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In Reply to: RE: Marten Speakers posted by RGA on January 09, 2017 at 22:03:11
Appreciate your extensive opinion RGA. To reply to your questions here goes...
1. Among my favorite all timers are the Thiel CS5, B&W 800 Nautilus.
2. My room is medium size 15 x 13 highly damped
3. In order of preference I like Jazz (Miles, Spyro, P.Methany), Sofisticated Pop (Swing out sister, Basia, Level 42, Tears for Fears)
Classical (Handle, Baroque, Mozart, Borodin) Classic Rock (Styx, Steely Dan, Springsteen)
4. I have two main rigs. On is powered by a Mark Lev 335 all ML SS gear. The other by a ARC and Counterpoint NPS200 all tube. I also like vinyl more than digital. VPI Avenger and VPI HWMK IV, Lux PD375. Koetsu, Ortofon PW
5. Wife is no problem. She feeds my crazy hobbies. As long a colors match the living room decor we are fine
6. I have considered used. I found a used Django XL in Spain for half the price of new...so, there must be a few out there that could lower investment risk.
7. One thing I appreciate with high end audio is clarity and definition. I love to be able to feel a vocalists breath for center rather than a huge image from panel speakers. Thatīs why I swapped my maggies as main speakers to B&W. I definitely donīt like horns. I tried a set of Klipsch horn and the sibillance that appeared now and then would kill me. Diamond tweeters also are very precise but I rather soft dome tweeters.
I know it gets complicated the more you dig in as it is a highly subjective matter but I feel Iīm the ballpark of my musical taste.
Follow Ups:
Given the room size you really don't need to be looking at big floorstanders which may create some problems. Most speakers require lots of space from walls which means they sit closer to you - with large multi driver speakers they need distance from you to properly integrate so that you don't constantly hear each driver out of step with each other.
Some speakers beyond my own Audio Note E that should consider given you like soft domes would be the DeVore Orangutan, Harbeth Super HL5 Plus, ATC SCM 40 or second hand 100s - I have not heard every model but all have that precision your after but also very controlled sound - and IMO warmer and more inviting than most pro studio speaker makers.
If you are willing to go a bit off the beaten path - I quite liked The Acoustic Zen Crescendo speakers one of the few big speakers that always sound really quite good even in small hotel rooms. Von Gaylord "the Return of the Legend" - I can see why some would feel it's a legend. These are pretty dense and thick - not sure how they'd do in a heavily damped room. The Teresonic Ingenium is a single driver which is about as pristine as it gets in the midrange - and has pretty good bass - it is a single 8 incher and the largish cabinet extends bass response. It's the best I've heard from Single drivers along with Voxativ and Silbatone. But these are too big likely.
Further off the beaten path is Rosso Fiorintino one of the better floorstanders that I have heard. Easily beating top of the line Reference 3a speakers in the same room. http://www.rossofiorentino.com/en/collections-siena.asp
The Usher Be 10 is also an under the radar speaker that I prefer to more expensive B&Ws and Focals.
But some of these floorstanders IMO are too much for a 15 X 13 room. They may have more extension but at what cost.
$15K is a lot of money to spend without hearing what you are spending it on first.
What would I do in your position? First of all I would bear in mind that the existing list of favourite speakers you have may well have been built up from experiences over a period, perhaps a number of years. During that time the speakers that you had heard may well of gone out of production or have been changed in other ways (different components etc). Meanwhile other speakers will have come onto the market which you may like or even prefer to those on your shortlist.
With that kind of sum I would step back and find some kind of way to review what is on the market these days and try to actually hear them ( or some of them) rather than do it as a paper exercise with the risk of buying something you don't really like, no matter that some reviewer has gone crazy over it. Remember he has to find something new to write about every month and make it newsworthy and enticing to read.
So, rather than rush into it, and taking account of work demands on your available time, I would look at my diary and plan to get to one of the big audio shows. OK, shows are not the best place to form definitive opinions but they are good at giving an idea of what may really interest you - especially as some of those speakers may not even be on your personal horizon yet.
So maybe leave it for now and, say, visit the RMAF Colorado show in the autumn or even bite the bullet hard and have a short break in Europ to go to the big daddy High End show in May in Munich. You would get to hear a vast amount of what is currently about there. Furthermore Munich is a lovely city and your wife may well enjoy what it has to offer too. In the context of what you are willing to spend such a trip may be a good investment.
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