IDS: The Return of Roger Russell

RMAF 2006

IDS: The Return of Roger Russell

By Jason Victor Serinus • Posted: Oct 21, 2006

In the amazing bass department, Roger Russell’s towering IDS-25 took today’s cake. With 25 drivers per side, and designed to sit very close to the rear wall with speakers and sweet-spot seat arranged in an isosceles triangle, the $18,900/pair speakers eliminate crossovers, woofers, midranges, tweeters, subwoofers...well, everything but the sound itself. With a sensitivity of 92dB, and capable of sounding their best with far less power than that offered by the room’s beefy McIntosh electronics, the IDS-25 includes a fixed active equalizer that creates purported dead flat response between 20Hz and 18kHz. Designed by McIntosh’s former chief designer, and distributed by Ken Haig (pictured) via the www.ids25.com website, the speakers are brand new; the first pair sold arrived at their happy purchaser’s home today.

Comments

Submitted by Roger Russell on October 24, 2006 - 4:41am.

The amazing bass actually goes to 20 Hz and not 250 Hz mentioned in the Stereophile RMAF report.Although the excellent bass is truly the first feature that is noticeable, it is the IDS, which stands for the exceptional imaging, depth and spaciousness that the system can reproduce.If you want to learn more about the system, the link was incorrectly reported by Stereophile. The correct link is www.ids25.com .

Submitted by Jason Victor Serinus on October 24, 2006 - 8:47am.

My apologies Roger. I've asked John Atkinson to fix the copy. Thank you for such wonderful speakers.jason victor serinus

Submitted by Chris on October 24, 2006 - 3:19pm.

Jason got it right about the incredible bass, but I stayed around long enough to test a wide variety of sources. I think they concentrated their demo on the bass since nobody believed that those small drivers could reproduce it so accurately, but the real surprise was the open and totally transparent vocals. The high end was crystalline and I even stood on a chair to discover that up or down, side to side there was no discernable sweet spot. When listening to the guitar it felt like you were sitting right on the bridge. The dynamic range with such little power requirement is awesome whether acoustic or synthesized.These are a totally remarkable pair of speakers.

Submitted by Anonymous on April 28, 2009 - 11:36pm.

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