What kind of music you listen to and how loud?
I had Usher BE718 for a few years. Nice speaker but was not the most detailed although tonally was very nice. I would say not very neutral but did sound good on most music. Needed a balsey amp to come alive.
Monitors in that range I would be looking at some Dynaudios. They do monitors very well IME and from what I read those new Heritage monitors are pretty much sota for their frequency range. |
I have never heard the Usher so can’t really help. I know you said new but with monitors picking them up or shipping them is much easier. I would look at used Focal Sopra 1s (a few pairs on here). I think they are the monitor to beat at the moment. https://youtu.be/FxTQvqlsp54https://youtu.be/BpUQkKQxXkENew I think the revel m126be is under rated and on pare with pretty much anything in that size of speaker. I another forum I saw a member chose it over the Sopra 1 for sound quality regardless of budget. |
Good one on the Focals! Also could score some Focal Diablos in that price range. Never heard the Sopras but the Utopia Focals are REALLY good IMO. |
there's always room for improvement No argument, but you’ve already got some good speakers so what specific improvements are you looking for? |
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@mikedudd My room is a 12x11x9 and I have a floor stander in there with room treatments from GIK. For my digital streaming from ROON I have a professionally created Convolution filter (DSP). It has made the impossible possible in the small space.
The most important component in your system is your room since it is so small. No component or speaker is likely going to make a dramatic change as room treatments or DSP. |
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Thanks for all of the responses. Sorry for the delay on my part but I wanted to sketch up my room in it’s current configuration and what I could change it to. As far as what I listen to It’s a pretty broad cross section. Mostly mid-1980s and earlier. Prog rock such as David Bowie, Roxy Music, Gabriel era Genesis, Pink Floyd. Rock like Led Zeppelin, Humble Pie, Montrose. Lately a lot of funk and soul music. Classic country and a lot of blues too. I guess you could say I listen pretty loud considering it’s such a small room, but nowhere near as loud as my equipment could go. I think my original post is probably putting the cart ahead of the horse. I should make a final decision on a room configuration and possibly treatment. And I confess my room has other crap in it like a computer along the left wall and a dresser in the front right corner. Should get all that crap out of there and get to a good baseline of the room itself. I’m definitely very interested in opinions on which of these two room configurations would likely be better. Now that I’m trying to attach photographs of the sketch I made I can’t find a way to do it. Anyone have any ideas how I could do that? Thanks
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Until I can figure out how to post my photographs I should just say that right now my speakers are up against the 12 ft wall and my chair is along the opposite wall. I guess that you would call the crosswise configuration in my 12x9 room. If I rotate it everything 90 degrees I would be listening in the lengthwise direction of the room |
I love Focal Utopia. I’ve had Sopra 3, Sopra 2, and most recently Sopra 1. I have Diablo EVO now.
I recommend listening to Sopra. To me there is an unnatural excitement to the upper-mid/lower treble, that, although not fatiguing, is distracting in a look-at-me kind of way. Ultra-clean, clear, but contrived, pushed. It seems to be part of that speaker at least to me when used with Audio Research Ref/Transparent Ultra and Primaluna Evo400 separates/ with Nordost cabling.
I will admit, I did not let any of them break in for 300-600 hours. More like 100 hours. They all
imrpbed drastically in the few days. But the Diablos (EVO) do not have the same “look at me” upper mid/low treble challenges of the Sopra - right out of the box. Sopra sounds great with electric music, and electric instruments (guitar), but I couldn’t get past the crossover mid-tweeter. Seems to be a house sound of the Sopra line. To me it lacks refinement.
On the other end of the spectrum, and in your budget, You might want to look at used Sonus Faber Cremona M Auditor. Great for the money and I would take them over the Sopra 1. |
I’d definitely put the speakers on the 9’ wall and pull them out at least a couple feet — that alone will do wonders opening up and improving your sound. You still haven’t mentioned what type of improvements you’re looking for over your Ushers. Tough to make a recommendation without that critical info.
