Talon khorus vs. Nola Viper iia

Well as a long term Talon owner I can say the following. The original khorus is somewhat flawed in that it needs a good room, well damped and setup to sound good... not great but at least good. With some work via room correction you can get what I consider very good sound out of them. Better then most anything under 5k which is where they sell today. Yes I have owned a pair of the Alon's some years back but to be fair they were not the Vipers so I cannot make a direct comparison for you.

I have also owned the Talon Paragrin Mk II and can say first hand they did in fact improve the cross over, bass and mid-range with the upgraded version of that speaker (same basic drivers as the Kohrus without the super tweeter) so the comments are correct in that the speaker did improve over time. However from talking to other owners of various versions it seems that there was a very clear cut off point by which point more $ in did not get you a great deal more out of the speakers. Comparing the original Kohrus to the Paragrin Mk II, I would suggest the mk II is a good buy, but will cost you a good bit more then the original. You should also be aware that you can upgrade any of the Kohrus line to the current crossover and basically get to the last iteration of the speaker Mk II +. Its 1600.00 or so to buy the latest crossover but again the original speakers are selling between 2-4k these days while the Mk II seem to be going around 5-6k. If you can get them cheap and like them your all good. If not room correction or an upgrade to the cross over will help things along.

I have three systems in the house and can honestly say I have wanted to give up in these old birds and have put them up for sale more then once. Funny thing is I often find myself sitting in front of them tapping my feet to the music.

They are and or can be a chore to setup and the need some help with room correction or acoustic treatment... if not a bit of both. That being said they really are much better then what they get on the used market these days. And are hands down a bargain in terms of the used price the carry.

"The Khorus is a mess of a speaker. No bass, a muffled and distant midrange. Serious phase issues. Everything sounds like a blanket was thrown over them. Have to be cranked to max to sound good and by then you are deaf."

Interesting, not what I hear. The Talons work well with SS like Sim Audio but my Pass Labs X-250 was not a good match at all so you just cannot make a blanket statement about them working better with SS. I also own the older Alon V MKII speakers and they sound better with tubes but I also do run a SS Museatex CAS-10 100wpc SS amp but with a fantastic preamp (I built it). It all comes down to system matching. The Talons are a excellent value but are also heavy so hard to resell. The Alons also seem to have a low resale value but set up correctly are fantastic speakers. I heard the newer Alons forget the model buy they list for around $25K. They were faster then my older Alons, a little softer sounding, more refined, less bass output.