I am adding my recent speaker experience to this thread in the hope that it will be useful for other loudspeaker buyers.
My wife and I started listening to loudspeakers at local hi-fi shops last January, just to see if we could hear any significant improvement over the KEF 104.2 speakers I have had since 1992. There were indeed some real improvements, although that may in part have been due to the 104.2 price having been $2200, and my new speaker budget being $10,000.
After hearing a bunch of speakers in that price range, our strong preference was for the Paradigm Persona 3F. They sound great! I had not considered KEF, because I had been living with KEF for so long. After finding the KEF Reference 3 in a shop where we had gone to hear other speakers, we both fell in love with their sound. It was akin to the KEF 104.2 sound, but quite a LOT better!
I am not writing to suggest the KEF Reference 3 for the starter of this thread. I realize that they are an inch too tall, and $4,000 over his $10,000 price range. Besides, speaker preferences are highly subjective. I am writing to warn others about what I learned after I set up the new Reference 3 in my listening room. On their own, the Reference 3 speakers have too much bass output for my room. The room is 16'x16' with an 8 foot ceiling. The speakers are 17 inches from the front wall, and 17 inches from the side wall, just as KEF recommends. Still, the bass output was too much by a lot!
The happy part of my story is that I use an Anthem processor, which has ARC room correction. ARC set the subwoofer crossover to 160hz. Although the sound was good, this seems incredibly high for such large full range speakers. I sent my ARC curves to a technician at Anthem, and he told me that the high crossover frequency was due to the bass output from the front speakers being much too high for ARC to flatten. the ARC algorithm got better results by using the subwoofer up to 160hz.
The next chapter of the story is that yesterday, a set of Tri-Traps arrived from GIK Acoustics. They are standing from floor to ceiling in the front corners of the listening room. I have listened to the new sound, and it is improved by a lot. The sound from the speakers, with no ARC and no subwoofer, is great. The bass is a little exaggerated on some of my bass heavy test tracks, but most music is great. Like the 104.2 speakers, the deepest bass (probably under 35 Hz) from the Reference 3 speakers is not as clean as from my 12-inch subwoofer. Very little of my music collections have bass energy this low. Nevertheless, I knew which tracks to test with. Soon I will recalibrate with ARC.
I wrote this to give others a heads up about matching loudspeakers to rooms. I realize that many in this group know even more about such things than me, but heads up to any who do not think about it. I am sure that aggravating the loud bass is the fact that my 104.2 speakers had a port in the front, while the Reference 3 speakers have 2 ports on the back. Some on this thread already warned about port locations.
When I bought smaller and less expensive loudspeakers, I was usually given the opportunity to borrow speakers to hear them in my room. Others (like the 104.2) came with a 30-day return policy. I do not know if any large high-end speakers are sold this way. I asked, and the KEF speakers definitely did not have any "try before you buy" option. These speakers are built to order in England. Delivery took almost a month.
All-in-all I am really excited and happy with the terrific sound from this system! My wife likes it too. She is an angel for letting me put this big 2.1 channel system with room treatments in HER bedroom! I am a lucky guy. :)
Sorry if this post is a bit too long, but if I were not me, I would enjoy reading it.
Regards,
Tom Shults
