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Really Inexpensive Systems That Sounded Great?

I think there is a big difference between "cheap" and inexpensive. I have blown money on "cheap" cables and immediately regretted it when my ears started bleeding from the brightness in my digital components. I also don’t mean "bargains" like the time I scored $2000 speakers for $200 on Craigslist, that is basically luck.

I am talking about inexpensive (less than $1500) for a system that sounded really great to you.

I fell into a whole house audio system from DTS Play-Fi because I wanted to try and compare different brands. I picked up Play-Fi amps, preamps and active speakers made by Polk, Paradigm, Klipsch, Onkyo and DefTech all for less than $1000 a pop. For what it is, whole house audio/casual listening it sounds great.

What inexpensive great sounding systems have you tried?

 

kota1

Showing 1 response by cd318

cd318
2,636 posts
 

I'm all for high performance budget gear as anyone but I can't honestly say that any of them sounded great.

Some were surprisingly good.

I remember a 1980s Rega Planar 3 / AR 18 bookshelf system playing Dylan's Blood on the Tracks with far more detail than any system I'd heard before, but in hindsight it was still a relatively small scaled sound in both image size and bandwidth.

I don't think that any inexpensive system can sound great, if they did, that would be the end of the so called 'high end', there and then.

Unless of course, there already is a brilliant budget full range loudspeaker out there that I not yet heard?

Did someone mention Polk?

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