I use a ProAc D48 and love it. The K6 are supposed to be better.
Looking for a good full range floor stander
Hello all. Making a good two way system for a 20 x 40x 12 high room budget 12k to 16 k. Powered by a bryston 14b cubed amp. Have a surround system with Golden ear ref and surrounds powered by parasound a21 for mains and Carver cinema grand for surrounds. Like the GEs The speakers I'm looking for will be for music only lots of jazz (female vocalist a fav), classical, classic rock and roll (70's and up). I have heard good things about proac k6, Joseph audio, and a few others but am not within 4 hours of audition range. Real interested in people in the know about the proac or suggestions. Thanks in advance.
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There's a rare pair of JA Pearls available for $13k. Dealer demo in great shape and full 5-year warranty. You know what to do. https://www.usaudiomart.com/details/649537368-joseph-audio-pearl/ |
I vote for the Legacy's too. I have a little smaller room with Ascend Sierra 2's as back speaker surrounds, and a horizon Ascend Raal Horizon Center. Our listening choices are the same. I listen too about the same genre's. He probably has a better amp, as I have a 6005 ATI signature series 5 channel. And your right on the cabinetry, they are lookers. I also have two big 18" subs, and at high volumes, they are definitely worth having, and I would not be without them. Turned down at moderate levels, not so much |
I went to last year’s RMAF. I visited Jim Salk at Salk Audio. I listened to his Song3 Encore towers priced at $6,00/pair and they sounded better than a pair of $60,000 speakers down the hall. Can’ imagine what his more expensive speakers sound like. Jim sells direct. He told me he was not willing to use inferior drivers and cabinet design in order to sell his speakers at a discount so dealers can make all the money. As a result, he uses the most expensive high quality drivers. I promise you, they are the best speakers you will ever hear. i am sure the dealers who participate in this forum are rolling their eyes. And no! I am not working for Salk Audio. Call Jim Salk and tell him Larry Edwards sent you. You are in for a treat. |
Yes Larry and if you undertstand acoustics you will understand that most loudspeakers will not fill up a room that big, you must look at total square footage, and if the room is open to another room then you have an even larger amount of air to fill add in more requirements in power handling and bass if the listener likes to play loud. Salk does use excellent drivers, however, because you sell direct doesn’t mean that much, their are economies of scale that enable large manufacturers to design all their own drivers that are often far superior to the collection of parts that JIm Salk and many home brew guys use. Also Larry just because in your opinion that a pair of $6k Salks sounded better to you than a $60k speaker means nothing, first the $60k speaker could have been shoe horned into a tiny room or may have been setup like crap. Horse for courses. It is interesting that we heard the Salks at both Axpona and at CAP, as we do listen to products that compete with ours, and neither Salk at either show was blowing us away, nor were the uber expensive Von Schweikerts, nor were the Magicos, our favorites at Axpona were Wilson, Focal, Vimberg, Golden Ear and the Alta Audio, and the T+A speakers were the best at the show. Back to the matter at hand, Giant room 20 by 40 with 12 foot ceilings means a speaker that can play loud with prodigious bass, high power handling and great efficiency. We brought in Legacy for a client who wanted to DJ and had a 300 watt per channel amplifier, the Focus can handle 500 watts, is 95db and has bass to 18hz and they will fill up a large room with ease! Please show me a conventional high end loudpeaker that can do that. Salk makes only one loudspeaker that will do the job with the exception of not knowing how much power the speaker can hold and that is the $13k Salk powered Exotica 3, which is 3db less efficient, and has bass to 25hz vs the Legacy’s 18hz bass. The other speaker line that will do that is the Tektons, we have heard the Tektons and were not blown away by their treble, and their cabinetry is ugly, but they will also do the job and they are a great deal for the money. A pair of Focus XD come with self amplified bass and you can add a Wavelet room correction processor to help tame the awful acoustics that will invariably be a part of a large room with high ceilings. Yes you can add a set of subwoofers, and providing you can roll off the bass going to the main speakrs that can also work but then you have the added cost and space constrains and look of having four boxes in the room rather than two. Hey what do we know 30 years professional sound system design, trained in Theater design by Russ Hershelman, acoustics courses by Tony Grimmani of Lucas sound. You must factor in all of these factors just because you use exotic drivers like a Raal ribon doesn’t account for much when you blow up your tweeter or launch a midrange driver because your speakers are not designed to fill up the space. And you can roll your eyes as well, as Legacy uses a custom German made Heil AMT tweeter and midrange, coupled to an Italian made silk and graphite midrange driver, so Bill’s drivers aren’t too shabby either. The best thing is for this gentleman to visit a few dealers or go to a good regional show and find out for himself. Good luck OP. Dave and Troy Audio Doctor NJ Legacy dealers |
Nothing without good room correction sound very good in a small hotel room. Jim Salk was kind enough to agree to participate in an event in June our club put on. We had legitimate rooms, 19 x 29 x 12. His speakers were excellent sounding. Salk does not use a 4 to 1 component cost to retail price ratio as most makers do. We guesstimated the Song 3s we had @ $5,900 had about $2k in raw SEAS speakers. Amazing wood work goes into his speakers too. |
