Yep the price is not too good to be true for these Sophia's so it may be a legit seller. It certainly is worth to ask more pictures/proof etc. before a long trip.
A litlle help for choice of speakers up to €5500 (used or new)
Hi folks.
In advance I need to say that I am truly gratfull to be among you and learn with you all about this most passionate area of audio/hi fi.
Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Now, what brings me here today is a request for your help in an area so important to me. The purchase of loudspeakers. Perhaps the most important element of a system. And at this point I feel a little lost before the many choices and options available (nationally and internationally, new or used).
Having this budget available, I would like your precious help in choosing speakers within those values above.
The ideal objective would be to reconcile two worlds to which I very much identify myself in audio ...
I love a good mid range but also feel intrinsically need to have good bass that make me feel like "completely filling the room" (correctly, of course) with a full bodied sound.
I'm not referring to the bass of "impress your friends", but deep bass, dark, correct on the timbre and tonally that permits you to connect fully with the music.
The listening room is of an average apartment, by European standards. It has 35m2 and with good acoustics.
Previously (giving a bit of my experience to better situate the intended objective) I had some portuguese handmade speakers, skillfully built with many units and sealed box, that gave me years of pleasure with very good high and low frequencies. But I needed a little more presence in the mid-range and so I decided to change radically...
I ended up buying from a friend the Harbeth Super HL5 loudspeaker, which I knew well as a regular at his home. From all my audio experience were the loudspeakers that sounded better at this level of the midrange. I've never heard voices so naturally and realistically. But not only. The whole mid range is fabulous.
But nevertheless, ... I missed the bass I had previously with its predecessors. They were tonally correct basses that made me thrill more about music (I'm lucky that the setup room does not accuse the bass very much. So I can choose speakers with a significant bass). Both things are quite important to me.
Now, the goal would be to get and reconcile both things, of course. Among all the other normal features we all look for in very good loudspeakers.
An important detail is also the need to choose a model / brand / topology that allows me to have the freedom to play loud but also to play a low levels of sound. Not all speakers allow minimum quality at low / medium volumes.
As a result, I sold the current Harbeth Super HL5 and am a buyer of something I'm not sure what ... so many models, brands and topologies.
I can buy new or used and even internationally if necessary (in Portugal post-crisis, many of the good audio stores have fallen and some others do not give the necessary support).
As amplification, I have an integrated tube amplifier. It's a JJ828 from JJ Electronics. A Push Pull with 75wt channel-separated current transformers with 8 KT88 Genelec Gold Lion tubes.
I had previously a Lavardin IT that many hours (years) of pleasure gave me, but after knowing and testing this model of JJ, I was taken with its quality and conquered me to the point of having replaced Lavardin IT.
Not relevant I think, but as sources, I have a Primare CD31 CD player, a Portuguese hand-held turntable manufactured by artisan Rui Borges (Rui Borges UNO MKII) and a M2Tech Young DAC for hi res files.
The phono units are more than one, depending on the type of music I want to hear.
Sorry for the long text, just wanted to leave you everything you need for a better help.
Once more and in advance, thankyou for all.
Miguel
In advance I need to say that I am truly gratfull to be among you and learn with you all about this most passionate area of audio/hi fi.
Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Now, what brings me here today is a request for your help in an area so important to me. The purchase of loudspeakers. Perhaps the most important element of a system. And at this point I feel a little lost before the many choices and options available (nationally and internationally, new or used).
Having this budget available, I would like your precious help in choosing speakers within those values above.
The ideal objective would be to reconcile two worlds to which I very much identify myself in audio ...
I love a good mid range but also feel intrinsically need to have good bass that make me feel like "completely filling the room" (correctly, of course) with a full bodied sound.
I'm not referring to the bass of "impress your friends", but deep bass, dark, correct on the timbre and tonally that permits you to connect fully with the music.
The listening room is of an average apartment, by European standards. It has 35m2 and with good acoustics.
Previously (giving a bit of my experience to better situate the intended objective) I had some portuguese handmade speakers, skillfully built with many units and sealed box, that gave me years of pleasure with very good high and low frequencies. But I needed a little more presence in the mid-range and so I decided to change radically...
I ended up buying from a friend the Harbeth Super HL5 loudspeaker, which I knew well as a regular at his home. From all my audio experience were the loudspeakers that sounded better at this level of the midrange. I've never heard voices so naturally and realistically. But not only. The whole mid range is fabulous.
But nevertheless, ... I missed the bass I had previously with its predecessors. They were tonally correct basses that made me thrill more about music (I'm lucky that the setup room does not accuse the bass very much. So I can choose speakers with a significant bass). Both things are quite important to me.
Now, the goal would be to get and reconcile both things, of course. Among all the other normal features we all look for in very good loudspeakers.
An important detail is also the need to choose a model / brand / topology that allows me to have the freedom to play loud but also to play a low levels of sound. Not all speakers allow minimum quality at low / medium volumes.
As a result, I sold the current Harbeth Super HL5 and am a buyer of something I'm not sure what ... so many models, brands and topologies.
I can buy new or used and even internationally if necessary (in Portugal post-crisis, many of the good audio stores have fallen and some others do not give the necessary support).
As amplification, I have an integrated tube amplifier. It's a JJ828 from JJ Electronics. A Push Pull with 75wt channel-separated current transformers with 8 KT88 Genelec Gold Lion tubes.
