Thanks for the recommendation everyone. I am intrigued by the Tekton Design Mini Lore, and will be keeping an eye on the ads for paradigm S2, revel M106, audio monitor bronze, LS50s and anything else that pops up in my price range. I think a high efficiency speaker will be important as I suspect a small tube amp will be next on my upgrade list for this system. As others have noted, this small system will not fill out the large room. I do have a home theater system set up in the same space with floor standing, ceiling and surround speakers, which I occasionally use for listening to music. It can definitely fill up the space with sound. I know this smaller bookshelf system is not going to fill up the room, but I'm just looking to build something I can also use for detailed listening at a relatively short distance. Thanks again for the recs!
Please recommend speakers
I’m just starting my audiophile journey and want to make sure I pair the right equipment before going too far down the rabbit hole. I am coming into this as a complete newbie. I listen pretty much to everything but mostly pop, classical and jazz in a fairly large-ish lower level living room (maybe 20 x 20 feet square) and speakers sitting on bookshelves. I know they should be on stands or floor-mounted, but that doesn’t really work for me right now space-wise. So far I have Jamo 803 bookshelf speakers with newly purchased SMSL DA-9 amp and matching SMSL SU-9 DAC (previously was using an old NAD D 3020 V1 integrated amp with direct connection from iPad to internal DAC). Now I stream directly from an old iPhone/iPad via a USB camera adapter to the DAC which has balanced connections to the DA-9 amp. I pretty much stream music exclusively (currently on free trials with Tidal and Amazon HD). No other sources. No library to speak of. No headphones. The Jamos sound great to me, but I feel like I need something better to pair with the mid-fi DAC and AMP. So I’m looking for upgrade the Jamo 803s which were purchased on sale for $130. Looking to spend up to maybe $800 for a pair. Recommendations? Thanks in advance!
Edit: Here's what I'm considering so far. KEF350, Polk R200s, Audio Monitor Bronze. Thoughts on pros and cons? Anything else?
- ...
- 108 posts total
I see the amp is rated at 50 wpc.@8ohms. The way they post the spec makesme believe that 50wpc is questionable. I would not look at any speaker with less than 90-91 db sensitivity. 93+ even better. So far, none of the speakers except the Tektons are a decent choice for your amp. There are other mfg’s who make high sensitivity speakers but I can’t think of any right now. You will have to look at the sensitivity rating. Anything below 91-92 db is not going to be very good. Don’t look at the speaker mfgs rating on "Recommended Amplifier Power" Sure you can get some sound from an 87db. But your amp will be near distortion (clipping) when playing BTW, Here is an example of the specs I was speaking about. Look at the Recommended Amplifier Power" and you will get some understanding of what I am speaking about |
Thanks for looking up the specs on the DA-9 amp. I will keep that in mind for sure. Perhaps I should also consider the Klipsch 600M (sensitivity of 96db). I don't really listen at very high volumes, but I do want to be able to get the best out of the amp/speaker pairing. Seems like a bit out of my league here after reading the other thread about speaker recommendations for $130k! But I very much appreciate all the time people have taken to respond. It does seem like the advice I'm getting here is a bit different than what I have been gathering from popular audiophile review sites and YouTube channels. Maybe I shouldn't trust those reviews so much... |
Yes this is the way a lot of audiophiles start out thinking. The Binford 2000 speaker sold new for $18k I can get one used for only $800 WHAT A DEAL!!! Years later after flipping one "deal" after another it dawns on them they never were a deal, the things that look like deals are really just the stuff other people don't want. The real value is in sound quality, period. Fortunately you don't have to learn by the school of hard knocks. Look around, the lessons are everywhere. Tekton Moab and other Tekton almost never come up for sale. Certainly not compared to the large numbers sold. This is the market telling you they are high value. This is true for a lot of things, I just like using Tekton as an example because while I live rent free in others heads this is how I pay the rent. But the same is true of Decware, Herron, Townshend, Raven, Origin Live, and I could go on. An extreme example, the worst system I ever heard was this guy who was so proud to have bought one killer deal after another. And yes based on what he paid vs what they sold for new he got himself quite the deal. Most if not all of what he had was Stereophile Class A components too. Only thing, like I said, worst sound I ever heard. He came over one time and his wife sneaked up to me and whispered, "I could listen to this all night!" As opposed to what they had at home, which no one could stand for even a minute. You're seeing a lot of KEF LS50s. For a reason. Think about it. You're seeing zero Mini-Lore. For a reason. Think about that.
|
- 108 posts total