Best monitor under 5k?

I recently moved and had to sell my Magnepans as they were too large for the new room and also had to be further away from the wall than the room allowed.

Besides liking the sound of the speaker, your two primary smaller room issues are typically, 1) just the physical size of the speakers, and 2) the need for them to be closer to rear and side walls with minimal deterioration. The latter parameter will be hard to judge unless you can test drive them at your own house.

I ended up with a pair of Spendor S5e speakers that are small footprint floor standers (they also make stand models) and they also sound good even though they are relatively close to the rear wall.

The second place speakers were Dynaudio Contour 1.4's. Their main drawback was they were about double the price. That made my decision easy as even if they'd been the same price, it'd still been a horse race between the two.

Harmonic Precision Caravelle, www.audiopoints.com. Great monitor! $5,000.00 with stands.

Chuck

I heard the Totem Mani-2s sound great in a small room in Montreal two shows ago. They have a warm balance not too dissimilar from your Vandys. I've always liked this speaker for putting a lot into a small and well-made package. They need a first-class, powerful amp and you have one.

I've lived in an apartment for 6 years or so and have had my Coincident Super Eclipse Series II for about 5 years. I use a SET amp with a BAT VK-50SE preamp. The Super's are not small, but they are narrow and don't dominate the room. They provide more bass than stand-mounted speakers and look nicer.

I know all about apartment living - like when you are unlucky enough to get neighbours with a nasty boom box + sub system and all you can hear is the thumping bass. They didn't stay long.

My apartment is old so the walls are pretty solid and the current neighbours are quiet.

What you need, though, is a system that sounds good at low levels. It's my opinion that an efficient speaker does this better. If you are going to get an efficient speaker you may as well get one that presents a benign impedance load - and now you have the right transducer for single ended triodes.

I compensate for the lack of punch and volume I can have with beautiful tone, easy listening at all levels, and that extra magic that SET adds.

A lot of stand-mounted monitors are inefficient and need some volume to get going, and that's not what you can do in an apartment.

Just one person's opinion.

Regards,

Metralla is onto something here. If you are forced to go with a smaller speaker that will sound good at lower volume levels (be a good tenant!), you might as well go with a speaker that is efficient and has a benign impedance load. This will allow you to use almost any amp, including low powered SET amps. Some of the lower powered tube and SS amps are very affordable and sound fantastic within their power limits.

I'm currently using the Reference 3A MM DeCapo monitors. They are a very easy load, sound very good at lower volume (as well as higher volume) and can be used with almost any amp over about 1.5 watts/channel (for most listening taste). I currently power mine with either a 3.5 watt/ch 2A3 SET tube amp or a 40 watt/ch. SS chip amp. Both sound fantastic.

Enjoy,

TIC