Save your money and put it towards a TACT RCS. It is just gets too expensive trying different speakers until you find one that works (unless you can get them on trial). With the TACT, you don't care.....any half decent speaker will be optimized for your room. It is the best purchase I ever did. You can pick one up, currently, for $2600 used. |
The Gershmans are really good & at a good price too.
Give Joe, at JC audio a call, I am sure he can help you.
Good Listening |
If the 5.3's sounded good, and you have some room to leave some air behind them in your room, you should go with them! You liked them! It is no harder to get a good sub to integrate w/monitors than w/floorstanders; the RELs, for example, have tons of fine tuning to accomplish this with any kind of speaker. As far as the Vienna Acoustics go, I don't believe they have rear ports, or need a ton of space behind them. The fact is there are a LOT of great speakers out there, but you have the great advantage of having heard the soliloquies. Did the dealer let you listen to them in your home? Or will he let you return them if you get them home and can't get them to sound right? |
If you were willing to go to 2500.00 i would buy the pair of talon peregrines with stands on audiogon right now. This is possibly the best deal i have ever seen on this site. I own the peregrine Xs and i love them. The peregrines are about 90% as good as the new ones. They have 20 hz bass and have a front firing port. I have them about 8 inches from the rear wall and about 3 inches from the side wall on terrible stands and they sound incredible. My room is very small as you can tell. They seriously compete with wilson watt puppy 6s very well. They are much better than B&W 802s and i prefer my peregrine Xs over dynaudio confidence 5s. They are also super easy to drive. |
Have your Soliloquy dealer move the 5.3s closer to the wall or even better take them home for a demo. They may sound a little better out in the middle of the room, but they may be fine in a more practical, closer to the wall, position. Unless your are going to wedge them into a corner, they should be fine closer to the back wall. I have my pair of 6.3s 12"-18" away from back wall with no problem. |
I can audition them in my home. Problem is, is I have to move quite a bit due to my job and I don't know if always would be able to get them away from the wall. I could position them so that the back of the speaker was 18-22" from the wall and it would look fine. My TV comes out about 2 feet from the wall. I love the 5.3 would really like to not have to worry about this. |
The 5.3s are excellent and do require some space behind them to let the ports breath. For that purpose, 2 feet should do but more is better for the imaging in the rest of the audible range.
I also love the TacT but it cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear and tranform a mediocre speaker. I've tried. |
You can plug the rear ports of the 5.3s with some foam or tube socks if need be--it can solve the problem(if there is one in your room) and it doesn't change the character of the speaker(I have done this with my 5.3s to great effect). In many rooms the 5.3 does fine 2ft. from the back wall without plugging the ports, but you always have the option. If you like them I wouldn't give up on them because of this--you should at least try them at home as it may not be an issue at all. Best of luck.
Tim |
Gunbunny,
You may have lost sight of the forest for the trees. You mention your TV sitting out about 2 feet - if that is a hulking RPTV monolith, that sitting in between the speakers is doing a lot more damage to your soundstage than whether you can get the speakers an extra foot out from the wall. Almost any speaker sounds better (depth of soundstage particularly) a considerable distance out from the wall (on the order of a third of the way into the room). I don't think there really is any significant boundary effect for the port at 2 feet away from the wall. Some towers with side firing woofers (like the NHT 2.9 and 3.3) are designed to be close to the wall. This is for bass response - they still create a better stage moved out. You say you can audition in home - move them in a variety of positions and see if any are unacceptable to you. Can you also take a pair of different design home for comparison? |
A TV 2 ft. from the wall? and speakers 22 in. from wall?
DAH? Not good in my opinion. Others may comment. |
let's see if I can more clearly illustrate my living room floor plan. The room is 17x18 with another room opening up that makes it about 17x30, except for a 5ft wide wall in the middle.
Right now the TV is backed into a corner, but when I get new speakers I plan to put it against the 17ft wall which all windows by the way. This cuts down on glare. The TV is a Toshiba 57HX81 widescreen RPTV. Yes, it's big. Also on that wall is a 2.5ft wide audio rack that will stay there unless I want to buy all new video cables, and I don't. So I would estimate the speakers would be about 10ft apart and about 10ft from the couch. The screen of the TV is about 2ft from the wall, maybe a few inches more when backed all the way to the wall.
Keep in mind that is my current residence. Won't always be the case so my set up needs to be versatile. I have about $7000 of new furniture in the room. I would have to leave before my fiance' let me do me anything with that. |
I would second the recommendation of the Tact. If you like the speakers then keep them, two feet shoud be plenty for most speakers and you don't want to be falling over them. The Tact is the only sure way to make your speakers work in your current room and deal with any problems that might arrive in the future.
The Beauty of the Tact is that it does more than just fix the frequency range it also fixes all reflection and time domain problems, which will do a lot to fix the soundstage destruction mentioned earlier due to the monster TV |
Afraid everybody's right here: if you don't get those speakers WAY out in front of the TV you'll be dramatically compromising the soundstaging potential of 2 channel.
I have a decent pair of speakers flanking our TV, and it's fine for that, and DVDs, but sounds like crap, especially when I try to use the Panasonic DVD for CDs.
My reference 2 channel sits in a DIFFERENT room, somewhat smaller than yours (14x24). I sit in a 7.5' nearfield triangle NINE feet out from the front wall, as there's a Steinway B sittin back there. The imaging is spectacular.
Couldn't imagine trying to replicate it in the TV room...who cares? Boston Public, West Wing, and NYPD simply require decent signal-to-noise to enhance dialogue comprehension...that's it.
Sorry to be so cavalier, but perhaps you'll move to a home where you can bifurcate your entertainment. And if so, I'd recommend a used pair of Revel Performa F30 for around $2500 as a fine option.
Cheers. |
