How big is your room? I had the Special 25's for a home audition - they have a very large rear port, and I found that they really required being brought out about 4 feet from the back wall in my 14x18 room. When I did that, the bass locked in very well. I wasn't totally sold on the low end even after doing this - don't get me wrong, it was very good. It just didn't have as full a lower end as you might want, a problem with many monitors.
The tweeter in the Spec25's is unbelievably fast. If you want detail and imaging, I can't imagine a better answer.
Two things - I had them for a weekend, not a month, so these were somewhat limited impressions. I also don't know how broken in the speakers were - I had them fairly shortly after their release. I seriously doubt they had hundreds of hours on them. The things that concerned me may have become bigger in my mind, but also might have become mitigated or even become strengths.
I've only listened to the 1.3SE's at the dealer, driven by nice Krell amplification. Very nice, but no idea how they'd compare specifically with the Spec25's in concrete terms, as I haven't had them in my room.
To throw something else into the mix, have you thought about springing for the extra $$, but buying a pair of the Confidence 3's? Faced with many of the same parameters, that's where I ended up. In any case, an unbelievably well constructed and sounding speaker. Not quite as detailed, but a somewhat fuller sound, and will definitely have a deeper bottom end than the 1.3SE. I never had the Confidence 3's in my room at the same time as the Spec 25's, so I can't say I compared and one was a clear winner, tho I'm extremely happy with the Confidence 3's.
All of these are great speakers, IMO - well built, sound good on lots of genres of music, fill a lot of space without taking up much room. I don't think you can go wrong, basically. And, no, I wouldn't throw out an alternative to the Dyns :-) -Kirk
The tweeter in the Spec25's is unbelievably fast. If you want detail and imaging, I can't imagine a better answer.
Two things - I had them for a weekend, not a month, so these were somewhat limited impressions. I also don't know how broken in the speakers were - I had them fairly shortly after their release. I seriously doubt they had hundreds of hours on them. The things that concerned me may have become bigger in my mind, but also might have become mitigated or even become strengths.
I've only listened to the 1.3SE's at the dealer, driven by nice Krell amplification. Very nice, but no idea how they'd compare specifically with the Spec25's in concrete terms, as I haven't had them in my room.
To throw something else into the mix, have you thought about springing for the extra $$, but buying a pair of the Confidence 3's? Faced with many of the same parameters, that's where I ended up. In any case, an unbelievably well constructed and sounding speaker. Not quite as detailed, but a somewhat fuller sound, and will definitely have a deeper bottom end than the 1.3SE. I never had the Confidence 3's in my room at the same time as the Spec 25's, so I can't say I compared and one was a clear winner, tho I'm extremely happy with the Confidence 3's.
All of these are great speakers, IMO - well built, sound good on lots of genres of music, fill a lot of space without taking up much room. I don't think you can go wrong, basically. And, no, I wouldn't throw out an alternative to the Dyns :-) -Kirk