I only had this pair of 4-way, five driver Sansui's for a weekend, and paired them with a Pioneer SX-1050 in my garage as I spent all day Saturday sorting through boxes of cables and tidying up. This gave me at least four hours of solid testing time for these speakers, and you know what? The best thing about them, to me, is their shiny dust caps. I know, I'll get emails from die-hard Sansui fans out there, claiming that a cement-floor garage is perhaps the worst listening environment there is, and how could I carefully evaluate these while I was running a shop-vac. Well, to that I say this: I'm not claiming to carefully evaluate anything, and second, my pair of DCM TimeFrame 600's sounded great under the same conditions three months ago - shop vac and all, so why can't the Sansui's? Here I am arguing with myself again - I'll make a note of this for my next therapy session.Look, the SP-3200 pair sounded fine - much like Pioneer HPM-100s, to be honest. (Very similar lattice grills as well.) They are perfectly good speakers, just nothing that made me want to stop cleaning for five minutes, pop a Snapple, and sit and listen to them. These were going back to their rightful owner on Sunday and I didn't distress over their departure. Again, as I mentioned in my post about the Sony SSU-1070 speakers, more drivers and complicated crossovers don't mean better sound.
Have any photos or stories about your Sansui SP-3200 speakers? Please leave a comment or send me an email. I'd love to hear from someone who disagrees with me on this particular model of Sansui speakers.
Am I the only one liking those shiny dust caps?
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All speakers have strong and weak points. The weak point of the Sansui 3200s is low bass projection, so on a dead concrete floor with a shop vac for accompaniment, they're gonna be pretty lost.
ReplyDeleteThe high point is mid bass and midrange. In a reasonable environment (say, a room in a house) they are pretty much ideal 'string quartet speakers,' rendering beautiful tones that highlight the richness of cello and tame the screech of violins.
Conversely, they are good rock speakers unless 'big thump' is essential to your experience....
I scored on a pair of SP3200 a year ago, in almost perfect condition. I am also blessed with very good acoustics in our living room. Paired with another CL score a Sansui AU-5500 amp, they sound incredibly good. Yes they lack the "big thump" base, but for 99% of the sound range, they are a real treat. They sound rich, deep, crisp, precise. Sitting in front of the speakers, I can hear each individual instrument and voices precisely defined in space, with some playing in front of the speakers and some behind these. I get 3 dimensional sound, that's is how I would describe it. When I paired them with a "modern" amp, they sounded ok not great.
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