I had previously a Lavardin IT that many hours (years) of pleasure gave me, but after knowing and testing this model of JJ, I was taken with its quality and conquered me to the point of having replaced Lavardin IT.
Not relevant I think, but as sources, I have a Primare CD31 CD player, a Portuguese hand-held turntable manufactured by artisan Rui Borges (Rui Borges UNO MKII) and a M2Tech Young DAC for hi res files.
The phono units are more than one, depending on the type of music I want to hear.
Sorry for the long text, just wanted to leave you everything you need for a better help.
Once more and in advance, thankyou for all.
Miguel
- ...
- 23 posts total
The D48R is amazing, but you don't see many used. I haven't heard previous model, the D40, but it doesn't seem too difficult to find. https://www.hifishark.com/search?q=proac+d40 The D30RS might be in your budget new (not sure about prices in Euros), but won't have as much bass. Good luck. |
Marktomaras/Plutos - thankyou, my idea (if doesnt find anything here in Portugal) is really that (finding some solution through Europe. But I am quite afraid of what Pluto's said about scammers. My idea is really to find some twou ou three good solutions and choose one to go visit in person the equipment in person. But to help reduce the risks can you tell me what can I ask the owners to show me before I go there? I usually ask for the certificate serial number, invoice, etc. So I may contact the brand and asks for the autenticy of the product. If you know any other thing that helps me to assurance the situation, please tell me. That WAS seems to me a very good option, despite the owner being not so good in communicate. I already asked him for some information and he is quite reserved in words. Maybe I will have to pass this unfortunetly. Because at first sight I found it a potential very good choice. Gnostalgik - thankyou, I put the D48/D40 in my short list and that is a model I can listen in Portugal, I think. The D30 I think (for what I read only, of course) it would be feel a lack of bass, for my taste. The only thing I am afraid is that those models seems to have a problem with the listening rooms etc. But I think to mine maybe isnt the case. |
I'll have to make a parenthesis here. To warn all those who are like me in my situation of buyers of audio material internationally. Among the various options I have been seeing here, and others that I have been advised here, I saw in the international sales forum "Adpost.com Classifieds", several good solutions in several commercials and contacted the owners. In one of these sales ads, I've detected a fraud scheme that I come here to warn you to be careful about and avoid that person. In fact, after verifying the fraud, I have already contacted the administrators of this sales forum as I have already denounced the fraud in the appropriate instances. Beware of commercials coming from this guy: https://www.myadpost.com/ste332/?session_key=c80988aea2cb9fd07b996acaac1a239a https://www.myadpost.com/ste332/uk/audio_video_electronics/18683/?session_key=c80988aea2cb9fd07b996a... the seller of these Wilson Audio Sophia II loudspeaker, of name (username) "ste332" (after entering his profile is named Jaan Steve from the city of Ajaccio, Corsica / France). After my contact to tell him that I was interested in his Wilson Audio speakers, he directed me to an email address of him for further contacts. His private message with the email address he gave me to contact was as follows: "Thanks for your response..Yes.if you can give me your email.then I will send you pictures and details or email me at flybratts231@gmail.com thanks" ... And so I did, I sent him my email and I exchanged some emails with him. After some rather strange details in his messages, I asked him certain things, like the location where the speakers would be, as well as obviously asking him for the certification of the purchase, purchase invoices, the serial number (in photos and also the possibility of entering into video call so that I can verify the same serial number) and his answers were always sneaky. At very cost after my insistence he sent me a supposed purchase invoice. Invoice that I want to resend to you as one of the evidence of fraud (as I will explain below). The invoice did not look professional at all and came in Swedish. Supposedly his purchase would have been made at a Stockholm store called Audio Stylus - as I found out after some research by the name of the store in the invoice (http://www.stylusaudio.se/kontakt/). In addition, the purchase invoice does not contain any stamp or official sticker of the store, nor any signature of someone responsible for the store, etc., etc. Already realizing that here would configure something illegal and fraudulent I still asked him about the photos of the serial number viewed from the own loudspeakers. Just as I told him that in order to make the purchase, he would have to send me all these things first, and I would want to go to Ajaccio, France, to see and hear the loudspeakers live and with my eyes (just to see his reation). As the enigmatic answers continued, I did a personal research and got to contact the responsible for the lodgers of Audio Stylus from Stockholm (the store actually exists), and could talk with Karl Liander, Oscar Andersson and Daniel Hofmann from this audio shop. Through the number 00 46 70 843 29 88 any of you can do it and confirm this unpleasant situation. Those store responsibles could thus confirm to me that the purchase invoice (which I had sent to them in the contact email) was totally false, forged and counterfeited. Nor have they ever sold any loudspeakers of this model to ajaccio or anywhere neither to that person. In a very attentive and friendly way, these gentlemen have made themselves available to contribute to the fight against this scourge that exists worldwide, with these scams of fraudulent fraudsters and scams that infect international sales outlets. As my work is in the justice field, I had to report all this to the competent authorities, not only local but also international. Interpol is already more than attentive to these things, which are nothing new, unfortunately. But I found it pertinent to inform you too, because we must always be aware of this. Of course I'd never step in to a blind business without proper investigation and without all the data that these kind of person (as a seller is obliged) has to provide to any buyers. Well... the surch to be continued, of course, with tranquility and pleasure. But its sad these kind of people and actions. Kind regards for you all. |
- 23 posts total