Overview
This is a pair of speakers that will bring some serious listening enjoyment to your room. Stereophile called them one of the best kept secret in hifidom. They are a four piece setup with a pair of AS2.1 monitor speakers and a pair of AS2.1 woofer modules. The AS2.1 are sold separately and is one of the hidden gems in the monitor speaker category. It will challenge some of the brands of that era like Wilson Audio, Genesis, Avalon etc with resounding ease and actually offered a competitive alternative to them. The setup you see here includes the optional AS2.1 woofer modules which lowered their LF range down 30Hz. On its own, the monitor speakers will drop to 45Hz while the highs max out at 20kHz. Nominal impedance is 8 ohm with a sensitivity of 88dB. They are easy to drive with 35W as the minimum amount of power required but we powered them with 150W for a glorious response. Each woofer module contains one 10″ woofer while the monitors have a 7″ kevlar mid-woofer and a 1″ Accutron ceramic tweeter. The monitors weighs a hefty 67lbs while the bass module clocks in at 123lbs. There are three castors under the AS2.1 woofer module which makes moving it around slightly easier but demands a bit of dexterity to keep them from tipping over (would have been better if there were four castors instead!). Connectivity is quite flexible. You can power each speaker/bass module separately or if you only have one stereo or a pair of monoblock amps, you can just run a pair of speaker wires to the bass module and have the long jumper wire connect to the monitors. The monitor’s speaker jacks can either be jumpered again or bi-wired. We kept it simple with just a pair of speaker wires connected to the bass module and then wired up the long jumper to the monitors where their two pairs of speaker jacks already have jumper pins in them.
Placement is crucial and we placed each speaker about 10″ away from the back and side wall. With a slight toe in, the speakers projected out a slightly forward soundstage that was expansive in terms of both width, height and depth. So if you have a rectangular shaped room, have the speakers fire down the long side. Bass was plentiful and powerful while the mids and highs were fast, detailed and cleanly extended. It may not share the same refinement as the Wilson Audio WATT Puppy 6 that we had but it was more refine that the Wilson Audio WITT speakers we also have for sale. The bass volume on the WITT is heavier so in the medium size room, the Artemis EOS speaker setup is more accommodating.
Speakers looks fair with some scuff marks/nicks here and there and some wear on the bottom edges of the woofer module which are expected with speakers of this vintage. We don’t have the grille covers. Local pickup preferred but if shipping is required, they will be shipped strapped on a pallet.
