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"Best" mini-monitor?

I have a relatively small listening room (12x10) and have always owned mini-monitors.  Currently I have proac tablette anniversaries, but have had the original 15 ohm rogers ls3/5a, proac response 1, KEF, and reference 3a through out the years.  As you can see, these are all moderate priced speakers, having never spent more than 3k on any pair.  I am now in a position to spend a bit more money, certainly 5k, and maybe up to 10k.  So what out there should I be listening to?  I am in the Chicago area, so I would love something that I can listen to at a local (Midwest) dealer, but I do travel a lot and have auditioned/purchased things across the country from time to time.  New or used, does not matter to me.

as you can probably guess, I really don't care much about deep base, but live for soundstage and warm midrange, listening to a lot of female vocalists, acoustic rock/jazz/blues, and light (non full orchestra) classical.  

With my musical tastes, I have always loved el34 tube amps.  I currently have the prima Luna hp premium, which has 4 el34 per channel, giving me in the 70 wpc range, more than enough for a small room.  I am running naim digital source material (no bad remarks from the analog folks... I know I have have traded off).

so, what should I spend time auditioning?  I have used "best" in quotes because of the 10k price limit, but I suspect there are many more candidates below 10k than above it.

thanks.

Bill


meiatflask

Showing 1 response by mitch2

mitch2
3,716 posts
 
Long ago I had a pair of ADS speakers and never (NEVER) was
disappointed with the sound, whether i was listening to classical, jazz, rock, female vocals, whatever.
Me too, ADS L810s, which I stupidly sold a long time ago.  Finally found the same level of enjoyment with Aerial speakers, designed by Michael Kelly (formerly designer for ADS).

As large monitors, I now have Aerial LR5s on Sound Anchor stands and, along with two Aerial SW12 subs, I have not heard a better speaker system in my room.  As long as you have the power (to drive the lowish efficiency of the LR5s) there is no practical volume limit in a moderately large room.  Very dynamic yet smooth, with great tone and a touch of warmth (maybe due to paper drivers).   At Kelly's suggestion, I run the LR5s full range and roll in the subs at around 40Hz, but if I was aware of a very high quality high-pass crossover that would not affect sonics in the upper frequency ranges then I would try it. 
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