Our Barefoot Sound MM27's arrived yesterday (2 x 83lb boxes) and we hooked them up and put them through their paces. They are now sitting next to our ADAM S3A's and a Dynaudio BM6A 5.1 Surround System. The BM6A's have a Velodyne High Gain Series Sub as part of the system and it will, after much modification, produce 15hz accurately which is why I use that system for film post production.
The first thing we noticed was that the Barefoot system was loud! They have 4X the power of the Adams but I assumed it would need most of that power to produce the low end that the company brags about so much. After all, my Velodyne can demand as much as 3000 watts to produce its lows. I had to make some adjustments so I could A/B/C them against the other speakers in the system.
I was expecting to hear some difference between the systems but I was blown away by how radically different the Barefoot's were in comparison to the other monitors. First, I threw up a mix that featured a modern drum recording. On the Adams, I could just hear the attack of the snare and then the snare vanished. Switching to the Barefoots, I could not only hear the attack of the snare but I could also hear the shell as well as the reverb tail. Was this the same recording??? The Barefoots clearly had an openness in the mid's that the ADAMS just don't have.
On the low end, the Barefoots had a low end response that I couldn't match until I brought the Velodyne Sub to bear. BTW, I know how picky people here are about things so let me tell you that the Velodyne HGS 18 is not a commercial sub. It has balanced inputs and I had that particular sub placed in a much sturdier cabinet that I had built for it as well as the fact that I had the speaker professionally tweaked and the amp was modified by velodyne not once but twice for us. When I say it will do 15hz with less than .05% distortion I am not kidding. Anyway, the Barefoot system even beat out our club system destroying everything but the Velodyne - I was impressed.
The highs on the Barefoot system was not nearly as ear raping as the Adams. That ribbon tweater on the S3A's can really push the highs.
All in all, I like the Barefoot system a lot. I'm very curious to see how my mixes will translate on this system. I also plan to keep using the S3A because they just plain sound bad in the same way an NS10 sounds bad. If I could get a mix to sound good on the ADAMS then I was sure they would sound good anywhere else.
I would like to hear your thoughts on these speakers.
