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Challenge: Best $2K-ish floorstander

I'm in the market for a floorstander in the $1.5-2.5K range. It will be in a 13x23 living room with a ceiling that vaults up to 15'. Also there is no real back wall to the living room as it opens onto the hall and dining area, also with high ceilings. In fact, the only doors in the entire house are to the bedrooms and bathrooms. The rest is open architecture.

Here are my current candidates:

Sonus Faber Venere 2.5: $2500, absolutely beguiling sound.

Monitor Audio Silver RX8. Auditioned over a year ago, sounded promising but it overloaded the demo room so it was hard to tell.

Salk SongTower: Elegantly proportioned and beautifully made.

SVS Ultra Tower: At the big end of the space I have. Designed by Mark Mason, a 13-yr vet with PSB. Bass extension into the 20's, probably the only one on the list that does this.

Aperion Verus Grand Tower: $2K price includes either gloss piano black or real cherry veneer. Size is a good match for my space.

Tekton SEAS Pendragon (the std. Pendragon is too big for the available space)

Tekton eNZO

Axiom M80 v3: Actually made in Canada and has damped titanium tweeters, something I'm accustomed to with my Mirage speakers. In fact, Andrew Welker, who designed the Omnipolar and Omni Design lines at Mirage, now designs for Axiom. Std. finish is vinyl, but there are many custom finish options.

GoldenEar Triton 3 or Seven, $2K or $1.4K. I auditioned the Triton Seven last week and--like the Monitor Audio--the bass overwhelmed the demo room and it was hard to evaluate the speaker when things got loud--was it congestion or room overload?

MartinLogan Motion 40

Silverline Prelude Plus: Petite and elegant, but would four 3-1/2" woofers cut it in my space?

Ascend Sierra Tower: An interesting same-price alternative to the Salk SongTower. It claims a phase-coherent step response, which I would like.

Magnepan Magneplanar 1.7: The poster child for $2K speakers. WIll try to audition them tomorrow. The 19"x65" profile may prove problematic. Then again, I could turn them sideways and tuck them to the sides of teh hearth and bring them out into the room for listening. Are these physically robust enough to be handled regularly like that? Or would they start falling apart even with my most careful efforts?

I'd love to get something that's good down to 30Hz or a little below if possible, but if there's a compellingly good speaker with a higher rolloff (e.g., Mag 1.7), I have a pair of small, quick subs that will blend easily to fill out the 60-40Hz rolloff, but they're not much help below that.

I use these speakers for a 2-channel music system only, and most music is sourced from LPs or lossless redbook and 24/96 digital on my MacBook Pro via Audirvana.

Musical tastes are acoustic folk, classic rock, combo jazz, big band, blues, chamber music, large scale orchestra, vocalists (Sinatra, James Taylor, Holly Cole, Norah Jones, Allison Kraus, Diana Krall. Will the Maggies stand up to Holst's The Planets and Respighi's Pines of Rome?

Any of you have direct experience with one or more of these speakers, please share your recommendations and caveats.
johnnyb53

Showing 4 responses by johnnyb53

johnnyb53 OP
3,510 posts
 
I have a few different amps, all maintained and in good working order. Among them are a Perreaux PFM1150, one or two VSP Labs TransMOS 150's, and a Heathkit AA-1600.

The Perreaux is a wide-bandwidth design (out to 3Mhz) with rise times under 1 microsecond. It's rated at 100 wpc into 8 ohms, and probably something close to 200 into 4. Damping factor is >500.

The VSP TransMOS amps are very high current and stable even into a short circuit, rated at 150/300 wpc into 8/4 ohms. They are also bridgeable to mono, so if I bridge them I'm getting at least 300 wpc. Damping factor is also high.

The Heathkit is easily 40 lbs, maybe 45. It's rated at 120 wpc into 8 ohms, but is massively overbuilt and probably making around 180. It's also a robust high current design with high damping factor.

I don't have any class A, low powered, or tube amps, not that I'm against them; I just don't have any.
johnnyb53 OP
3,510 posts
 

10-04-13: Shakeydeal
I had the Aerial 7B once. I think it lasted about one day in my system, and was
sold in less than a week.
What didn't you like about
them? Were they new or used (broken in)?
johnnyb53 OP
3,510 posts
 
Well, I auditioned 3 speakers on my list today. First was the MartinLogan Motion 40s. That's a nice little speaker, very linear, quick, room-filling dispersion, doesn't take up much room. Then I refreshed my memory on the Sonus Faber Veneres. They reconfirmed on the one hand how beguiling they are, but on the other hand also revealed their limitations on sorting out large scale orchestral music.

Finally I tried the Magneplanar 1.7s, and they seem to be exactly what I was looking for, other than bass down to 30 Hz. But they do everything above 45 Hz so well that i don't care much about the rest, and anyway I can fix that with subs, which I already have. These aced everything from solo voice with one acoustic instrument to combo jazz to large scale orchestra (Respighi, Rimsky-Korsakov), and in all caess they scaled up and down according to the ensemble size, and always floated the images in space like a live concert.

Thanks for all your suggestions, especially turning me on to the Odyssey Loreleis. That's a lot of speaker, both for a modest price and demure footprint.

But at this point, the Maggies are what I'm going to put my money on.
johnnyb53 OP
3,510 posts
 
Rebbi: I never had Ohms; I have Mirage OMD-15s, which are also mid-sized omnidirectional floorstanders.

Zd542: Interesting perspective on the Mag 1.7s. I was much more taken by the 1.7s' soundstage, transparency, and sense of "you are there," while obviously missing the bottom octave. You're right, however, that the bass that is there is of very high quality, quick and accurate with all the overtones on time and where they belong. That's certainly better than trying to tame a +10dB hump at 100-150 Hz.

Fortunately I have a pair of small (9" cube) very fast subs that should have no trouble blending with the Maggies. My biggest problem right now is blending the Maggies visually with the room.

I'm still sort of tempted by 2 or 3 of the small footprint towers such as the MartinLogan Motion 40s and Revel Performa F206s.
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