PSBs are incredibly linear at all their price points, with a nice, natural room-filling dispersion. In general PSB and Paradigm sound better than their asking prices would indicate, as they use Canada's National Research Foundation's sophisticated psychoacoustics studies and R&D facilities, dramatically reducing the R&D costs in the selling price.
From tiny Silverline's to slightly bigger PSB's
I now have Silverline Minuets being powered with Jolida's latest JD 302 integrated amplifier. I am thinking about changing to some PSB Synchrony Two B's, or even step down to the PSB Imagine B's. I have a medium + listening area and am (obviously) a budget audiophile. Is this an upgrade, or am I just spinning my wheels and wasting my money?
Showing 3 responses by johnnyb53
How big is your listening room, and how contained is it (4 walls, vaulted ceiling, open architecture, etc.)? The Minuet has two problems in filling a large space: 1) Its radiating area is tiny with a single 3-1/2" woofer, and 2) its measured sensitivity is a rather low 85 dB. That means that with a 50 wpc amp, and a listening distance of 8-10 feet, it can only put out a clean peak or crescendo of 99 dB. If you really like the sound of the Minuet you might be able to fix this with a powered sub to offload the LF duties, increase overall radiating area and open up the Minuet's dynamic range. Another approach would be to get more power. Silverline claims the Minuet can handle up to 300 watts. A third approach would be to replace the Minuet with a small-footprint floorstander that provides more room-filling radiating area. For little more than the price of the Synchrony Two B, you could get the PSB Imagine T Tower with 8"x13" footprint. Notice that both of these PSB models have a nominal impedance rating of 4 ohms, so you should use the Jolida's 4-ohm taps. |
15x34 with vaulted ceiling and open wall is a friggin' big room! That calls for a line array, but even the "economical" ones are $6K. Even DIY kits run $2K and up. While we're on the subject of a high sensitivity horn system (Klipsch Forte), consider the Cerwin-Vega CLS-215 at around $1K-1.2K/pair. Although they have twin 15" woofers making bass down to 26Hz, the high end reviews (Soundstage, TAS) also stress that they do solo vocals and intimate music surprisingly well. They could definitely fill the room. And as long as there's a frat house somewhere, you'll always find a ready market when it's time to sell. |