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A very reasonable question that I’m not sure I have a defined answer. Over the years as I’ve bought better and better equipment and I listen to the songs I’ve been listening to for decades and I hear more detail and more things that I didn’t know were even there. After each significant upgrade I think "I’m there, I don’t think there is much more to get out of that music" then I find out I was wrong. This goes for both my stereo room and headphone listening. My big breakthrough this year is how I can pinpoint the location of each instrument or vocalist since I added the ATC amplifier. Had no idea an amp could make that much difference. I would say as of now I find acoustical instruments and vocals near perfection. I think when there’s a lot going on with a lot of instruments and vocals at the same time, at high volume, I lose a little clarity compared to a live performance. I’ve done a little research trying to find out if that’s unavoidable no matter how good the equipment is. It seems there’s different opinions on that subject. There are some high-end audio shops within driving distance I think in metro Detroit. I think I should visit a couple and say let me listen to the best you’ve got. Once I know how good it can get I can then figure out how close I can get within a semi-reasonable budget. To sum it up I guess it’s a case of I don’t know what I don’t know. Thanks for the advice on running my set up 90° from my current configuration |
Well, given what you’ve said, the music you listen to, and your amp, without question I’d be taking a very hard look at the ATC SCM40 v2 speakers. I say this despite being a huge Usher and Joseph Audio fan, I think the SCM40s could be your ticket to nirvana. FWIW and best of luck. |
Appreciate the advice. I guess I thought a floor stander in that range would be overkill for my small room but it sounds like it wouldn't. I did almost buy a pair of pre-owned SCM19's a few years ago. Do you think they would have been better than the Ushers I ended up buying? Maybe kind of their equals? Unfortunately ATC just had a big price increase across the range. The 19's went up $800 and the 40's went up a thousand. I likely would be looking pre-owned anyway but I imagine those prices will be up also a bit. Just curious do you agree I would want to run them lengthwise in my room, in other words put the speakers along the 9-ft wall with the sound traveling down the 12 ft length of the room? Thanks |
Since I first posted this I've made a few changes in my system. Upgraded my preamp to a Violectric V281 preamp/headphone amp and added better interconnects and power cables. Very pleased overall with the sound. As far as the speakers go, I've done a little research and it seems my Ushers are considered to be great cabinets, good drivers but less than optimal internals. Thinking about crossover upgrades and upgrading the internal wiring. One other speaker I considered when I bought these was the Canton Reference 9k stand mounts. At the time Canton's presence in the USA was in doubt but that has been settled apparently. Does anyone have any experience with these. Sounds like build quality is out of this world. Of course I kind of think that about my current speakers as well. One concern I have is the Canton is rear ported and the fact that I'm less than a foot from my speaker to the back wall makes me wonder if I should rule this out, and for that matter rule out all rear ported speakers. Opinions? |
Keep the mini-x’s, better than the Focal or dynaudio mentioned above IMO. You can’t compare the mini-x to the 718’s from the past unless the 718’s had the DMD tweeter which is a game changer. I have and still own many Usher speakers, the later 1’s with the DMD tweeter. I have the Usher x-towers which is a $14k floorstand speaker consisting of the mini-x plus the woofer modules with their Eaton 11" woofer. Before this I owned the Mini Dancer ii’s with the DMD tweeter and other Usher Dancer series speakers with their silk dome tweeters. I just moved to a new house with a 16’ x 13’ room and will be using the mini-x speakers without the woofer modules if I put them on the long wall or will use them with the woofer modules if I put them on the short wall. I had the top of the line Totem speakers before going to usher and they were also very nice speakers.
As for ported speakers, I like front ported speakers so they are more room friendly. You can still plug the ports to fine tune them. |
Sorry rb, it was only today I noticed your response to my post. Thanks for your input. From what I can tell it would be well worth the effort to replace the internal wiring and silver solder them in rather than using the push on connectors. I think upgrading the binding posts at the same time will be a good idea. After that perhaps I will use these as my endgame speakers for my small room. Thanks again |
I recently purchased a set of usher mini-x. I drive them with a naim supernait 3 + denafrips pontus II DAC.
To my ears the mids and heights sound great, detailed, a huge improvement over my previous speakers (B&W CM5 S2). These speakers sound a bit "holographic" as they say.
What I feel is the lack of low frequencies --> Basically these speakers lack the bass compared with the B&W on the same DAC and AMP.
I don't want to have huge bass levels, and I don't really want to add a subwoofer --> I just need to have some "normal" bass that usual bookshelf speakers can provide.
I believe that my integrated AMP naim supernait 3 is not powerful enough to drive these speakers and I was looking for an upgrade (or maybe these speakers lack the bass whatever amp you use).
Any advice on this would be great.
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If you want more bass, move the speakers closer to the front wall.
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With the ushers, you don’t need a large sub for the low end. I’m using a good 10” sub now but will be going with a pair of Rel t5x or pair of Rel t7x that have an 8” woofer. The sub I have now is crossed over at 50hz with no phase adjustments, and the gain is a setting of 3 out of 10.
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