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Bookshelf Bake Off

Fellow Audiogoners,

Lend me your ears.  I live on a farm in South Georgia and have a 3+ hour drive in any direction to audition anything.  The price I pay for land, peace and horses I suppose.  I am putting together a secondary system and can't audition everything I have interest in, so I am hoping you can help me shorten the short list to a manageable set of maybe three (two would be even better) auditions for bookshelf speakers. They will be driven by 2 x PS Audio M700 Monoblocks, Schiit Freya+ tube preamp and a Mytek Brooklyn DAC+.  The space is fairly small at approx. 10'x20'.  For a number of reasons, floorstanders are not a possibility, hence the call for bookshelf speakers.  I would like to keep the budget in the $2K range, +/- a reasonable %.  I am not someone that feels the need to max the budget, i.e. linear correlation of price and quality, so feel free to suggest high value brands/models less than the max budget.  I have a pair of Focal Aria 906 in another system and very much like their sound, but want something a bit warmer with similar (or better) resolution.  Deeper low frequency extension would be a plus.  The brands I have narrowed the field to are:

Revel
Legacy
KEF
Monitor Audio
Sonus Fabre
PSB

This list is not written in stone, just my initial list after research.  Feel free to suggest anything I have omitted that warrants consideration.  Thanks in advance for your ears.

Mark


markcdaniel

Showing 4 responses by markcdaniel

markcdaniel's avatar
markcdaniel OP
45 posts
 
I should have also included my listening tastes.  Here is an approximate distribution of listening time by genre.

Heavy Rock (Korn, Tool, etc) - 40%
Vocal Jazz (Norah Jones, Diana Krall, etc) - 40%
Hip-Hop - 10%
Folk / Country / Blues - 10%

@twoleftears I have never heard of Fritz or Silverline, I'll look into them, thanks.

@yogiboy The reviewer pretty clearly states that the Harbeth are not for my musical tastes, would you agree?

@kren0006 I was actually going to put Dynaudio on the list, I just don't know much about them.  Would you recommend them over everything else on the list?

@glennewdick Ironic, I had actually just opened an article on ProAc when your message came through.  I don't know much about them, but reading up now. 

Thanks guys for your input. 

Anyone else have an opinion in Audiogon land?
markcdaniel's avatar
markcdaniel OP
45 posts
 
@b_limo That is actually a good idea, I have Focal 1028Be in my primary listening system and the 1008Be would put me one speaker away (cc1008Be) from being able to integrate the listening and HT systems and retire the DefTech BP9040's currently running there.  I was wanting to try a different sound, warmer, but this makes a lot of sense. I was leaning toward the Monitor Gold 100's before this very obvious answer was presented.  There are some very good deals on the 100's also, so maybe I'll pick up a pair just for giggles anyway.    I am going to sleep on it.
markcdaniel's avatar
markcdaniel OP
45 posts
 
@pgaulke60 As luck would have it, I will be in Atlanta tomorrow.
markcdaniel's avatar
markcdaniel OP
45 posts
 
@gadios How right you are! My shortening of the short list has become an epic fail, but I do appreciate everyone putting their 2 cents into the pot. Although my original objective is in ruins, the outcome of this thread is better than I expected. Thanks everyone for taking the time. I’ll let everyone know what I end up doing. 
If anyone has other thoughts/suggestions, feel free to pile on. The thread is not dead and I will keep checking as I figure out what to do next. 
Cheers.

Mark
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