Two words: Emerald Physics My room is 19 x 36 with 11 foot vaulted open beam ceilings. Both front and back walls are 50- 90% glass PLUS a open up/down stairwell on the left side Been using a pair of EP KC IIs and dual SVS subs which do a darn good job with music like; Patricia Barber, Diana Krall, Jacinta, Eagles Hell Freezes Over, lots of large orchestra classical... but expecting to replace them with EP 2.8s ~ $9K soon |
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I'll assume the system will be going on the 20 foot wall. An omnidirectional point source speaker will make a room like that sound like a giant cavern without very significant room treatment. The end result will be that the speaker will get lost in the echos. Keeping the listening position as close in as you can will help. The ultimate speaker for a room like that would be the SoundLabs 945. Unfortunately it will not make it up to a 12 foot ceiling so it will stop behaving as a line source at about 110 Hz. Ideally you would cross over to a subwoofer array there. This all goes way outside your budget but the point is that a line source dipole will project better into a larger room and limit reflections off the floor, ceiling and side walls. This will give you less echo and a better sense of the the stage and image in front of you and it would give you a little more leeway in regards to the listening position. The Magnepan 20.7 is in your price range and is a dipole line source down to 150 Hz. It will play the type of music you like effortlessly and if you felt you needed more bass subwoofers could be a future option. They will not play as loud a horns or a large point source so if you were a Metallica fan I would have a hard time recommending them in that room. Otherwise they will sound much more realistic, project better into the room and suffer less from room anomalies than other types of loudspeakers. The next step up is the 30.7 if you happen to find some cash hidden in the Mattress. |
Mjstoyn most large panels suck. Try an image that is out of focus, the large flat diaphram causes diffraction which gives you a very large unfocused soundstage as both your midrange and top end freq are bouncing off the diaphragm. Add in poor bass your back wave is cancelling out your front wave which leads to no impact. Even with subs not realistic sounding. Then add in low efficiency and compression when played loud. A large poïnt source with room correction does work in a large room. Go to a live music show ever see a giant set of panels? Big room you need big dynamic loudspeakers |
Mtdining, the Sabrina are excellent loudpeakers that are not designed for this size room. You would need a set of Daw or Alexias to provide enough air movement for this size room. Large room = high efficiency, high spl, deep bass, physically larger loudspeakers. It is really that simple, for this reason we recommend speakers like the Legacy Focus, Focus XD with Wavelet, or the Aeris they will fill up a large room beautifully, are they the best speakers in the price range that is a different question, they are really great sounding loudspeakers for the money that will work acoustically in the OP's very large space. Add in the fact that the OP can go perhaps to a Legacy dealer in his state and listen to the speakers or here them at shows is a bonus. Dave and Troy Audio Doctor NJ Legacy dealers |
@milpai I agree with you that the Proac D48 would be a great choice. I had a pair of D30r's (the D48's sounded great but were too big for my room) powered by a Bryston 14b cube amp and the sound was fantastic. At the time I was thinking about the Legacy line but thought the Proac's were much more musical and way better looking. Hope this helps. |
I head the Salk Song3 BeAT and the Encore at CAF, and they did indeed run rings about plenty of more expensive speakers, including an utterly uninspiring pair of Personas. For that room size, look at what may be Salk's masterpiece to date, the SS 9.5, which is larger but related to both BeAT and Encore. |
audiotroy, to be kind you have no idea what you are talking about and judging by your dialect would not know a good speaker if it hit you over the head. Your explanations of physics and acoustics lack any semblance of reality and the way you describe auditory phenomena suggests you can't hear either. |
audiotroy: you appear to be not "au fait" with the latest (and probably greatest) offering from Salk, the SS 9.5, which takes the woofer from the Encore and combines it in a larger cabinet with dual passive radiators. Salk continues to up his game. He also uses one of the few listenable beryllium tweeters in some of his models. |
No rja we didn’t bad mouth Salk speakers, we heard them and thought they sounded good but not spectacular at both CAP and Axpona. Also you can't demo Salk speakers he builds to order, you have to buy them on faith. Mjyostyn, after 30 years of professional audio sales and design can assure you we abolustely know what we are talking about. Every large flat panel speaker will have a terrible image because of defraction, the larger your panel in order to have any lower bass frequncies at all means you have a giant surface area to which all of your frequencies will bounce off of, we had Quad ELS 63, ESL pro, Magneplaner 3.5 over the years, and none of them could throw a realisticly sized image not to mention selling Apogee, and Martin Logans for years. Then you have the issue with dynamics, a large panel can not move air with the force of a dynamic driver. Play a pair of Wilsons audio loudspeakers at realitstic concert levels and put on a drum recording, what you get sounds real, the panels don’t have the accelerative impact of sealed box with dynamic drivers. If you like your lead singer to be excessively tall and wide, please enjoy your perverted view of reality Mykyosyn, good speakers we like: Vimberg, Rockport, Paradigm Personas, Wilsons, Kef Blade and Rererence, Legacy, Focal. . Again Twoleft ears, you need greater efficiency and deep bass to fill up such a large room only Salks Encore 3 version is really suitable. |
