Home Speaker Asylum

General speaker questions for audio and home theater.

Re: What's a -fi to you?

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Mid-fi to me is any speaker that sounds half way decent, but is slightly over-priced. The VR-M80 from Boston Acoustics would be my ideal mid-fi speaker. At 2,000 dollars a pair they were not cheap, but within the reach of most. At times they sounded pretty good, but also sounded very congested and boxy at moderate to high volumes to my ears. They performed nicely on Beethoven's 9th on a low volume, but when I played "The Power of Love" from Celine Dion at a loud volume, the seemed to have lost control in the bass region and the midrange. They were not the worst speaker I have heard, yet they failed to met my expectations of a 2,000 speaker. For that amount of money I expect a speaker to sound very good and have few flaws. The salesman made the comment that they have a hard time selling the VR-M80's when people hear the VR950 as they sound quite simlar and cost 1300 dollars less. I took a listen to the VR950 and they did in fact to my ears sound a lot like the VR-M80's. I could live with the VR950's for light jazz or other non demanding music, but at the 700 dollar price point there are many other speakers I like better. Both speakers sounded much better then speakers from Cerwin Vega or DCM that I have heard, but not quite in the League of hi-fi speakers like B&W or Vandersteen. I expect a 200 dollar pair of KLH's from Best Buy to have some flaws, but at the same time I expect that there may be something I don't care for in a 2,000 dollar speaker. The flaws in a 200 dollar pair of speakers can be overlooked. It gets hard to shell out 2 grand and not absolutely love the speaker and find little fault with it. While it is true that you often get what you pay for, it is not always the case. I had a set of Bose 301's which cost about the same as a Set of Paradigm's mini monitor. To my ears, the mini monitor's sound a whole lot better than the 301's.


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  • Re: What's a -fi to you? - tuneman 12:42:29 07/25/02 (0)


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