Don't forget ATC and Harbeth(especially Compact 7 and Monitor 40 speakers) if you REALLY want music and not hifi.
A great combination is ATC pre/power SCA2/SPA2-150 and Harbeth Compact 7s. I've had this set-up since April 2005, and feel sublimely happy with classical CD listening. |
Aktchi - I can only respond to what I have actually owned in the past and my degree of ''satisfaction'' with them.
This is very subjective of course, here's a quick list of past gear I owned, and not just speakers !
QUAD L22 - ''romantic'' and forgiving, a best buy for sure.
Polk LSi - amazing and compares to many times it's price
Sonus Faber Grand Piano - Seductive but ulitmately not very dynamic, sounds congested at higher volumes, tweeter a tad bright.
Canton Ergo floorstanding : Nicely built, but ultimately too bland for my taste - nowhere near the LSi 15, and it cost 2X as much.
Verity Audio Parsifal - in a league all it's own (so are many others in this price range)
Totem forest : Classy speaker, very lively, for detail freaks, lot's of bass energy.
B&W's - A few samples for extended listening in my home - what can I say, not my cup of tea.
Opera SP Callas: PERFECT combination of size, great design, and sound. Beautiful speaker all-around, with so many details, angles. In true Italian fashion. Surprising bass for it's size. Tweeter can get a bit too much with some cd's (it has a rear-firing tweeter too) but overall a great speaker. Beats equivalent Sonus Fabers in my opinion - more dynamic, deeper bass and cinerama soundstage (I think this is where that rear tweeter contributes).Opera is like Avis, they try harder. Underrated for sure.
Electronics
Musical Fidelity A-300 : powerfull but too edgy
Electocompaniet EC-3 : Closest to tube sound from Solid state
Audiomat Arpège: Very, very nice - passes on LOTS of information - one of my favorites, but unfortunately had service issues.
Sim Audio: I was foolish enough to buy two I-5 amps, years apart, hoping the sound would match the looks. Big let down, thumpy, artificially-induced bass. Major service issue with both the dealer and Sim Audio (will leave it at that...) Sim is on my ''never again'' list.
Sonic Frontiers : Power2 and Line2 combo: Best built machines I ever owned. Sound was a bit too butterscotch and creamy for my taste - I felt I was missing information.
Cary: SLP 74 preamp (strong tube hiss from the headphone input) and 572 monoblocks. The amps were poping tubes like crazy. 572 was discontinued and remaining stock was expensive. Cary wanted hundreds to modify my amps to accept a more common tube. They should have done it for free instead of selling amps with no tube future....Cary is on my ''never again'' list'' Sounded great when it worked, though.
McCormack DNA 125: Excellent value. Lively amp, nice midrange, nice soundstage (for a SS amp)
Magnun Dynalab MD 208 : One of my big mistakes, in my book. ''Class A'' Stereophile. They must be kidding. ''A'' for the sound, or for the tuner? A magnum tuner, with the ''economy-line'' Celeste (at the time) lower-level electronics from Sim Audio (not even up to ''Moon'' standards. Not that it would have made much difference, mind you.
Naim Nait 1 (first generation, the original): Kept this little sucker 10 years. If you see one floating around buy it. It's that simple.
Naim 42-110 amp preamp combo: Very old, but would probably still sound great today.
Cayin A 88 T: My current amp. And my SECOND A 88 T (I had purchased an early first unit 3 years ago) THE bargain of the millenium. Incredible build quality - triode/ultalinear on the fly - point-to-point wiring, looks amazing, but more importantly, sounds absolutely incredible. All for the equivalent of audiophile pennies as far as high-end prices go. Beats my previous Sonic Frontier expensive combo on sound quality - no kidding.
Cayin T-30: Almost forgot about this one, best entry-level amp you can by, it you want to try tubes. (could be your exit-level too). Get the one with the extended bias. The only amp I know where you can go from 6550/KT88 tube family to EL34 on the same amp in this price range. Can also be used in triode-like 4 watts for extra transparency.
