Best speakers for Classical music under 10k used

Depending on your room size and other components involved in your system, you should check out eletrostats and planars for your listening purposes. If you will be doing most of your listening from a seated position in a small to medium sized room the Quads would be a great choice.
If you want something with more adjustability, check out some of the Wisdom Audio speakers. I ran the M-50's for a few years and totally enjoyed the classical recordings (CD and DVD-A) that I have. The soundstage(width and depth)and the detail blew away my Dad who is an avid classical music listener and loves the "live" performances at the Hollywood Bowl. These speakers do need to be bi-amped but will allow for room abnormalites with the "active brain". I recently upgraded my speakers to the Rush and the clarity as well as the bass is unbelievable!
Good luck in your quest!

Hi McTeague,

I've been very curious about the Orions, but unfortunately it seems that it will be impossible to hear them where I live.

I'm a novice but I think there are three things that are important to good classical music reproduction: 1. Body- some might say bass, but its also how the bass fleshes out the whole. The bass should be articulate, tunefull, and when required, have that slam. 2. Clarity when things get nutty. Many otherwise fine sounding speakers creat a wall of undiferentiated fuzz when an entire orchestra plays complex passages at the limmit. I suppose that folded into this requirement by necessity might be an accurate rendition of what people call "timbre". 3. Musicality- a wishy-washy term I suppose, but I do feel the speaker should let the music carry the listener away, rather than create a merely analytical experience.

All of the foregoing is pretty abstract I admit, but I'd be grateful if you could put into words what you hear in the Orions, and why like them for classical above other contenders out there. Are there other speakers you'd compare them to?

Thanks,

-Bill.

I have had Wilson Benesch speakers for 2 years. Very satisfying for all types of music. I am mainly a classical lister. The WB speakers are coherent, still detailed and very dynamic.

For classical only Quads are superb.

Billhound,

The Orions, being active speakers, seem to just get louder as the orchestra swells. As much as I loved my Thiels they seemed to contrict a bit when things got loud. That may be due to the 1st order crossovers which put lots of strain on the tweeter. The Orions bass is really impressive, not just low down but in the sense of air pressure in the room. They have a very layered sound most likely due to being dipoles. They are very clean and lack the slight brightness that most Thiels seem to have. But, as noted, I had to invest in a TacT room correction preamp to get them to really work in my room. When I first set them up they did sound better than the Thiels but not as much as I had hoped after hearing them in Don Berringer's house (Linkwitz's partner). Now who knows how much better the Thiels would have been if I had used the TacT on them.

Tim