Mid-Range Hi-Fi Advice (Speakers & Amp)

Interesting comments, it was after lunch on a nice day, was warm inside, and they had been running for the last few days ready for my arrival.... :)
I'd be worried if I could only listen to system on nice warm days of with the heating turned up full .... :eek: ..lol.

Anyway I'm still working on own designing in parallel or tweaking a kit to my taste.
 
I'd be worried if I could only listen to system on nice warm days of with the heating turned up full .... :eek: ..lol.

Anyway I'm still working on own designing in parallel or tweaking a kit to my taste.

Yeah, that does sound a bit extreme :eek:. In reality anything above, say 17°C or so isn't a problem, so at home it's fine. I was just thinking of a dem room at a dealer near me - old (probably listed) building, big room upstairs with a high ceiling and no double glazing. It always took an age to heat, so dems were often a bit on the chilly side!

Looking forward to hearing how you get on... :)
 
Finally managed to book a PL200 demo for this coming Saturday. I'm also hoping to re-visit the Fact8s at a different place and actually meet some Linn gear, as well as some more speakers and amps (not sure what yet).

The main problem I'm having is finding hi-fi shops within around 30 miles of where I live that actually stock anything other than what I've listened to so far, at least on the speaker front. Everyone seems to do B&W, most places seem to do PMC and the lower range of the Monitor Audio stuff but everything else can be a bit hit and miss.

I don't think I'm going to have time to travel very far afield so at the moment I suspect that what I can demo will be limited by what's available to listen to in my local area. Obviously I'm happy to travel to some extent, but it's not as if I live up in the Scottish highlands - there are lots of medium-large cities pretty close to here.

Anyway, will see how things go this weekend :)

arty
 
The main ones I've spent time in so far have been Orton's in Hitchin and Sevenoaks and Audiofile in Cambridge. I'm intending to go back to both Sevenoaks and Audiofile this weekend for more demos.

I have discounted lots of places that don't seem to do gear at the kind of level I'm interested in (e.g. Richer Sounds) and have been really trying to find independent places where I think the service will probably be better. However, an awful lot of places seem to be either installation-focused, very high-end / bespoke or just consumer-focused without any listening rooms etc.

Maybe my Google powers just suck :D If you can find anywhere good moderately close to Cambridge (ideally within 30 miles) that'd be great. Thanks :)

arty
 
How about Hifi trading station in peterborough or acoustic arts in bedfordshire? Both carry high end AS brands like Krell, audio research, sonus faber, martin logan etc. I've not been to either of them but I know Hifi trading station's sister shop, KJ west one in London, quite well and they offer great service and some really impressive kit.
 
Hmm, don't know how I missed this thread.
To the OP. My suggestion is that you continue to go have a good listen around. I'm a little surprised by the fact that you seem to have focused on the usual "dynamic driver" type speakers, as there's a number of different options that might be worth checking out.
Excluding the usual options of floorstanders vs standmounts, you might also want to have a listen to:
- Electrostatics, e.g. Quad ESLs. These tend to have brilliant mid-range, but don't do party volumes too well
- Hybrids (e.g. ribbons with dynamic driver combos). The Kensai's are standmount hybrids IIRC. As it happens, I know Simon (the designer), very nice chap. The Kensais blend the good bits of standmounts and hybrids together, ie. lovely smooth mid and top with lack of box colouration. Not that clever at creating a big soundstage. Bigger hybrids are units like the Martin Logans. I have a friend with a pair. Again, does some things brilliantly, but with the wrong amps, can be hard to get the bass to work well with the mid range.
- Horns and high efficiency speakers. There's a variety of these available, all the way upto the mad bad stuff like the Tannoy Westminster full horns, and Avantgardes. Go hunt around for some photos. The really big stuff have awesome dynamics, but can suffer from cabinet colouration.
- Active speakers. In the dynamic arena, this would be my preferred route. PMC and ATC are some of the best known. A friend of mine has some active ATC50s, and they're ace. On a similar vein are units like Meridian actives. These contain not only amps, but also DACs, meaning that all you need to do is give them a digital input. The Meridian speakers have never really done it for me, but they might be right up your street.

The key point is that IMO the speakers should be your starting point. Pointless buying a really good amp and then realising that it won't gel with your speakers. Get the speakers first, THEN chose an amp that will work with them in a synergistic manner.

Some thoughts on potential dems:
- Full Linn DS system with their amps and speakers.
- Full on Audionote style system. Try Definitive audio in Nottingham. They can dem audionote front ends with valve power amps and Living Voice horns. Real spine tingling stuff.
- Meridian system, i.e. some of their mid-range active speakers driven by a digital source. Very minimalist, and can be great.
- Someone who can dem some ATC actives with a decent source. If you want to go streaming, the Linn DS range is the best I've heard to date.
 
ugly ferret - thanks for the suggestions. I think that I may not have time to get to the place in Peterborough this week, but Acoustic Arts is on my way so I'll give them a call and see if I can pop in. Not sure how I missed them!

