I'm a dealer so I am biased but I will say that when we discovered Audes speakers we were really blown away with how good they sound and look for the money.
To address the last post - they are mellow if you put them on the right electronics, but it is true that if you put them on bright sounding gear they could be a little fatiguing. But we don't sell any bright electronics for that reason :)
On mellow solid state or tubes they are dynamite. I love them on SET - they are extremely tube friendly. You can run the Blues on 2A3's if you want, but I generally recommend 7 wpc. or up. We have run them on Audes' own EL34 monoblocks and several 300B monoblocks successfully. The speakers have such a benign impedance than you can use the 16 ohm. taps out of tube amps if you like. This yields fabulous sound because there are fewer windings on those taps... few speakers let you do this. You really need a benign impedance and non-capacitant phase characteristics to run speakers on 16 ohm taps without losing control in the bass and overdriving the amplifier quickly. Suffice it to say that the Blues are easily the most tube friendly 4 ohm speaker we have ever encountered.
So we are big fans of the Audes here because they are so tube friendly and such a great speaker for the money. The build is remarkable - absolutely as good as a $5000 speaker no question.
They are a total bargain at $2000. People come in, listen, look, pick their tongue up off the floor and put down their credit cards. It's an easy sell.
To address the last post - they are mellow if you put them on the right electronics, but it is true that if you put them on bright sounding gear they could be a little fatiguing. But we don't sell any bright electronics for that reason :)
On mellow solid state or tubes they are dynamite. I love them on SET - they are extremely tube friendly. You can run the Blues on 2A3's if you want, but I generally recommend 7 wpc. or up. We have run them on Audes' own EL34 monoblocks and several 300B monoblocks successfully. The speakers have such a benign impedance than you can use the 16 ohm. taps out of tube amps if you like. This yields fabulous sound because there are fewer windings on those taps... few speakers let you do this. You really need a benign impedance and non-capacitant phase characteristics to run speakers on 16 ohm taps without losing control in the bass and overdriving the amplifier quickly. Suffice it to say that the Blues are easily the most tube friendly 4 ohm speaker we have ever encountered.
So we are big fans of the Audes here because they are so tube friendly and such a great speaker for the money. The build is remarkable - absolutely as good as a $5000 speaker no question.
They are a total bargain at $2000. People come in, listen, look, pick their tongue up off the floor and put down their credit cards. It's an easy sell.