i want better sounding speakers

Just to give you more excuses to pout: in my very humble ( hah ! ) opinion you shouldn't even be considering speakers at all. You should be listening to sources.

To paraphrase a great writer ( humble, yah ), a man who is tired of his music system is tired of life. If you want to hear more life, you need more detail and resolution at the source. You do not want to hear an ordinary source through a super amp and speakers which bring out every little bit of ordinariness.

Good stuff which is not there at the source cannot be magically restored downstream. I say go listen to some digital sources which cost what you are considering spending on speakers.

Then go listen to the speakers you really want. But take your present source with you for the listening session ! See what you feel about the difference.

Happy hunting !

Yes, vague. If you are tired of listening, are you sure it's your speakers that are the reason? If you intend to move from home theatre to 2-channel, you'll have a chance to upgrade your source. In my experience, listening to an ordinary source through great amps and speakers gets old fast.

Sorry this isn't the speaker recommendation you asked for. I don't know how many OM5s you've got or how many you want, so it's hard to suggest.

Jesseo1, you never get there. If you did you would be deaf, dead, or in love with ( obsessing over ) something else. The journey is the destination, to coin a cliché. And the gear makers know how to get you no matter what you have.

But it need not take too long to come to the point where you think, every time you listen, "How come I get to have sound this good?" and you are sorry when you turn the rig off :D

Just remember--source first, then downstream. Biggest step you can manage each time. Cables come last.

School's out! Go play! :)

Maineiac, about that iPod demo ( the Wilson Audio one, I presume you mean ). Can you tell me, was Mr. Wilson using MP3 or Redbook-PCM coded source files, do you know? It would obviously make a large difference to the significance of that demo.

Beemerrider ( nice bike ) I agree you have to find speakers you like ( and how to buy them ). That's part of the game. This hobby is a job of learning, as Jesseo1 sees quite clearly. There is indeed a great variation between speakers and it takes time to learn what they are and which variety you prefer. You might as well do that learning with the least-coloured, highest-resolution source you can find, in my view. It's just more fun that way.

Source material varies too, that's true. Again I feel you might as well learn what's good using a player that can get as much data off the disc as possible.

Of course that doesn't mean you should never upgrade anything but your source. When you start out, though, you know you're going to be spending some time with gear that is not yet your dream setup. In my experience, it's more fun saving money when the source is what you love than when the speakers are your best girl ( or boy if that's your taste ).

it may be time to challenge conventional wisdom

Eusmani, with respect, I thought my point of view was the minority one. In other words, I believe the conventional wisdom says spend all your dough on speakers. That's what you hear in the box and mid-fi stores.

Of course if these guys even have gear on demo it's set up so that it all sounds the same anyway.

I don't know why this is the conventional "wisdom", maybe it's because when you buy speakers you get two of them, hee hee. I remember my best buddy back in 1961 telling me that speakers were responsible for 35% of the distortion in a system, cartridges the same, amps ten per cent, yada yada. So you should spend the most on cartridges and speakers. Of course today we have advanced to levels of more perfect sound and don't need cartridges any more. That leaves speakers, and the market sure seems to support a lot of them.

Tomryan, I wasn't being serious--maybe you aren't either, or maybe you are. How can numeric values be set on such a subjective issue, and anyway isn't it clear that distortion (which is how that "breakdown" was presented to me, way back when--your post doesn't even explain that much) is not the measure of a system?

I just wanted to point out that the conventional wisdom is spend it all, or most, on speakers, and that there is a more productive alternative. But any point of view can be defended (and tested in practice), that's why we say YMMV.

I would agree that "source first" is another in the class of analyses of the problem to which the above percentile list belongs. But I believe it works better than the percentile list because it makes more sense.

More sense for the hobbyist or music lover who is starting to build a system, for the reasons I mentioned above.

More sense later on too, because for me, resolution is what makes it. The best systems seem to get out of the way of the music and reveal all of what is on the disc. If that's what you want, then let the downstream gear represent any necessary compromise, and the upstream gear provide it with the most possible data to process.

the sonus fabers were like a bleach blond w/fake breasts

Now now, some of us quite like them that way...

( rofl, thanks, I had a good chuckle over that post... )