Thanks for your reply, Mr_Sukebe. I have not focused on dynamic driver speakers intentionally, but as I explained above rather been limited by what is available for me to check out relatively locally. I think that anything very large won't be appropriate for the room, as it's not particularly big. I'm partiularly interested in electrostatics and active speakers, although the costs seem to be somewhat prohibitive from what I've seen so far.

I agree with you on starting with speakers - the variation in terms of sizes, shapes, costs and (obviously) sound seems to be greatest of all components, so it made sense to start with those in order to narrow down what I want to hear. I think that I am far clearer on the sort of sound I'm after, but articulating that to dealers is not necessarily easy.

Hoping to try out a full Linn setup this weekend, including the DS range which I am particularly interested in. Unfortunately I think that Nottingham won't be feasible for at least a couple of months due to my schedule.

I will look into the Meridian gear - sounds interesting. Not yet found anywhere stocking the ATCs but will continue to search :)

Thanks for all suggestions.

arty

EDIT - Got another demo booked for various Focal speakers (1027s, 1028s and 1038s) and also any Linn stuff I want, including the DS range. Also planning to re-visit some PMCs.
 
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Arty, make sure the dealer has got the Focal's run in, they need about 100 hours, I heard some fresh 1008be's bloody awful top end, which shouldn't be the case.

If you get chance to hear some Linn Akurate speakers, 212 or 242 I'd be very interested in your comments. I have my opinion, but I'm upsetting some on the Linn Forum over them !!:D

Yes active is excellent and very expensive. My main room runs active, the easiest/best way to go active is with Linn speakers, as they produce active cards to fit inside their power amps. BUT, and for it's a big but for me, most of the current range of speakers are 3, 4 or 5 way designs, meaning you end up needing many amplifier channels. OK they produce a 6 channel power amp to keep the box count down, but not the cost. Shame, because Linn speaker are are so much improved when converted to active.

So you end up looking at the second hand market at some of the older designs that were a bit simpler. Ie Katan or Ninka, 2 way designs and hence only needs 2 power amps to go active...... For me I just don't want a 5 way design or believe it necessary to cover the audio range !!!....Sorry rant over...


Mr_S ..... Interested to hear more what you think about those Kensai, they would seem ideal for my 12ft/3m square room, to replace the Kabers. Are they musicaly involving ??? I find so many speakers are excellent Hi-Fi but boring music....... except my Active Dyn's and the PMC FACT8's !! which are to big.
 
I have to say that whilst the Kensais clearly had some genuine strengths, they really didn't appeal to me. Though do remember that my benchmark is a pair of 3 way horn loaded speakers with an efficiency of 94db/w and a rolloff of -3db at 26hz. The Kensais are about as different to my preferred speakers as it's possible to be.
So whilst I might not like them, others may love em.
 
I think 26Hz in my 3 meter square room could be an issue ;).

Trying to find a dealer with Akurate 242 and Fact8 is impossible !!

Open question, what makes one speaker fun and enjoyable, and another not ?
 
I had an interesting afternoon yesterday :)

First up, I had a listen to a pair of Focal 1027 Be speakers run by a Bryston pre / power pair of amps and a Bryston CD player. I wasn't that interested in the amp system yesterday as the guys admitted that it wasn't a pairing they'd suggest, but their preferred amp (Naim 282 pre / power combo) was unfortunately out on demo loan.

My now-standard jazz test track sounded great for about 5 seconds... and then the double bass kicked in. Oh dear. It sounded horribly boomy, out of control, lacking in any detail whatsoever... I quickly skipped ahead to the next track, which started with a very well-recorded drum intro. Here, the bass drum sounded great - fast, fairly detailed and pleasantly 'full', capturing many of the subtleties on the recording. No boominess.

It was immediately apparent that the room - a 3m cube :( - was absolutely terrible for my first test track. That boomy awful bass note was at exactly the fundamental frequency of the room, which of course is why it was so terrible. This was confirmed by the guys in the shop who exactly predicted what I heard before I complained to them about it!

On the good side, however, the mid and treble ranges were really rather good. The brushed snare in the jazz was both cutting and right in front of me in the mix, but not harsh or over-emphasised (something I had heard with the B&Ws earlier). The piano sounded extremely good - warm, clear and bell-like in the upper registers with a bit of oopmh from the left hand. These were starting to impress me.

