Ever heard of, any opinions on, these speakers?


Sinclair Brighton 490T:

http://sinclairaudio.com/460t.html

I've not heard of them, but they are in our local shop, and extremely reasonably priced. They sound good, but I haven't compared them other other speakers much.

Thanks...
river251
Hi, thanks for the responses. Pretty good research there.

They are around $1500/pair. I'm told by the shop that two shops in Tucson have dropped Paradigm and replaced them with Sinclair. I did get to compare them to a Paradigm and a PSB but just one listen to them then the Sinclair. The soundstage went from the little area between the speakers to the entire room, location of instruments in that space was clear. The Sinclairs were much louder too, the 92db I guess. Harmonically, the Paradigms were incredibly bright, the PSB very even and laid back but kind of compressed, the Sinclair was even, mellow and warm, but with detail and lots of space. Kind of hard to compare because it's like comparing the sound when it's all sort of in a ball, to the sound of each of a lot of separate things (the instruments, singer, etc.). But the tonality seemed right. I later took in my old tube gear, and Diana Krall sounded correct on the Anthem and my MC240, but less on the husky side on the Marantz 8B. On the Anthem SS, soundstage seemed up across the wall in the room like looking at the stage in a live venue, opposed to the Gallo 3.5 I auditioned recently at Absolute Sound in Santa Fe which had an almost as wide stage but seemed between the floor and 3 or 4 feet up. Pinpointness of the Sinclair and Gallo were similar but we're talking about comparing months apart in different places. Of course the Gallo audition was with vastly superior electronics. The first time I have ever heard this, though my memory of the Gallos is fuzzy from time passage, but on the Anthem the Sinclairs absolutely, and completely, disappeared. Completely...there was just the sound stage. Many times with my eyes closed I pointed to an instrument and opening my eyes it was seldom at the speaker. The ribbon must be good because the detail was pretty amazing, esp. on cymbals. There's one cymbal strike on one of my CDs where you hear it go through a series of sounds, the soft strike on the brass, then through different high and lower frequency shimmering and wooshing (for lack of a better word) then trailing off. It's not forward in the recording but distinct. It was really clear. The bass was enormous, too big with my old tube gear which probably needs new caps to tighten the bass. But the bass goes way down and is strong. With the Anthem it was tight. The bass is forward. On Patricia Barber's Modern Cool, by far the lowest, strongest bass CD I have, the bass was forward and huge but clean with the Anthem. I plan to go back to compare with the PSB some more, but wish I could hear them with something like a McCormack or Bryston with an ARC or Audible Illusions pre to really see what kind of resolution they can do.

Anyway, I guess I'm nervous about buying a speaker that is not popular with this crowd as I trust the experience people here have with gear, and think something popular on Audiogon must be good. But for the price, I am about .00001 millimeter from pulling the trigger on these. If they are in your city, please have a listen and let me know what you think. Or if I get them I'll post some more extensive info.

Thanks for asking...

Jim
Not famiiar with those specifically.

Tall towers with wide spaced drivers tend to work best in larger rooms with some distance to listening position for the drivers to integrate coherently.
Here's my off the cuff shot at an analysis of the speaker (BTW, anyone here been watching Top Shot? It's a show on Netflix in which 16 marksmen/markswomen compete to see who's best at a wide variety of skills with an assortment of weapons. Very entertaining).

The price point, if accurate for that pair of speakers causes me to pause. That's supposedly a LOT of technology crammed into a speaker for that price point. Somewhow I think the quality must suffer as I don't believe it would be possible to get a great cabinet, crossover and driver set for that amount.

Now, it's made in Canada, which bodes well for it. Paradigm and PSB are also Canadian, and they are fine speakers. The Canadians have the advantage of the use of their national acoustic research center - forgot the name of it. If Sinclair has been developing their products in similar fashion it could be a sleeper, a good value.

I just bought a pair of speakers which is the only one of its kind in North America - the King's Audio King Tower. The price had to be right because of the uniqueness and thin chance of repair, and it was. You may want to call the company and speak with a rep regarding the speaker line. That may give you a feel for the people and products. It's hard to tell the true health of a company from a website, but the company looks to be large enough to sustain the product development.

Finally, another speaker which would likely compare well would be the Golden Ear Triton Towers. I have heard them and while not the last word (What is at that price point?) they are quite good. Having a similar ribbon for the top end you'd probably like them, too. The Golden Ear would plumb deeper in the bass as well, which would allow you to avoid having to get a subwoofer to get HT action or have the proper foundation for heavy rock or electronic music.
I've seen these in a few stores here in Ontario. It was my understanding that they weren't a very high end speaker>>>just a pretty box! (I deal with a couple of extremely honest retailers who both told me that these were "mistakes" in purchasing!). I believe these were made to compete price-wise with the likes of Monitor Audio's silver series or Paradigm's products (in the $700-800 price range)
Hey, everyone's ears are different so the best judge will still be your own ears as far as I'm concerned! (I admit that I didn't bother because these aren't what I have been looking for)
I'm a Sinclair Dealer. Very well made, and nice looking speakers, nicer than they look in photos. I was really impressed when I opened mine. Fairly heavy, at about 75 lbs. They won't beat out a 5k pair of speakers, but, I'm enjoying mine alot at the moment. Pretty hard to beat for the price.

I'm running mine at the moment with a 300 watt Sunfire amp, Adcom GFP 750, and an Arcam DV139. They will play loud, if you want them to. Mine show no signs of distress, even when pushed far beyond where I would ever listen.

Albert, MSRP on the 460T is $1500.

Jamie