You CAN demo Salk speakers. As I said, he has a list of speaker owners that are willing to let interested folks come over for a listen. Audiotroy, Your know-it-all attitude gets a bit wearing. Please remember, your opinions are merely opinions not fact. I know you have plenty of experience with audio, that’s great. But please stop dictating your beliefs and tone it down. Generally I have no problem with dealers or manufacturers posting here when they have something to offer. |
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Silfoth we didnt bad mouth Salk we in fact said for the Op large room he would need the Salk model with the powered woofers. Nor did we badmouth Wilson Our quote Mtdining, the Sabrina are excellent loudpeakers that are not designed for this size room. You would need a set of Daw or Alexias to provide enough air movement for this size room Rbach there are no words suitable for you. You and Rebstero are complaining we only endorse our products didnt we just say above Our quote Twoleftears unless subs are used still way too small for the op room also not efficient enough. The encore 3 is the only Salk that would work to cover that much air space. Legacy, Tekton, Salk encore would really do the job. We dont sell Salk or Tekton now do we? Silfoth look at myostyn reply above and see who is being nasty unless the moderators removed it he said some pretty insulting things. Big flat planers have tons of problems. To recap to fill up a big room properly 1. High efficiency speakers 2. High power handling 3. High spl output the combo of above as well as having low levels of compression 4. Deep bass output Horns with subs, compression drivers, dynamic loudspeakers, large dynamic loudspeakers will all do it. It is really that simple. |
As the OP has amps that offer 600 wpc., I think speaker efficiency will not be a limiting factor unless the speaker has a nasty impedance dip. Most here on Audiogon know of my love for Vandersteen- which Audiotroy doesn't carry. The Quatros's and above have subwoofers that can be EQ'd to the room. And, I am sure they will fill his room with enough sound pressure to make his ears bleed. My other recommendation would be MBL. They ain't efficient, nor cheap, but will out perform anything out there when given the proper signal. Bob |
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Rja so sorry you feel that way, you said a lot of things directed against us that were not true, we never bashed Salk speakers just the times when we heard them and weren’t impressed by them and we didn’t say they were bad, on the contrary,j ust that we weren’t blown away by them. We also mentioned several times that there are Salk models with the active woofers would do the job far better than their passive models, we also mentioned Tekton both of these lines we do not sell. We also mentioned that there were many speakers at that show that didn’t impress us either and these were expensive well respected brands. Look our experience is very different, we have done shows with 30 foot by 20 rooms, and we have heard systems that did not accheive room lock in a giant room where the bass did not fill the room and the sound was okay and not exceptional. One notable example is the $1 million dollar plus Von Schweikert Vac systems as shown in Axpona and Cap, giant rooms with loudspeakers that just couldn’t fill them. When you accheive room lock you will feel the bass when the note is there. This system in a room half or one third the giant ballrooms size and the sound would have been fantastic. Gndrbob, the Vandy 7 with the dual subs in the giant room they were in at Axpona were also poor, these might be superb speakers but there is no substitute for displacement and they just didn't fill the room. The big Magicos with the dual giant subs and a lot of power did fill a large open space at a norminal listenng distance. Many of the loudspeakers mentioned here are good loudspeakers that will not work optimally in a giant room. Same speakers in a smaller room will sound excellent. It is our belief that the world’s top loudspeaker companies do produce their own drivers and spend millions on research and developement. Seas and Scanspeak are tiny companies with revenues in the millions not in the hundreds of millions, both of these companies produce excellent drivers, but there is a clarity in drivers such as the Acuton diamond tweeter and midrange that just arent available in more conventional cone materials, yes Acuton is a small driver manufacturer but nobody other than them have figured out a way to make a pure Diamond midrange, and the reason nobody uses these drivers is cost. Kef is one of the most throughly engineered companies out there, so is B&W and Focal and Paradigm. We tend to favor the bigger companies for one reason which is not price but ultimate performance tends to be with these companies, which have the raw engineering talent and budget to push the boundaries of sound. And yes if Bose wanted to invest in beating the best high end audio companies they could spend $30 million dollars in a heartbeat, it is fortunate for our beloved high end brands that Bose doesn’t desire to do so. We would be happy to contest facts with facts, the truth of what we say in terms of loudspeakers in large rooms is not our opinions it is established facts. Look at the sound systems in a concert, you will see stacks of compression horn tweeters and midrange drivers coupled to stacks of large 15 inch bass bins with thousands of watts of power. The reason is spf falls off depending on distance, total bass response in room is the output of the speaker coupled with room gain which is the effect that the room will bring on reinforcing the bass. Most of this discussion would be simple is the OP has a more normal sized room with a lower ceiling. Dave and Troy Audio Doctor NJ |
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