Then I moved on to the poppy commercial dancey CD. Wow. This sounded superb - the best I've ever heard it. The very busy and full first track really sang on these speakers, and was so involving - the female vocalist was in front of me, supported by the full textures of the strings and the rest of the band on either side of her. The second, more synthy, track was almost as involving - again, very good vocals, superbly clear and well-positioned - but the slightly stilted synth bass was not at all even across all of its notes. This was quite distracting, and could have been down to the room again.

Finally, the classical CD. Unfortunately this didn't really move me - something seemed missing. I'm not sure if my ears were a bit off at this point but it all seemed a little 'cloudy' - the depth and detail I was hoping for didn't really seem to present itself. A shame; I didn't spend too long listening to this.

We then moved onto a properly run-in pair of PMC Fact8s. When I heard an almost brand-new pair of these a week or two ago I was fairly unimpressed.

However, these were on a different level :eek:

These were staggeringly better than the harsh, toppy things I heard last week. The clarity, airiness, transparency were so much more effortless and not in the least bit straining on the ears. The bass was great - firm and clear, if not quite as muscular as larger speakers. The jazz was excellent on them, the dancey stuff good but not great, but the classical was right up there with the PL300s for me. I was blown away by how much better these were. 9designs2, I think I heard the things you were describing finally! :)

Unfortunately, I was short of time by this point and so I didn't really get a proper chance to listen to these. I had a very brief play with a Linn Majik DS, which fortunately had a Keith Jarrett album I know pretty well already dialled in and ready to go. Through the Fact8s, the piano was stonkingly good. I'm sure it sounded better than the Bryston CD player, though obviously I wasn't comparing the same recordings on both. They didn't have an Akurate DS in (out for demo like the Naim amp) but I'm extremely keen to see one of those.

Later that day, I auditioned the Monitor Audio PL200s. This was a newish pair but had been run in to some extent. They were being powered by a Chord Electronics CPA2500 pre-amp and SPM650 power amp, and the source was the Cyrus 8-series CD player again (which, incidentally, was falling apart and kept crashing - I thought I'd lost one of my CDs at one point! :eek: )

What immediately struck me was that the lower mid and bass sounded way flabbier, muddier and more indistinct than I remembered from the PL300s. Sure, the great top end clarity and openness from the 300s was there, but down below around 700hz or so things seemed to blur into one. All of my test CDs exhibited this, and it didn't take me too long to realise that I actually didn't really like them. There almost seemed to be some awkwardness in the transitions from the mid driver to the woofers, particularly in the jazz with the double bass walking way up into the treble and then descending back down - almost like a sort of sweep test tone! :)

It was a relief to get the PL300s in, and doing so really confirmed my suspicions. The clarity across the whole range was back - that lovely treble was enhanced by the authoritative, detailed bass and the whole thing just seemed to gel together a lot better than the 200s. The improvement was extremely noticeable. Maybe the 200s would improve with more running in, but I'm not so sure. They look like a compromise to me, and sounded exactly like one.

Then, for the purposes of comparison, we switched over to the little Bel Canto integrated amp I first heard these speakers with a couple of weeks ago. Yesterday I had brought along an extra test CD: a live recording of Mahler's 9th Symphony by Abbado. This is a very good live recording on the whole, but around 4 minutes in on the first track there's a hell of a lot going on which most systems seem to struggle to reproduce. After listening to this passage on the Chord amps we switched to the Bel Canto and... oh dear. The bass became indistinct, most of the detail throughout the range was lost, the violins became harsh and brash... ouch. Quickly switching back to the Chord system and re-playing that couple of minutes of music confirmed my observations, which were correlated by the shop assistant who seemed to be almost as shocked as I was. The diminutive Bel Canto seriously fell short on this particular track :(

So, some observations from yesterday:

  • The Focals have real promise, but the dodgy room didn't quite do them justice. I would like to return to those but in their other demo room (which was larger and not a cube) and with the amp combination they recommended.
  • If the PMC Fact8s were a little larger and a little more muscular in the bass, I'd be very tempted by them. I may re-audition them to see if I can seriously consider them
  • The Linn Majik DS looked very promising, so I definitely want to give that a proper listen and compare it to the Akurate DS.
  • To my surprise (relief?) I was able to hear the difference between two different amps powering the PL300s... and wow, what a difference. The Chord system was head and shoulders above the Bel Canto.

Something which has occurred to me today: I think I need to be seriously considering a good amp combination with whatever speakers I decide to go with. The Mahler test with the PL300s really astonished me, because up to that point I was thinking that something like 95% of the sound of a pair of speakers was down to them and only 5% the rest of the system. That may sound naive, but yesterday it was more like 60% spekaers vs. 40% amp and the realisation of that was a little bit daunting.

Now I need to figure out how on earth I'm going to find the right combination of speakers with amps, given that there are so many varieties of both :p

arty
 
Sounds like a good test, nice write up.

