speaker advice' help needed

vandersteen is a very good match with the jolida. you could get a used pair of 2ce's (maybe even signatures) for ~$1000. the combo would be great for orchestral music (i'm a big classical music listener myself).

i've used gma europa's with a 502a, and had excellent results as well.

currently, i am using dali suite speakers. a pair of suite 2.8's just came up for sale at $795, and i would imagine they would sound stunning with the jolida. for large scale classical music, i think that you would be better served by speakers that are closer to full-range, like the vandy's or dali's.

that's a nice setup of gear you have there... lots of good speaker options in your price range. you should be able to come up with a system that sounds far better then the price would suggest.

Hi Tony,

Since you very much into classical (especially Symphonies) I am not sure whether single driver speakers are the right way to go. Some speakers I considered for my Jolida amp before going the single driver route:

Soliloquy 5.3 or 6.2
Spendor S3/5 (+ sub)
GMA Europa
Totem ARRO (+ sub)

With your amp the Soliloquy speakers should work especially well. For the JD302b I find a monitor to work better (tighter bass), but for the 502b the standspeaker should be great too. Check with Underwood Hifi if he still has some Soliloquy's available. I almost bought some 6.2's from him. Lots of additional info in the Archives.

The GMA should be great as well worth checking out.

Good luck,

Rene

New I would look at the Opera Audio Consonance Eric-1 mini-monitors at 1K/pr. new. They may have some polarizing looks, but the sound is quite good, and way better than I would expect for 1K monitors.

Also worth consideration used would be either the Tyler Acoustics Taylo Reference Monitors, or Ellis 1801Bs (both about 1K used).

---Dave

Meadowlark?

I have an Underwood modded 502B driving a pair of Totem Sttafs and this is a lovely combination. Totems are not the most efficient but not a problem at all with 502, i think people tend to exaggerate about how much power some less efficient speakers need to be happy. Any Totems will match well with the larger Jolida tube amps. I upgraded from an Arcam A75 which was terrible with the Totems which revealed all kinds of grain and high frequency garbage, very revealing speakers. My Arcam CD72 is next on the chopping block to be repleced by an Eastsound CD-5.