Come to think of it, it is an even better bargain than the A 88-T. They sold many TA-30's yet are scare on the used market. People keep 'em, just like the original Nait.
I know Prima Luna has taken over (with Kevin Deal's puchasing clout) - still, given the choice, I would go with the extended-bias TAD (Tube Audio Design) Cayin TA 30, for the extended bias and the variable feedback control. So much fun.
Maybe I'll get into the cd players some other time....
take care all ! |
Hifisoundguy: I'm waiting for the all new Polk Audio LSI series to come out sometime this year... Any rumors / pre-release info on what the new line might contain? I must say Polk's LSi line seems very good and caught me off guard. Quad's L-series and Usher seem other great values. Sonicbeauty: I once owned a $ 20,000 pair of Verity Audio Parsifals...
By the way, I ALSO once owned a pair of Polk LSi 15 speakers. This is not a joke, they are incredibly good, and not just for the money. Too ''low end'' for snobish hifi shops to put beside a B&W OR Totem speaker in the showroom (would make the B&W a harder sell), yet, too expensive for Boxstore electronics to carry - they are WORTH seeking out. No kidding. They are a steal You have quite a range of experience! Besides the LSi15, do you have any thoughts on what are other "best bangs for the buck" speakers out there? |
By the way, I ALSO once owned a pair of Polk LSi 15 speakers. This is not a joke, they are incredibly good, and not just for the money. Too ''low end'' for snobish hifi shops to put beside a B&W OR Totem speaker in the showroom (would make the B&W a harder sell), yet, too expensive for Boxstore electronics to carry - they are WORTH seeking out. No kidding. They are a steal. |
I TOTALLY agree with Tbg.
I once owned a $ 20,000 pair of Verity Audio Parsifals, thinking also '' this is it, I'M done...''
After 2 years I sold them, having found many flaws with them. I had slipped in a confort zone. On subsequent shopping rounds, I finally realized how great these were.
What a mistake that was, selling these incredible speakers.
The antidote for this disease : One must stop analyzing the sound, and just relax and enjoy the music, even if it's less than perfect sometimes. As far as I'm concerned. Good sound is greatly influenced - and dependent - by the quality of disk played. It is the weak link in the chain, that and the listening room, of course.
Here's my recipe for great sound: Enjoy a glass of your favorite wine or two with your favorite music. It WILL sound good garanteed !
I'd rather hear my favorite singer or band on a cheap boombox then Barry Manillow, on a $ 100,000 sytem anyday. The wine sure helps, though...
Cheers ! |
Bigbucks5, I have been at this hobby for a long time and remember thinking several times what you are thinking now. Don't be surprised if in two or three years you have different sentiments. Be happy for now, however. |
I'm waiting for the all new Polk Audio LSI series to come out sometime this year..... |
Hifisoundguy: Have you all seen the review comparing the Evidence Temptation speakers to some Polk Audio lsi15's! www.onhifi.com/product/2002_pr... No I had not. Thanks a million! |
Have you all seen the review comparing the Evidence Temptation speakers to some Polk Audio lsi15's! http://www.onhifi.com/product/2002_productsoftheyear.htm |
Welcome to the club. I love these speakers. The best speakers I've ever owned and I owned many. SoundLab A1, Apogee Divas, Duntech Soverign 2001s and more recently MBL111Es. Best move I made was when I traded MBL111E speakers for these. Tmptation speakers are simply amazingly accurate from top to bottom with unbelievable out of the box and immense soundstage, precise imaging, detail, fast transient speed and settle time, completely transparent, and extremely musical and emotionally involving speakers that you can truly immerse yourself into the music.
