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Product name: Vera-Fi Scout
Manufacturer: Vera-Fi Audio - USA
Price: $299 / Pair USD in rosewood
Reviewer: M.L. Gneier - TNT USA
Reviewed: April, 2024

I readily admit that if it were not for the amazing XSA Labs Vanguards, I would not have had much interest in the Scouts. But, that pedigree piqued my interest in what must be regarded as a very modest design. Before I get into that issue let me address some confusion. Initially, I thought this speaker model was called the XSA Scout. But now I see that what I'm going to refer to as the XSA Vanguard is produced by XSA Labs. So, I initially thought the speaker under test here was called the Scout and assumed it, too, was an XSA product. It now appears the Scout is formally referred to as the Vanguard Scout but is actually a product of Vera-Fi Audio LLC. To all of this I say, hmmm. I can understand why XSA / Vera-Fi would want to informally connect the speakers through the link of the Vanguard name but the result is rather confusing.

What is not confusing is the Scout itself. It is a straightforward, relatively small two-way rear-ported monitor. Though surely many will, I would not call it a mini-monitor. The Scout's actually fairly hefty and physically deeper than its more expensive relative (cousin? brother?) the Vanguard. The Scouts are handsome with an impressive rosewood-ish veneer covering all sides. An interesting note is their rated sensitivity of 84.5dB. This is a significantly low sensitivity for a dynamic design and coupled with the Scout's 8ohm nominal impedance seems to inform, I believe, some aspects of the speaker's in-room performance. As an aside, I am dismayed by the way the words sensitivity and efficiency have come to be used interchangeably in many contemporary reviews. They are very different things and I encourage readers to research both terms to learn for themselves. A few minutes of reading may just you better informed on the subjects than some reviewers.

Once I was finished gawking at just how good the Vanguards look I got around to perching them atop my 24 inch Sound Anchors stands. As a brief aside, a visiting colleague asked me about these old stands a few months back. I had them custom made by Bob Worzalla of Sound Anchors many, many years ago. They are unusual in that the four tubes were supplied unfilled. This allows me to fill the tubes with my own mass-loading formula which is a few inches of beach sand, a barrier of 4mil mylar and a layer of No.9 lead shot, another layer of beach sand, alternating with more lead shot until full. A tweak? You bet, but it's also one that's worked for me for a good long time and with virtually dozens of stand-mounted speakers I've reviewed. By the way, I cannot attest to how modern steel shot would work. It could well create some resonance problems that the far softer and denser lead avoids. Good luck finding lead shot these days, however.

I always start out listening to speakers at very low listening levels. I've found that if a speaker cannot retrieve small dynamic shifts at low volumes there may well be trouble as things get louder. At such levels, the Scout sounded quite withdrawn and colorless. When I refer to colorless here I am referring to their inability to recreate timbres and correct tonality rather than overt colorations that may be attributable to gross frequency response variations. So, up went the volume to what I would call moderate. The Scout's reticence persisted. At this point I decided to toe the Scouts inward a bit, so that from my listening position I could barely see the speakers inner panels. This geometry would usually be associated with getting full measure of the speaker's horizontal dispersion. The improvement from the increased level and significant toe in was minimal. I would describe the bottom end of the Scout's as fullish, especially considering their size but a little well-rounded for my taste even when positioned over four feet from the rear wall. To my ears the Scout's low frequency extension took a pretty fast dive south of 60 or 70Hz. That's about what I expected for a ported design of its size. The rear-facing nature of the Scout's port makes getting it away from the rear wall a necessity so be sure to keep this in mind if you expect to use them in a small room.

At first I was unable to hear any commonalities between the Scout and Vanguard's presentation, especially as regards their mid and upper frequencies. Where the Vanguard's midrange reached out and engaged the listener, the Scout did the opposite making it sorrowfully easy to disengage from even beloved music. Eventually, I could hear something of a family sound in those regions but the Scout was badly compromised in direct comparison. Perhaps this is reasonable to expect given the price differences between the two designs? With less critical music at higher volumes the Scouts finally opened up a little, its two drivers integrating somewhat better. But, taking the level even a bit higher made things worse again. Lateral staging was generous if diffuse. Depth of stage was quite shallow even on recordings I know capture that dimension well.

Here I'd like to stop and discuss my experience with loudspeaker sensitivity. I emphasize the use of the word experience since I have no science or engineering to rely upon. Here is a statement of my experience: the best (dynamic) speakers I have ever heard have had sensitivities between 87 and 89dB. More sensitive designs, to me, are nearly always possessed of a tonal and timbral crassness that I find unmusical. Designs that are much less sensitive tend to sound withdrawn. They beg to have the volume jacked up, but when it is their presentation often flattens. Are there notable exceptions? You bet, I would cite the Celestion SL700 and the Scout's fantastic sounding brethren, the Vanguard. So, what gives with the humble Scouts? I really don't know. It would be crazy to regard the speaker, in its entirety, and call it bad. It has a lot going for it in terms of pedigree, simplicity of design and the quality of its physical execution.

I know it's become popular to do partial teardowns as part of reviews these days, to have a look at what's inside. I would like to offer a mild warning on this subject especially regarding budget products like the Scout. Please, resist the temptation to remove the drivers unless you have a good reason. The Scout's assembly quality is just fine and dandy. But, even the simple act of carefully removing the driver screws hogs a bit of MDF from the front baffle. The screws will never bite as firmly as they did the first time they were cinched down. This is especially true with a speaker (like the Scout) where the woofer is mounted without a gasket. It's not all that difficult to over tighten the screws and distort the edges of the basket. Just leave them be unless you have a good reason to pop the hood on your speakers. If all is well, there's just nothing for you to see on the inside you've haven't seen a hundred times before. In the case of the Scouts all you'll be treated to is a liberal amount of foam and very conventional looking drivers that are connected with slip-on connectors. One thing I did notice while inspecting the drivers was the fact that the basket of the low frequency driver was made from stamped metal that was quite thin. Am I correlating this fact to the way the Scouts sound? Nope. I'm just reporting on an obvious and understandable compromise that was made in the design of the Scout.

Let me get back to the sound of the Scouts. After many hour of listening I would say that it sounds best at moderate levels and while playing non-acoustic material (read: standard-issue pop). The Scout's presentation with acoustic music (and voice) was persistently veiled if basically pleasant in both applications that I listened to it. The first application was in my main reviewing system atop the aforementioned Sound Anchor stands. I cannot say why but at some point I decided to try the Scouts in an improvised near-field application on my desktop. The Scouts ended up far closer to the rear wall so I used foam port plugs I had on hand to tame what was then a significantly wooly bottom end. The midrange and high-frequency balance was largely unaffected by this nearish-field positioning. The Scouts remained pleasant but persistently uninspiring and uninvolving. They simply didn't make me want to listen to more music or allow me to wholly engage with the music I was hearing. Listening to the Scouts made me feel like a kid who dropped his ice cream cone and I used to hate it when that happened.

Knowing of the Scout's lineage my listening results are especially disappointing and even a bit sad. One possibility that occurred to me is that the Scouts sound as good as is possible for a pair of speakers that cost what they do. But, I don't quite believe that. I think it is possible to create a musically involving speaker for what the Scouts cost, especially considering the company's direct-to-consumer business model. Significant compromise would be the order of the day. Such a speaker would probably lack dynamics, low-frequency reach and likely a certain sophistication of presentation. But, what it would have is the ability to engage the listener and to capture essential tone and timbre. I tried my best to coax these qualities from the Scouts but in the end my best efforts proved fruitless. Unfortunately, I cannot recommend the Scouts. No matter how lovely they look, it will always be the music that matters.

Listen well, but listen happy, my friends!

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