Need Recommendations for a pair of Speakers around $1,000

Check out Jay Iyagi’s (YouTube) build and review of the CSS. He says it compares favorably with his Sonus Faber Lumina II speakers but are probably flatter in that they don’t have the slight midbass bump that the Sonus do.

But I’m still confused. You have a very large room and are planning on sitting 19 FEET away from the speakers. Can ANY small bookshelf speakers really do such a large room justice, or vice versa? Good luck with whatever you get.

Jay ended up paying someone to veneer his CSS, but you could probably do them yourself and save $$$. He later bought the "upgrade" and was even happier.

Magnepan LRS+ and never look back.

while agree these are terrific, high value speakers, op said this:

The new speakers will be in the living room connected to the Adcom and also a signal fed from the TV but I don’t want a multi-speaker system. Stereo is fine and if they sound good to me with music the wife will be happy with the TV sound. She just wants them to look good and not have a lot of wires hanging around.

there will be issues with the grainy adcom driving them, but more serious issue may be w-a-f...

There seems to be a bit of controversy over the original Adcom GFA-545 designed by Nelson Pass. Some say they're very good while others, some here (I also got a PM), don't care for it.

How is it that audio engineer like Jim Williams who has worked in pro studios with people like Stevie Wonder can say these are good amps and can be made even better with a few mods while others say it's not a good amp??

Is it Adcom in general or have you listened specifically to the Nelson Pass designed GFA-545 to come to that conclusion?

Then again, could it be as simple as the Klipsch Heresy....some love them, some hate them?

over time i have had the 535 545 (i and ii) 555 - it was years ago of course

yes papa nelson pass designed them when he was a pup - but one needs to separate design and execution...

the adcoms were designed and spec’d to a specific (quite modest) price point, even for back in the day, so there were numerous execution tradeoffs in parts spec and quality, mechanical and electrical isolation... result is a nice sweet sounding product at fairly modest volumes but a glare, grain and glassiness that comes through once there are some demands placed on the amp and its power supply, especially into more reactive speaker loads

no free lunch here... take a nice resolving pair of speakers, like maggies, vandersteens, harbeths, revels, focals, get a clean source, run one of the old adcoms and then a modern day pass amp... there is a substantial, immediately audible difference

even leaving aside the capacitor aging issue, if a 30 year old 545 worth $400 could deliver for a discriminating audio lover what high-level modern ss amps can, we would all have them, and hegel, ayre, pass labs, belles, naim, exposure would all be out of business

Thank you jjss49.

It may sound strange but your criticism actually aligns with the mods for the 545 MKI. Select parts are upgraded with higher quality and some with new values as well.

Mods to:

Change to higher uf caps in the power supply

Change resistors and transistors in the input circuit to stabilize Offset Voltage

Upgrade the type and value of the Bias cap

Add shunt caps to increase the Low End and correct Phase Shift

Change select resistors and caps in the signal path with better quality components.

I'm not an engineer but I used to be a tech and still have a bench with a scope, load, freq counter, distortion meter, etc. What if any before and after tests would you or others recommend? I've read these mods which cost a few hundred dollars can transform this amp to compete with those costing thousands more. I'd like to see how this turns out.

Thank you for the input!