During most of the Rethms' stay, they were partnered with subwoofers of varying degrees of power, bass extension and price. The constant throughout this period was how willingly the Third mated with these subs, demonstrating that while a tight and powerful sub with 20Hz extension is great, even today's smaller and less ambitious models will prove welcome additions to the Third's virtues. Make no mistake then - even a good inexpensive sub with small drivers and 40Hz reach will do a very good job of filling in another octave down low for a very satisfying and balanced experience. The key to balancing such inexpensive subs seems to be in finding one whose aspirations don't exceed its grasp. My Polk PSW 550 sports a small 8" woofer and 38Hz limit and succeeded very well indeed. Naturally, I'd avoid the overly ambitious $500 12-inch boom box. But of course, other subs of higher pedigree and lower extension are welcome, too.
With the aid of a decent subwoofer and despite the occasional hotly distorted guitar, the Rethm proved a fantastic speaker for every sort of Rock music. Its forward tonal balance meant that, if you liked, you could bump up the volume on the sub for a bit of chest-thumping fun and not muddy up the music. The speaker is so utterly fast and transparent that even injudicious use of the subwoofer's gain control can't slow its pace. Even the aforementioned Nirvana CD spent an inordinate time in the player. The biggest offense was to be found in the heavily distorted first track, "Smells Like Teen Spirit". It's a great song and the opening cut gives new meaning to grunge when heard over the Rethms. But once I got beyond the noisy opening mayhem, certain aspects of the CD sounded spectacular. Cobain's voice was so in-the-flesh that I could feel his pain. Drum strikes were amazingly present and tuneful. There was just nothing between the music and me - a good kind of addiction.


Warner's remastered Super Bit Mapping of Love Over Gold by Dire Straits [9-47772-2] sounded spectacular. Knofler's leads displayed transient snap and extraordinary insight and presence with no frequency-related nastiness at all even when the music got loud. Electronic keyboards were smooth and palpable. And soundstaging? I haven't even gotten to how these speakers image and lay out a soundstage.
I did a fair amount of listening to brass over the Rethms. The DMP Big Band's Carved In Stone [DMP CD-512] and The Brian Setzer Orchestra's self-titled CD [Hollywood Records HR 61565-2] were both extremely well served by these speakers. For sure, the brass was slightly tilted up - but it also resulted in a vibrancy otherwise only experienced live. If you like well-recorded big brass, you simply gotta hear it on these Rethms. And the body of the instrument wasn't forgotten; it came across vivid and full-bodied.
The Rethm speakers produced vocals just short of magical. At a recent family gathering, I did something I've never done before. Those who took a seat in the chair were treated not to bombast or pyrotechnics but a very
simple Hawaiian vocal arrangement by Keali'l Reichel [E O Mai, Punahele 17862 ]. Such organic neutrality. Such transparency. Such presence and focus. Such simplicity. It was all that was required to put the Rethms into their best light and provoke stunned comments from a group of complete non-audiophiles.


So much for how the Rethms spotlight the featured performers. What about their overall perspective on the music? In a word, they conjure the original recording space (real or electronically contrived) spectacularly. Only occasionally was the soundstage constricted to in-between the speakers. Image specificity could be as good as I've ever heard and in my room, the Third Rethms set a high-water mark for an absolute vanish-
ing act. The music just floated in space completely free and detached from the speakers. Despite the forward and engaging balance of the Thirds, they did a fantastic job of placing the soundstage beyond the speakers. While the soundstage occupied the physical space beyond and behind the speaker's plane, they also did a spectacular job of charging the air throughout the room with energized sounds. This put the performance into the room and made you part of the venue - no more being outside looking in like an orphan during Christmas.
The Trouble with Treble...
The Rethm loudspeakers were my first experience with speakers without a dedicated tweeter. Quick and dirty measurements using the Stereophile 2 disc test tones and a RatShack SPL meter showed reasonably flat response to about 10 kHz followed by a slight decline to12kHz and greatly diminished output to 16 kHz. That's how they measured but not really how they sounded. For the most part, the speakers were completely open and spacious. I rarely ever missed the last half-octave of extension. Well-recorded cymbals had wonderful palpability and delicate shimmer. The triangle and chimes were almost as well produced but they lacked the kind of in-room presence more extended speakers will produce.


I've always been under the impression that high-frequency extension was all about preserving the sense of acoustic space. That's not what I found with the Third Rethms. As I've already outlined, the Thirds do a fantastic job at communicating the physical dimensions of the recorded venue. Music recorded in real space came across just that way, with cubits of depth and dimensionality. I found absolutely no missing sparkle to the music, no dulling or blunting. If that sounds as though I was surprised, I was.


One other area where the Rethms tower over the competition is with their dynamics. They play very loudly for sure. But one thing I've found about these high-efficiency speakers is that more importantly than how loud they can go is how softly they can go. Better than any speaker I've ever
used, these speakers sound spectacular at late-night listening levels. I've probably listened to them as much after 11:00PM as before. For that reason, they are one of my favorite speakers I've ever had in the house. So transparent, so musically detailed and so articulate, they remain alive and supremely enjoyable at whisper volumes. The only thing that really changes as SPLs shrink is scale. At the opposite end of the sound pressure spectrum, they are naturally very good as well. 0 to 60 acceleration is beyond reproach and they play louder without compression than I care to listen to them. All this on a few measly watts, too.


Conclusion:
There are more reasons to reject the Third Rethm from consideration than there are to recommend it. Some will reject them automatically because they are a $4180 pair of speakers with no bass - end of story. For many, $4180 is a lot of money and finding room in the budget for a complementing subwoofer will be out of the question. Others will find that, in theory, its truncated treble response makes for a speaker beyond recommendation no matter how it actually sounds. That's fair enough, too. People need to feel comfortable with what they buy.


Still others will be bothered by a forward upper midrange that is almost as prone to making substandard recordings grating and annoying as it is to making well-recorded ones sound absolutely ravishing. What can I say? It's all true. But what legions of Lowther aficionados know to be also true? That the single reason to consider the Thirds outweighs all the reasons not to: Its beguiling way with midrange musicality, transparency and intimacy. It doesn't take a golden-eared audio guru to hear all that the Third Rethms do wrong but neither does it take one to appreciate all that they do so right. And for many, once they experience what these speakers do so much better than conventional dynamic designs, there will be no going back.


Perfect? No. But then, what is? The fact remains that in the here and now, such an accomplished midrange is difficult to find and usually comes at a cost greatly exceeding the price of the Thirds. You might consider the Third Rethms an end product. You might simply consider them a building block for a very highly accomplished music system. One way or another, just make sure you do consider them.
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