Ref the DS Akurate and Majik. I did dem them side by side, and thought that the Akurate was a good step up. If it were my dosh, the Ak is where it would be going. One final thought, the Akurate also supports balanced operation, and I felt that this really did assist. Of course it does mean that you'll need an amp that can also support fully balanced operation (thus narrowing your options somewhat), but it again, IMO it's worth it.
 
Arty,
Excellent write up, really pleased to hear you are making good progress.

Few observation and comments per your points,

Focal, I had the same Boomy experience with the 1008be's, plus they were not run in and the top end wanted to take my ears off. I think this shows they have to demo'd at home before any purchase. As they seem quite room sensitive, and a little unruly. .... and I have 3m meter cube I'm tyring to buy for :eek:
Seems like when sorted they're worth another listen.

Fact8's, good that you got a better demo this time, for me the lack of "muscular bass" is perhaps how transmission line and port boxes differ. the 8's or TL have a more open bass, and less colouration and boxy "honk". So often can sound like alack of bass, but it's not, it's a lack of coloration and distortion. That said if dance music was the main interest i can see how the more heavy pounding nature of port multi driver design is going to give the kick required.... Other than that I guess you need to check out Horn designs as per Mr_S recommendations. Best of both world ???

I didn't bother to listen to the PL300, but as I think I said before the PL200 and 100's left me uneasy, as there was something not right and didn't come together as you described. They are off my list now.

What you also are now seeing which is great, because so many on the forum, here and else where like to scoff at the idea that you need to have a really good amp and front end. You just can't go whacking high end speakers on lesser kit and get away with it.

From what I have heard anyone that does the Majik vs Akurate DS demo buys the Akurate !!

Think you need to see what electronic brand you like, and perhaps start seeing how they partner with the top two speakers on your list.

Would suggest using the Akurate DS as front end, Chord, Naim and Linn amps. See what works best with the Focal and the 8's.

Interesting comment Mr_S re balanced, I've never bother to try it, as the general Linn/Forum advise is they are not as good over short lengths.
The Akurate pre and power amps have balanced connections as well. So easy to do in a Linn set-up.

There's a new software release due soon on the DS, it's in beta now, but it will add a built in volume control to the Akurate DS. Now I'm sure having a separate pre amp is better, but it might help spread the cost if you can add it a bit later.
 
Ref the DS Akurate and Majik. I did dem them side by side, and thought that the Akurate was a good step up. If it were my dosh, the Ak is where it would be going. One final thought, the Akurate also supports balanced operation, and I felt that this really did assist. Of course it does mean that you'll need an amp that can also support fully balanced operation (thus narrowing your options somewhat), but it again, IMO it's worth it.

I've listened to all three DS boxes and there was, I felt a good step up on each level up. For my money I would get the Akurate aswell as it is a good enough step up and still within a reasonable price range.
 
Balanced operation is an interesting issue. I've tried balanced a few times and results vary. With my existing pre-amp/power amp, I find that it definitely improves things, mainly by lowering the noise floor. Having said that, I have tried other setups where it's made bugger all difference. If you have the option already, do give it a try.
One additional point, there seemed to be far less variance in the results from different quality balanced cables with my own system. I have some fairly high quality 0.5m balanced cables that were made for me and also some fairly cheap AudioTechnica 10m cables. I expected the 0.5m stuff to sound better. If the brief dem I did, I couldn't tell the slightest difference.
 
I would be surprised if there is much noticeable difference in sound as balanced operation just lowers the noise floor by 3dB. We use them in RF systems because they improve input and output match but hifi doesn't suffer from that problem due to the low frequencies involved.
 
Not sure where they have a dealers but just back from a friends and was listening to his new speakers (which actually turned up to be a new version of his old speakers) the Zu Druid 4. Remarkable speaker although the looks may put some people off.

http://www.zucable.com
 
Balanced operation is an interesting issue. I've tried balanced a few times and results vary. With my existing pre-amp/power amp, I find that it definitely improves things, mainly by lowering the noise floor. Having said that, I have tried other setups where it's made bugger all difference. If you have the option already, do give it a try.
One additional point, there seemed to be far less variance in the results from different quality balanced cables with my own system. I have some fairly high quality 0.5m balanced cables that were made for me and also some fairly cheap AudioTechnica 10m cables. I expected the 0.5m stuff to sound better. If the brief dem I did, I couldn't tell the slightest difference.

I only have one set, Linn Silver, came with the pre-amp so I could try either between the DS and Pre or the Pre and Power amp..... Will try some time. :)
 
After an excellent review in the May Hi-Fi world I found these XTZ speakers.... UK agent site is here http://www.audiosanctum.co.uk/

Looks like some interesting stuff, ribbon tweeters SEAS Magnesium Mid/Bass units, and impressive price considering the parts used.

Room correction and measurement software looks interesting as well.

I've mailed them for more information.
 
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