You need good fundamentals and associated equipment to make these speakers realize its full potential. For instance, I thought I needed a subwoofer with these speakers because my room is huge and was not getting bass below 30 hz. Wrong. I put in 8 dedicated isolated ground 10 AWG MC cryo treated cable 20 amp rated(35 amp capable) lines with hospital isolated ground Hubbel 20amp IG8300 cryo treated outlets. When I did this, my MBL9007 reference 440Watt mono amps suddenly had enough juice to provide the deep bass with weight that I was looking for. The clean AC line also provided vanishingly low noise that removed layers of veil that I didn't know I had and made the music extremely dynamic as in live event.
Now I hear every little change I make to the system. I just can't believe that you can hear so much differences in the quality of power cables, speaker cables, interconnect, and every little tweak such as vibration absorption tweaks on equipment, power amps, etc. I am having to upgrade all my cables as I truly am hearing huge differences depending on what I use and there seems to be synergy inter related with electronics. But one thing I know for sure is that Evidence Temptation is not the one to blame as it is truly faithful to the music. Case in point. I had Cardas Golden Reference speaker cables and power cords that I thought that was excellent when I compared to other designs. However, I was noticing that Maria Callas voice was somewhat splitting in her upper registers and I thought it was the fault of the Esotar tweeters. Not. I replaced Cardas power cables with NBS Statement power cables retails for $3,000 each and Kubala-Sosna Emotion speaker cables retails for $3,900. This combination got rid of this phenomena completely and made music much more coherent and harmonically rich and immensely more enjoyable to listen to.
This weekend I'm going to try the top of the line Tara Labs Omega and next to top 0.8 speaker cables and also have scheduled auditioning of Pranawire. I have previously chosen before AC improvement, Cyberlight P2A interconnects which sounded the best. But I'll have to try Tara Labs Zero again as I might hear the difference this time.
So, it is plainly evident to me that Dynaudio Evidence Temptation keeps on improving as the associated equipment keeps on improving. I can confidently conclude that Evidence Temptation is not the limiting factor to scaling the highs of audio nirvana. The better stuff I throw at it, more amazing the speaker sounds. This phenomena was definitely not the case with previous speakers I’ve had. Kudos for Dynaudio to have designed such wonderful speakers. |
hammerjgh,
they are the last speakers I will ever buy. |
Yeah, baby!
As Homer would say, "ummmmmh, T E M P T A T I O N S, aghhhh"
I bought Deshapiro's speakers. He ain't getting them back, that's for sure! |
40 grand for a pair of speakers? Damn, they better be amazing. |
Bigbucks,
I bought a pair of Temptations a couple of months ago. I know what you mean. |
IMHO, the speaker is THE most important element of any system. Congratz! |
One of the beauties of a wide dynamic range, high efficiency speaker system. Of course Dynaudio has been making excellent cone systems for a long time. Ever try an SET amp with them? |
I will have what he is having! |
Bigbucks5, wow, that's great, congrats on your success!
I've actually accomplished the same exact thing with my little Aural Ersatz TAD-803 single-driver speakers... Ditto for me, now I can just relax and listen to the music. Good thing for me, as my wife would never let me bring any speakers as large and conspicuous as the Evidence Temptations into the house.
Go easy on the cigarettes. They're proven killers and besides wreaking havoc on your health I believe smoking diminishes hearing acuity due to blood vessel constriction. |
Wonderful speakers.
Another One Bites The Dust!
I know exactly how you feel.
I had to have a smoke when I got the first SF Stradavari out of the box.
About a hour later after setting them up & powering up - I had a smile that is still with me.
Great speakers should disappear & only the sound that they reproduce should fill the room.
I listen to my system about 9 hours a day & SMILE!
Just wait until they really break in & you have them set up 100%.
Try a Trinidad Fundador & Hennessey XO to celebrate your new found love.
ENJOY! |
They are great speakers,
congrats |
i suspect you could achieve the same result with a more modest stereo system, because you are very receptive to the message of the music.
i've always maintained that the listener is more important than the music or the equipment.
you may have made my case. |
