New set of hispec home cinema speakers - help pls

TomO

TomO

TomO

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28 Oct 2002
Posts
3,356
i am looking at upgrading my speakers in my home cinema setup and have shortlisted the following ranges:

Monitor Audio Gold Reference
Monitor Audio Gold Signature (how much of a difference between these and the references?)
Dynaudio Focus
B&W XT
Mission Elegante (big discounts on these currently)

I would like some input to see if i can narrow down the shortlist as i cant find anywhere that has all these speakers available to demo so it would probably mean 3 or 4 trips of quite some distance to demo them, which i would like to avoid if possible!

i would be getting fronts/rears/centre - not replacing the sub.

criteria is that they must be a good improvement on my current set (details to follow), not be to massive ( B&W 700/800 series too big) and look decent - other suggestions welcome on this.


current setup (sound wise) is:

sources - Pioneer DVD-989Avi, Sony Vaio Media PC (HDMI), PS3 / Wii / xbox 360, Freeview box.
amp - Pioneer VSX- AX4Asi
speakers - B&W CM4's (fronts), B&W CM2's (rears) , B&W CMC (centre), Velodyne HGS-15 (sub)

i am also looking at getting a seperate power amp and mains filtration but dont currently have enough space, so they may have to wait. although want to make sure that speakers make full use of these likely upgrades.
 
Tom,

I have Monitor Audios i belive I have the silver series been a while since I have looked at hte box, I have fronts, centre, rears and I find them fantastic much better than my dads Missions downstairs.

To me they give a nice clear sound, with a good lot of bass, without compromising the sound quality, its so good I never got a sub with them, didnt think i needed it.

Kimbie
 
problem with seperate amp /processor is that:

a/ dont have enough room
b/ the pioneer has 3 HDMI inputs and i could do with more. i dont think seperate processors with the same feature set as the pioneer are at all cheap!


i had monitor audio RS6's on my seperates setup last year and liked them, especially for the money. interested to see how the gold's compare.

with regards a sub, you need to hear something like the velodyne, that will convince you otherwise! :)
 
You could add a three channel poweramp to replace the Pioneer's, for front three.

Agree with sub though, no way floorstanding speaker can reproduce low frequency of a good sub (SVS 20-39 PC Plus)
 
Oh dont get me wrong I know how nice subs sound, but for my current setup it wasnt really needed for film watching etc, once I get some more space then yes its somthing i will be looking at

Kimbie
 
TomO, going to give you some tough advise here, but hey it's audio life....
You got to get off ya a^^^, stop reading forums, and go have those demo's, yep it's a pain having to travel around to hear kit, and it gets harder the further up the audio chain you climb.

I could sit here are praise the hell out some of your suggestions or rip the ^^^^ out of your kit.... but it wouldn't mean diddly, because only you can choose a speakers set that pushes your button.... There is no right or wrong set of speakers, only the ones you can live with.... As you moving to the more serious end of the scale, demo's are the only way. Easy to recommend a budget set-up to a newcomer......but when your spending bigger money do want to guess or go by a review or forum say-so.....

What disappoints you with your current sound ?

For the record I'd move to using power amps, and the AV as a Processor only. I would max out the electronics first.....

BUT GO HAVE A LISTEN, they don't all have to be in the same place, you will know which ones just seem "right"..... and all will sound totally different when you get them home !

Have fun !

PS What happened to the RS6's ????
 
i understand what you are saying, just seeing if there are any i can knock off the list easily.

nothing in particular disappoints with the sound, looking for an overall improvement. problem is i have a Cyrus Pre / Mono X setup to compare against.

RS6's went in favour of B&W 804's that i got at a bargain price. the 804's are on with the cyrus setup.

will have a look into the power amp's a bit more then. i need to find a MUCH bigger equipment rack! lol!
 
For what its worth, the Dynaudio speakers I dem'd (the Audience series) were significantly better than the smaller Elegantes and still noticeably better than the larger model, despite being cheaper at the time. The Elegantes are a bit "odd" in the way they are constructed and they sound a bit... hmm. Hard to put words to how they sound but its not "great".

The Dyn's are pigs to drive though and you would definitely need to move away from your current electronics, preferably to monoblocks or something like the behemoth Krell multichannel amps.
 
DRZ said:
The Dyn's are pigs to drive though and you would definitely need to move away from your current electronics, preferably to monoblocks or something like the behemoth Krell multichannel amps.
Click to expand...

Yes....was holding back on that, but the Dyn's belong in a different set up electronic wise..
 
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