1.7i's verses LS 50's and KEF Blades...long...
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| Posted on October 5, 2015 at 09:43:40 | ||
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Posts: 1079
Location: MN Joined: January 31, 2010 |
Saturday my Engineer friend, Bill and I went to 2 different Audio Stores. The first one was Halston Entertainment. A very elegant large store with many rooms and some very large wide open spaces. With more of focus on custom HT. He had bought a Universal brand remote there, but really did not look around much when he was there... We met there at 11:00 AM he comes up from small town in Southern MN about 70 miles away, me from a suburb 30 minutes north...After walking around a few minutes, I ask to listen to a pair of KEF LS50's they had set-up...I have never heard them and really wanted to know what all the buzz was about...They were hooked up to a Marantz Integrated and Marantz CD player...We each had our own references CD's burned to put the speakers we were going to listen to through their paces. I know his references and he knows mine... The LS 50's were on a pair of 28"-30" stands, don't know exactly the height...but they were the highest pair of stands they had displayed. They are quite impressive little speaker. They imaged pretty well, went deeper than I would have expected and sounded "good", but nothing special...I had to crouch down to get my ears at tweeter height when they sound there best...the width of and depth of sound stage was decent and well defined. I thought the midrange was a little dull and highs were a little bright...The salesman, very good guy, told us they were his best sellers for the "new" 20 year old something crowd who is discovering vinyl... Then the salesman asked us if wanted to listen to the big KEF Blades hooked up to an all Bryston stack...28 sst2's, Bryston CD player and Pre...These were truly impressive speakers...big room filling sound. They did everything right. I had not heard a really good pair of full range speakers in quite a while. The deep bass was tight, tuneful and musical...really impressive. Standing or sitting very very little change in presentation...the MSRP is $32,000 and they were selling these demos for $20,000...fit, finish and workmanship was beautiful, a really good looking speaker with a huge cool factor...could live with these and not look back... So after spending an hour there, we headed over to Audio Perfection, the local Maggie dealer to listen to the 1.7i's. Bill has been a tweaked 1.6 owner for 14 years. Has a very small listening room, that my 3.7i's did NOT work in...(you can search my Moniker for a post I wrote on that experience). I had called the day before to Audio Perfection to have them set-up 1.7i's in one of there small rooms... They were hooked up to a Ayre Integrated, (AX-7e) and Ayre CD player, (CX-7e)...both nice pieces. The Ayre AX-7e is 120 watts into 4 ohms, so IMHO, under powered for the 1.7i's...but still sounded really good. After listening to a few songs, we adjusted the 1.7i's placement by moving them a total of 18" further apart, which put them about 2' from the outside walls and pulled the listening chairs back about 18" also...this was very similar to his room and the speakers were about 4' off the front wall, with a 15 to 20 degree toe in... We both have listened to 1.7's a few years back when I was living in KC, that was in a very big room and hooked up to a Rotel Integrated...sounded good, but not that much different than his 1.6's...I know lots of variables, but that was our impression at that time... Now this experience with the 1.7i's was completely different. I was expecting good, but got great...the extension of highs was pretty damn close to my 3.7i's without the better dispersion of the ribbon tweeter...Like the rest of .7 models I have heard the coherence is truly special...they sound like a single driver... The imaging, sound stage, frequency extension top and bottom, rhythm, pace and musicality were much better than the 1.6's. I am usually chirping in Bill's ear while we are listening pointing out things I am hearing...aka...I have a big mouth and I am a talker...duh...but during this listening session I intentionally kept my mouth shut and let the speakers do the talking...we got through about 6-8 songs of his reference CD, not listening to whole songs but skipping around to listen to different parts of each song...we did not get through all his references and I did not get to put in my reference CD...He said he wanted to go talk them, salesman and the owner...I did not ask why or what was up...so I put in my CD and really enjoyed what I was listening to... After about 10 minutes I walked out into the Lobby and he was signing a credit card receipt...he said he had NO intention of buying them that day, but after listening to them in a very similar room size of his and making sure they worked well, unlike my 3.7i's that did NOT work in his small room... They had a pair on hand in a color combo that worked for him, Black on Black...(he really did not care about the trim, just wanted black cloth)...while they were finishing the paper work and getting them loaded up, we went and listened to the .7's which I had heard when I was auditioning the REL S3 sub for him, which he bought 2 months ago, (have a thread on that experience too)...the .7's were not as refined or play as big as the 1.7i's, as expected and a Rotel frontend, so not on equal footing by no means...but as Magnepan says go for the biggest model that will work in your room... Back to the tittle of this post...the KEF LS 50's were not even in the same league as 1.7i's or the .7's...the LS 50's sell for the same price of as the .7's...if you can handle the looks and placement of .7's it really is a no brainer...the 1.7i's smoked the LS 50's in everything... The KEF Blades are truly a great full range speaker and room filling ...but on sale for $20,000 verse $32,000 MSRP and the brand new 1.7i's selling for $2200...at the demo price of the Blades they are in NO WAY 10 times better than the 1.7i's...and with the right sub you can get allot closer to the full range presentation of the Blades... Yes...Yes...I get that the 1.7i's could not fill that big room like the Blades did, but based on just Sonics they were very very close to a speaker that that costs 10 times more, (demo's), with a $20,000+ Bryston frontend, Compared to a $6000 Ayre frontend with the 1.7i's. So, basically a $40,000+ rig did not sound that much better than $8200 rig...add sub and that gap gets even closer just based on sound quality taking the size of room out of the equation... I was really glad we heard the KEF LS 50's and Blades prior to listening to 1.7i's with the same musical references...it took me overnight to sleep on it, but it hit me the next day like a bolt of lighting what an extreme value Magnepan speakers are...I know this is not anything earth shattering...but damn it was fun day. Also reassures me that there are no new speakers in my future anytime soon...unless I move and have a room that could handle the 20.7's Since this is the Planar Board and we are biased towards that di-pole presentation and I am preaching to the choir...but this experience just reassured me WHY I own Maggies...still IMHO, the best bang for the buck speaker that I know of... Thanks Mark
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