Realistic "Machs" - vertical tasting?

[mhardy6647]

Since there are, somewhat inexplicably, a pair of Mach Twos sitting here at the moment... I am curious as to whether anyone here has ever directly compared the Realistic/Optimus "Mach" family: The Mach One (a couple different versions, no?), Mach Two (ditto), and the Mach Three. I have never seen a Mach Three in the flesh; anyone here have a pair?

Here's the Mach Three - see page 16 of http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/catalogs/1992/

 

[Old Busted H]

I have a pair of Threes, but none of the "slower" ones to compare them to.

 

[Live_Wire]

I have both the Mach Ones and Twos (Realistic, neither are Optimus) and they both sound really good. The tweeters in the Mach Twos I find are a lot smoother and more relaxed than the Ones (Might be that mine need to be recapped). The midrange I find is very similar, maybe a bit smoother on the Ones.

The bass response is hard to peg. My Mach Twos sound great on my Yamaha RX-397, while my Mach Ones really like to be paired with my STA-2100D. They both sound good on the Yamaha, just the Mach Ones come alive with more power.

Because the Twos are ported, they tend to go a lot lower with less power. But the Mach Ones have an advantage over the Twos in the vinyl department, they sound great with vinyl. If you have a subsonic filter though, the Twos sound fine with vinyl.

 

[Copa1934]

Having owned both (Two's I purchased new, One's used), I had an A/B show down and like LiveWire had similar results though I only tested with my Yamaha (only receiver at the time). With Rock oriented stuff the Two's came into their own, and with HT they hit really hard, but for me I liked the tighter sound of A.S. Mostly, after the recap of the One's, I liked the overall performance. I hated to let my Two's go, but there just wasn't room, or good excuse for the wife, to keep both so the Two's went.

I left R.S. before the Three's so can't compare. They all have a reputation for delivering serious bottom end punch, and differing performance in the mids and highs, but close depending on audio source, again based on other posts.

A recent post to the Mach One (4029) thread has some Mach One owners extremely pleased after performing various updates/upgrades to their 4024a that were intended for the 4029 speakers. Which by the way is another thing as well, two flavors of Mach One's.