How does one pick in this situation?
Not really any brick and mortar stores for audio in my area besides Best Buy. They don't carry much in the way of speakers and their audition room leaves a lot to be desired. The one or two others within driving distance have a few kef at one, and wharfdale at the other. Looking used, I found a local pair of Salk veracity HT2, and a Nola contender 3. So my choices seem pretty limited for a system. How do you choose a speaker if there isn't any place to hear a large variety, and what you can hear is all in different places on different equipment? I feel like m doomed to just keep repeating my failing attempts of trial and error.. help.
+1 Take a trip… listen to a wide variety of speakers, without prejudice. You want to find a brand (they have house sound) that has an emotional connection. Take your wife, take her out in the evening. Let her shop somewhere else while you audition speakers.
If you make this part of the pursuit, over time you will start being able to separate which sound is coming from the speakers vs components. Listening to different systems is very educational. |
@labguy sorry, no shortcuts. Bottom line - we can’t tell you what you’ll like. Best we can do is tell you what we like or retell what others like, only you can determine your preferences. 1) Ideally it’s best to test the component in your own system. Buying and selling used helps mitigate the costs and let’s you try it out. 2) Next best is to demo the speakers yourself. Speakers are not perfect, so there are subjective preferences. We can’t tell what you’ll like and am willing to pay. I went far to many audio stores and audio shows to demo speakers 3) if you can’t demo the speakers then you’re out of luck - you’ll have to take a chance to try out for yourself, but you can always sell/replace later - it’s not in stone. We can suggest popular brand/models that seem to get universally positive reviews like Monitor Audio or GoldenEar speakers which may be the safer bet.
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