2. speakers
  3. 184961-11209

Do my ears deceive me??

     The money is in the bank, thinking of upgrading speakers, but everything I demo is no better or worse than what I have.   Willing to spend up to $6,000.      Upgraditis??   My main system is Mcintosh MX 134 that I bought in 2003, with a pair of Focal 836v's and a Parasound 5250  (250w/channel) amp I bought around 2012.   I either blew the tweeters or crossover on my 836's, so they are in for repair.   Since I've owned them for 10 years, I was considering new speakers.    The blades are way more than I would spend, but I also demoed the Kef R11s, Martin Logan xtf 200's, Mcintosh XR 100s, and B&W 703 S3.   

       None of them sounded better than what I'm hearing right now from my BP 2006s.    Would I really need to demo them in my room to make a fair comparison??  Or are speakers just not much better than they were 20 years ago?   I know I love detail, and tend to lean towards aluminum tweeters.  I pretty much only listen to classic rock and roll.   Of all I demoed, I really like the B&W 706s.   They sounded much brighter/cleaner than the others.   But they had the reciever set up so I couldn't adjust the treble/bass.  I love a V equalizer curve, and bump up the bass and treble a bit on my home/car systems.   Maybe I just have the good luck of prefering cheaper speakers.   

 

  

fenderu2
fenderu2 OP
22 posts
 

Well I can say this.  In EVERY system I have ever listened to, be it home or car, i can make it sound much better to my ears than it being in the flat position.   I'm not gonna buy 20,000 to 30,000 speakers so I can not need an equalizer.  It's not economical, and I have better things to spend my money.  Audio is important but not everything.   I admit I have not demoed many speakers the last 10 to 15 years, cuz a lot of audio stores have closed up, and I've been content.  Many of these brands have NO way to demo, and I'm not going to travel all over to do that.   Plus I am limited in the speaker placement in my room.  It's not real big, and I kind of need to stick with tall and skinny speakers.   

     Not to flame on, but if you guys have higher end televisions.  Do you get it calibrated, and never use the other settings on it?  With no ability to adjust the contrast, brightness, color, and all the other variables when you watch different programs?   Would you buy a guitar amplifer with no TONE controls???  I'm perplexed as to why one would want this limitation in any endeavor.   

     If I took a hypothetical Jeff Rowland amp (1 with tone control and 1 without) what percentage of sound degradation does the 1 with tone control have???  Could he really not build them to damn near the same specs.  And you could pretty much make them sound identical??

mike_in_nc
1,157 posts
 

If room acoustics are bad, every speaker will sound similar because of the heavy room signature. Once you start killing reflections and bass overhang, the real nature of speakers comes out.

fenderu2 OP
22 posts
 

But if it's not feasible or economical to change the room, wouldn't that be a great reason for EQ.   And isn't that why room correction was created?   I mean if Trinnov, Lyngdorf, Storm, and Anthem are doing it.   It must lead to something better.    You can always leave it off if not.   

nonoise's avatar
nonoise
10,903 posts
 

My monitor speakers cost around $2500 and their bigger brothers (slightly bigger than my old JBLs) go for around $4500. The maker of these speakers used to be the head designer at Dynaudio and Focal-JMLab. Most of their successful models were designed by him. He just charges a more down to earth price for them, not anywhere close to $20K-$30K.

All the best,
Nonoise

fenderu2 OP
22 posts
 

I guess I tend to agree with this guy, there are high end makers but a lot of what you are paying for is luxury. I like to find stuff that punches above it’s price point.  And I will most likely be keeping the Focals once fixed, but may move to basement system.   

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS_tEMTqR08

More to discover