Set up in the Music Room was extremely straightforward. Having recently run Alumine 5 SEs in the same set up, I had a good starting point to work from, the main decision to be made being the setting on the bass jumper and balancing the low-frequency output against the cabinet’s height off the floor. In this large space, the bottom end control allowed me to lift the bass, compensate with the height of the cones/feet and achieve a greater sense of scale, presence and musical impact. At the same time, the U2’s easy-breathing and expressive presentation, micro-dynamic definition, inherent neutrality, linearity and natural sense of scale and perspective meant that dialling them in was simplicity itself, the effect of each adjustment clearly audible – for good or bad.
As with the Alumine 5 SEs, toe-in was moderate, with the speakers pointed at the listener’s shoulders rather than their ears. In common with other flat/vertical baffle speakers, breaking the perpendicular to the floor brought a renewed energy, shape and texture to the bottom end, which in turn translated to greater dynamic freedom, presence and a more expressive midrange. In this instance, a forward rake of 0.2 of a degree proved to be the magic number, but that will always vary depending on listening distance, seated height and the room.
As well as the footer discs to be used on hard floors, the Stenheim cones are also supplied with a large diameter lock ring and a pair of equally large C-spanners that pair with the six horizontal holes in the periphery of each part of the cone assembly. It’s an arrangement that makes it easy to make the small, repeatable adjustments essential for precise angular and positional placement – and then get that setting locked in without inadvertently re-adjusting the cones in the process! The C-spanners are slightly fiddly to use, especially in cramped situations and, in an ideal world I’d love to see one of them replaced with a simple rod of equivalent length, a solution that would be far easier to locate/insert when wanting to make a rotational adjustment. But even with that caveat, compared to the competition, the Stenheim feet remain one of the best-executed and most easily adjusted mechanical grounding solutions on the speaker market. That’s no trivial thing. Easier operation means better adjustment: better adjustment translates directly into better sound. All speaker designs involve a level of compromise: there’s no way that compromise should extend to something as simple to get right as the spikes, yet you’d be surprised how often it does – and just how damaging that is to achieving the product’s ultimate performance. But even the U2’s spikes aren’t perfect. It’s a mark of the seriousness with which the company treats the whole issue of both spikes and speaker set-up/attitude that there’s talk of a set of spacers to avoid overly extended threads and lift the maximum height of the spiked speaker closer to its height on its wheels, thus further aiding initial positioning and set-up options.
