Looking for suggestions on best small footprint speaker under $4K
miamiangler They can be got for around that price now used, if your lucky and a good haggler, and that’s a pair of Sonus Faber Extrema’s old, (new will cost you a kidney), best stand mount speaker I have ever heard, with bass that floor standers can’t match and a tweeter that’s still regarded as the best, but they like a very good amp. Cheers George |
twoleftears1,368 posts01-21-2019 12:06pmIf you're serious about small footprint, look at Totem or ProAc. You could get something pretty nice on the used marked for 4K. Step top up to the Acoustic Preference Gracioso 1.0 used for 1K more. Original price was 15K. One of the best bookshelf speakers I have ever heard and is incredible to look at. Very tasteful. Good luck in whichever you purchase. You’re on the right path. |
Thanks for all of the feedback I have recieved on my first post! I have reviewed all of the suggestions and have narrowed my choices down to the Salk Song 3 in gnurly maple with silver grey dye or the Dynaudio Special Forty in Birch gray. At first it appeared the Dynaudio looked more like a distressed wood grey but after viewing some videos it is gorgeous. The Special forty would provides a smaller foot print and I have a sub woofer. With the Song 3 I can get rid of my sub woofer. your thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks |
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@miamiangler hope this is not a bother, resurrecting an old thread. I am in the same boat: trying to seek as best a pair as possible for a small place. Music source will be Tidal on Mac Mini (and occasionally phone), amp most likely Hegel H90 or Cambridge Audio CXA81. I've short listed my options down to: 1. Dynaudio Special 40 2. KEF R3 (I can get a sub later...am not a bass hound) 3. JBL L100 The Salk Song3 is interesting, but being a full floorstanding, might be overkill for me. I'm not very familiar with Salk, and in Toronto it may be hard to find a pair to listen to. So, question: could you share why you decided to go with the floorstanding -- was it only the ability to get rid of the sub, or was the sound also better? |
Julie, the LFT driver is a push-pull magnetic planar design (magnets on both sides of the Mylar)---resulting in very low-distortion, with low-mass conductive traces vapor-deposited onto the Mylar. The 1.7i is a single-ended design (magnets on only one side of the Mylar), it’s conductive wire glued onto the Mylar. The LFT driver has a stiff cross-braced metal frame which is bolted onto the speakers’ MDF baffle, the 1.7i has it’s un-braced Mylar glued onto it’s baffle. The LFT-8b has removable front and rear grill frames, the 1.7i a non-removable grill sock (stabled onto the bottom of the MDF frame). The LFT driver covers frequencies 180Hz to 10kHz, with NO Crossover! Vocal and instrumental timbre remains consistent over their entire frequency range. Each note on the entire piano keyboard sounds like it’s coming from the same piano, ya know? No tonal "shifts" as the pianist’s hands move down the keyboard. That midrange driver has been in production for over three decades, without a single change! Bruce Thigpen got it right. VPI’s Harry Weisfeld stated he considers the LFT-8b to have the best midrange of any loudspeaker he has ever heard. The LFT-8b has about the same sensitivity of the 1.7i, but is an 8 ohm resistive load, better for tube amps than the 1.7i’s 4 ohms. The LFT-8b has two pair of binding posts, making bi-amping/wiring easy. The LFT midrange driver itself is a consistent 11 ohm load, even better for tube amps. 10kHz up is handled via a ribbon tweeter. Cross-overs at 180Hz and 10kHz are symmetrical 1st order filters. The LFT-8b plays louder and lower than the 1.7i, partly because of it’s 8" sealed dynamic woofer (for 180Hz down). Unlike other planar/dynamic hybrids, the planar midrange and dynamic woofer blend seamlessly, Bruce having invested a lot of time working on the woofer. And unlike Maggies---known for sounding veiled at lower SPL levels, the LFT-8b remains transparent at lower listening levels. The LFT-8b has an "immediate" character, making vocals and instruments sound more "there". In comparison the 1.7i sounds somewhat "whispy": less fleshed-out & full-bodied, less viscerally "present". Hi-fi descriptions being so subjective, I’ll leave it at that. Yes, the LFT-8b and the 1.7i are both magnetic-planar designs, but they sound rather different. It’s a shame the LFT-8b is not more accessible for auditioning. There have been quite a few reviews of the speaker in the UK, every one of them a rave. Robert E. Greene (a fairly reliable hi-fi critic) reviewed it in The Absolute Sound, and came to the same decision. A main take-away in all the reviews was the low-distortion sound of the LFT-8b, how "quiet" (no noise from spurious distortion) the speaker sounds. Pure, direct, more like an ESL than a magnetic-planar. The reviews are viewable of the Eminent Technology website. |
