Yes, it's a transformation.. and the speaker has changed its personality a bit.. it's more 'grown up' sounding... There is much more detail at every level and there is no (audible) distortion. The downside to this is that it somewhat requires excellent recordings. You can hear every nuance of everything. I heard new things I've never heard before yesterday... even in that Peter Gabriel 'Growing Up' song... which we've all heard too many times.
My reaction was, "oh, so that's what that is"... and wow, that recording is weird... as was most of the stuff I brought.. (mostly over produced pop crap). Sufjan Stevens recording choices were more evident.. with this nasal-sounding mic and for the first time I could really hear how off-key the violinists were. They're bad.. and I can't imagine it was intentional. It was super easy to pick instruments and hear the complexity unfurled. It gave a more 'you are there' presentation. There was definitely more emotional impact also. I can't wait to hear the pair in my room...
It was very cool to go back to the stock speaker and hear the changes. There was a familiarity there which I enjoyed... there is a little distortion in the upper mids that sweetens the highs a bit in the older design... but that's about all I can say good about the older design after hearing the new one. The new design is just heads and tails above in every way.
I decided not to change anything Rick had done until I'd lived with them a couple of months. It's a big change and I didn't feel qualified to tweak Rick's design after listening to 1 speaker in an unfamiliar system.
I'm hoping to get Steve to bring his C8's to compare directly when I've got these setup in my room so we can hear the difference. I'll have a G2G of course.
This change will take me further into the ability to hear the differences in components.
Charles is correct about working with Rick.. a real professional and a class act all the way... and he knows his stuff.
-C