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I need to be wowed

Next month I'll be starting my hunt for new speakers...new to me, at any rate.
And I will be obsessed...

What I've got:
Arcan Alpha 9
Plinius Integrated 2100i
Analysis plus 12's bi-wire
and shortly HT Pro MK2 IC's
and a *DOUZY* of a room:
http://www.geocities.com/sundaesundaesundae/audio.html
Oh, that room.I think that's the key....I learned early on how much room interaction plays in sound.

I listen almost strictly to classical music....small ensemble/piano/violin/but yearn for large scale to sound
wonderful too. Also listen to acoustical classical/folk/female singers...

What I want:Tonal quality most important....I tend to like laid back/dark sound but needs to be involving and have intensity...
and oh, yes....they must come in black.
What I don't want: Bright tweeters!

Just for comparison I had wanted to hear some stats but have been told there was no way bipoles could work with
in my room....although someone suggested Innersound Isis ....and Gradient(out of my price range)..
I had also been intrigued for a while by Newforms but the fact that most who own them feel the need to do
mods bothers me....I want to own them....not build them...

Any suggestions will be much appreciated!

allegro12
zaikesman
3,017 posts
 
....one more possibility is Aerial Acoustics 6 or 7....
ljgj
955 posts
 
Check out the Monsoon line.
tinynottwoec5c
18 posts
 
You said it would not be possible to home audition. Just my two cents, but home audition is really mandatory for speakers. Nothing any of us say or what you hear in a store will tell you what it will be like in your room for the long term. Whatever/wherever you buy, make sure you can take it back if it doesn't cut it for you.
bishopwill
369 posts
 
A couple of things bother me here. First, your constraints about speaker placement. Given the number of dollars you already have invested and the additional dollars you are prepared to invest, I'd strongly urge you to be more flexible about speaker placement. Please forgive me if I sound condescending--truly I do not mean to be--but it is a measure of your inexperience that you are prepared to say, "They have to be placed RIGHT HERE and no place else." It comes down to how badly you want good sound. In the interest of optimum speaker placement, I have seen speakers placed in traffic flow patterns so that everyone had to learn to step around them, etc. In my current situation, one of my speakers extends halfway into a doorway--AND the door is covered with ugly Sonex. Inconvenient as hell but I paid $15K for the speakers and I'm sure gonna put them where they sound best.

Speaker placement is absolutely CRITICAL to getting what you say you want. Whether it is a matter of convenience, aesthetics, SAF, or whatever, I'd try to work it through.

Secondly, please do make every possible--even superhuman--effort to audition in your home. Even if it means renting a truck to haul them back and forth a hundred miles there simply is no other way to determine how speakers will sound in your space until you put them there and spend some days experimenting and listening.

If all this sounds extreme....well, audiophilia IS a disease, after all, and you definitely seem to have the early symptoms. :)

Good luck!
seandtaylor99
1,262 posts
 
agree with bishopwill. Correctly placed $1k speakers can image far, far better than poorly placed $5k speakers.

See these two links for hints :
http://www.cardas.com/insights/roomsetup.html
http://www.audiophysic.de/produkte/aufstellung/aufstellung_e2.html
(they're both in english).
Again it's a trade off between musicality and aesthetics (since optimum sonic placement is usually rather non-optimal aesthetically), but the difference in sound quality is profound.
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