Can the Mercury V1s be bested <£100?

Cookeh

Cookeh

Cookeh

Soldato
Joined
21 Jan 2010
Posts
8,442
Location
Ceredigion
Afternoon,

Noticed the V1s are for sale on RicherSounds (£80) and I've recently been looking into upgrading my Diamond 9.0s. Are there any better bookshelf speakers available at or around this budget? My original budget was around £130 as I was looking at the Q Acoustics 2020i, but the V1s seem like a steal (especially considering how well reviewed they are) and I wouldn't want to stretch too much above £100 if possible.

They will be paired with my Pioneer SA770 with a FiiO E7 as a DAC.

Thanks chaps,
Cookeh
 
I don't have any answers but will be very interested in hearing the views of anyone who does because I want to get a Topping TP22 and a good pair of passive speakers to upgrade from my Edifier 1600T's.

I was looking at the Wharfedale Diamond 9.1 and the Tannoy V1.
 
Tough question. They certainly do look very good. I doubt anything can beat them unless you spend a fair bit more. Same applies to the Wharfedale 9.1 as well. I don't think it's so much a question of which is better, but which is preferred. I don't think you can wrong with either choice, but £80 is a damn fine price for the V1.

I have some 9.1's as my main speakers, and they still amaze that they only cost £100.

As for using a T amp that rids57 mentioned; I've got a TP21, which I use to drive some Roth Oli1 speakers. They are great little speakers, and the TP21 does a very good job driving them.

I did try the 9.1's on my desk, but they looked ridiculous! Again, the Topping amp did a good job driving them. Not quite as good as my Audiolab amp, but then that was a £300+ amp at one point. Considering the Topping was £50 or so, they are very capable little amps indeed.
 
Mmm, when I got the 9.0s I always intended the 9.1s to be my upgrade route - but now that Ive seen the V1 essentially half-price it is incredibly tempting. I think my SA770 is only a 6 Ohm amp whereas they are 8 Ohm speakers - not sure if that would make any difference.

I must admit the V1s are very well reviewed indeed, but I have heard a lot about the Boston Acoustics Range at around £100, unfortunately there are no comparisons anywhere that I can see - or indeed a comparison between the 9.1s and the V1s.

Out of interest, and with the intent of potentially upgrading my spare amp, what are the Topping amps you are discussing like and are they another 'Bay special?
 
The TP22 is from the big rainy forest with a very long river running through it for £70 - no DAC, no tone controls, no frills, just a well made amp built with decent components (ALPS pot, Nichicon caps, etc.).

It puts out 30W into 8ohms or 50W into 4ohms.

You can get it for ten quid less off the bay but you don't know where it's coming from then.

I prefer to know where it's coming from and where I can send it back to should it prove faulty (these things do happen).
 
Can't see them for £80?

They should be good, I use an older version as rear speakers and they were almost as good as the floor stander version.

I'm tempted to get a set for the spare room to pair up with my old AV Amp and the PC.
 
Still a bargain though, it's just that they are now head to head with the Wharfedale 9.1's

Both front ported, so either will actually save me room on my desktop because I can push them back closer to the wall.

The Edifiers need be around 6" from the wall and they're not that small to start with.
 
Last edited:
Thats just it, I have to have front ports due to my desk space at home. Rules out a lot of very good budget speakers. Now that they're at a similar price I may have to demo them both at RicherSounds and see which pairs better.
 
rids57 said:
The TP22 is from the big rainy forest with a very long river running through it for £70 - no DAC, no tone controls, no frills, just a well made amp built with decent components (ALPS pot, Nichicon caps, etc.).

It puts out 30W into 8ohms or 50W into 4ohms.

You can get it for ten quid less off the bay but you don't know where it's coming from then.

I prefer to know where it's coming from and where I can send it back to should it prove faulty (these things do happen).
Click to expand...

The TP22 is 30w @ 4 Ohms and 25w @ 8 Ohms.
 
rids57 said:
It puts out 30W into 8ohms or 50W into 4ohms.
Click to expand...
As good as they sound, the specs are quoted at rather daft levels of distortion. 10% THD+N at 25W into 8 ohms. The actual output is 15W at 0.018% THD+N @ 8ohms. Generally normal listening levels are sub 1W with peaks above this hence why they sound great for normal listening using a tripath amp. It's when you want things loud that their quality drops off. (you get 3dB more per doubling of power) So to get 101dB out of an 86dB/W speaker you need 32W. (to get 104dB you need 64W and so on) Not likely to be an issue in a small room though as you are closer to the speakers and suffer less fall off.

Both the tannoy and wharfedale are 86dB at 1W efficient so both should be equally as loud in principal. The tannoy spec claims 45-25KHz vs the 9.1's 50-24KHz only the tannoy states it as a -6dB plot. (proper spec sheets with all the technical measurements and graphical plots are a thing of the past)

Cookeh said:
Mmm, when I got the 9.0s I always intended the 9.1s to be my upgrade route - but now that Ive seen the V1 essentially half-price it is incredibly tempting. I think my SA770 is only a 6 Ohm amp whereas they are 8 Ohm speakers - not sure if that would make any difference.
Click to expand...
Your amp is fine with 8 ohms and is quoted as managing 50W @ 0.2% THD into 8 ohms. It should handle 4 ok too. The service manual i have is dated 1986 so it must be getting on a bit now and if it's never been serviced, it may be due one. Electrolytic capacitors don't tend to measure to favourably after 20-30 years. Their life expectancy really depends on the temperatures they operate at. (they used good quality parts back then) The good news is that you can usually replace them all for less that £20 if you can do the work yourself. (can usually be done in a single afternoon if you're good at it.) If the originals were in a poor state, new ones will make it sound like a brand new amp.
 
Thanks Kei, I live in a first floor flat so volume levels will never be allowed to go too high, which is why most of my listening is done via headphones.

As long as they can push clean audio at reasonable levels I will be more than happy.
 
I've only ever heard nice crisp clean audio from Tannoy speakers. I didn't demo the V1s but the Wharfedale versions of the floorstander I did demo next to the V4 and the Tannoys once again were the better pair. Crisper sound, better bass and the Mercury line seems to scale based on form factor with this trend too.

That and Tannoy speakers tend to be very amp friendly.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom