in the bottom octave in terms of extension with this speaker. Unless you NEED 16 - 25 Hz to live a life fulfilled, don't worry about it.

Conclusion. What more can I say? This is a wonderful speaker that is in some respects changing the expectations of audiophiles regarding quality at a price point. One reviewer of note remarked that the RM 40 surpassed "flagship" speakers from other companies costing in excess of $20,000. I can't dispute the assessment or the basis of the claim….other than maybe expand on the dollar amount stated. Which, when you think about it, makes the RM 40 one of the best loudspeakers one can buy. Quality speakers have crossed this threshold before. My mind goes to the Gallo Reference, the Scientific Fidelity loudspeaker, the Jovian Pillars, and more recently, the Silverline LaFolias and the PBN KAS….excellent speakers each and everyone of them. But, I don't remember them having the moxie and emotional involvement wrapped up in a single package so completely and competently done as is the VMPS. The music from the RM 40 doesn't come so much from the speaker as it does from the space between them. The "unleashed" nature of the sound combined with the transparency of the sound field and the amazing density of images on that field, make for a reproducer of Exceptional Merit in every respect. This is a breakthrough product.

click here for 2004 update