In my opinion, the speaker is by far the most important part of the audio system. After all, it is the only part you hear. OK, the other stuff really matters a lot, but without a great speaker... No go.
I am a bit 'speaker-obsessed' I guess, and now I am wondering: What are the best speakers you have ever heard, and what made them the best?
http://www.youtube Walsh style TLS-1 speaker by HHR Exotics review 1/21/13
I recently purchased a pair of HHR Exotics Walsh style TLS-1's. Before doing so I spent many months on a quest for the best system I could afford to celebrate my fiftieth year on planet earth. After reading some great reviews on Audiogon and other threads I decided to give Dale at HHR Exotic Speakers a call. When I first spoke with Dale it was not too hard to come to the conclusion that Dale was very passionate and beyond qualified when it came to all things audio. Dale referred me to a client who purchased a pair of their TLS-1’s and who was also a musician. This was very helpful because I could speak to someone who shared a view point that was similar to my own. After that call, I did what was the unthinkable for me. I purchased a pair of TLS-1’s without hearing them! Mind you I did much reading and learned as much as I could about the Walsh style transmission line driver.
The process took about three months from the time I ordered the speakers from Dale, as their were prior orders ahead of me. We shared many ideas and had many phone conversations over the course of the time Dale was building my speakers. He also provided pictures and info teaching me about the speakers as he built them. I drove to Ohio to pick them up when they were completed. When I arrived I was welcomed by Dale and his wonderful wife Yin like an old friend. Dale had my speakers set up and ready to go. We sat in his listening room, he fired up his system and off we went. After putting the TLS-1’s though a laundry list of music spanning many decades and styles focusing on content as well as recording techniques I must say I was feeling like the Cheshire Cat. What the HHR TLS-1’s produce is much more than I could have conceived. The sound stage was more than a wide front facing curtain of sound, it was enveloping me. The amount of uninterrupted overtones produced by a single driver delivering the whole wave over the three different cone materials captured so many nuances in the timbre of all instruments it was mind boggling. I had never heard music produced this way. The sound is so three dimensional it actually becomes addictive, like some ride at Disneyland that stimulates senses you’d forgotten or didn’t know you had. After spending two great days with Dale I packed my truck with my speakers and headed home. It has been three months and I must say this is turning out to be a never ending honeymoon. I must also mention the fit and finish of the speakers all the way around are impressive. Dale Harder offers a hand built speaker with old world craftsmanship while incorporating cutting edge upgrades that bring this speaker design to a whole new plateau. At this price point it would seem impossible that you could acquire something of this quality custom built by a master like Dale. My System: Speakers- HHR TLS-1 Amps- Carver Cherry 180 mono blocks Pre- Conrad Johnson PV-12 (tube upgrade) Processing: Aphex Aural Exciter CD Player: Jolida DD-100A (with platinum Hotrod upgrades) Tape: Akai 747 DBX Tape: Denon DR-M44HX Turntable: Audio Linear TD 4001 Dale and I still stay in touch and share our passion for music, I am so grateful for such an amazing product and experience. Dan Donofrio, Connecticut
Chahed, I am sorry. Reading my post, I realized that it sounded very heavy handed. I did have an unpleasant experience with the company in a phone call years ago. I am glad to hear that you have found a way to improve your speakers, and took the time to share the information with other members. I apologize for any offense.
Not at all my dear roxy54..!..if it does happen to you to Côme in Paris,i Will pleased to give you a listen with my system and i am sur you'll be smiling from the forts note .by the way you might as well bring some cd with you.chahed
Focal Utopia series. They just sound right.BTW,I'm taking a Poll on two very influential jazz recording engineers. Please visit my website and vote for your favorite jazz engineer: Rudy Van Gelder or Roy DuNann and spread the word. TIA.
WELL OF COURSE I WOULD HAVCE TO SAY OUR SPEAKERS ARE SUPERB AND COMPARE TO ANY SPEAKER. WE HAVE SAT OUR MODEL NEXT TO KLIPSCH LA SCALA, JBL 4312 & L7, MANY VINTAGE HORNED LOUDSPEAKERS,A FEW BOWERS & WILKINS, AND OTHERS. WE KNOW THE ANSWER. PLEASE GO SEE: ECSPEAKERS.COM
Makcer9, I can't help thinking that your self-promotional comments will win you more enemies than friends. It might also be a good idea to Google "internet etiquette caps."
Five years have past since I have posted on this thread. Sampled the wares in Vegas-The Show again. I still have not heard anything that comes close to MBL. Magico has perhaps closed the gap but MBL is playing in a different league as we speak. They can bring a concert to you at will.
I recently got the chance to get an old pair of mgIIa. They needed wire replacement for one tweeter and re-glue the loops. I fixed them and I power them with bridged nad3300 and nad2100. To me the sound is awesome and power ample. Some may argue about adding a sub. I find bass as being extremely tight and pure and probably as realistic as possible. Adding a sub may add some appeal but I feel that it would be further from the truth. Thanks,
MBL is at the pinnacle of sound reproduction right now. The cost of admission is ridiculous though. that said,I have to agree with Tom_hakins- YG acoustics is a game changer for us humble audiophiles.
The best speaker I have ever heard is the Dukane Ionovac plasma speaker. A horn speaker that will cover from 3.5K to likely 50K plus. Some venture to say possibly 100k with very low distortion. Until you have heard one it is hard to describe. I have heard one on the Aerial 10T and the Nestorovic 5AS MK IV Signature, and the sound blew me away. Nothing at the audio show impressed me as much. They do not use conical horns the way current plasma horns are produced today. They use compound diffractional horns and radiate about 165 degrees so the air and space is all over the room. No head in a vice needed. I have had Maggies, great ribbon tweeter, but nowhere close. The MBL also is very nice, still not this good. For those of you who have not heard one, you may get your chance if you go to RMAF. I hear through the grapevine that Jim of Vaughn Loudspeakers will be offering a speaker which will be be built for those who want a speaker to put their tweeters in. These are a must hear. Supposedly, he will have a Dukane Ionovac plasma setup there with one of his speakers. Get to either RMAF or Newport if he shows there. His speaker will be worth the trip. Only problem will be if you don't already have a pair of the tweeters..... Jallen
I was recently out speaker shopping with my father and he was interested in a brand known as "Golden Ear". He had read about them in his two stereo magazine subscriptions and was looking to replace his old Kef's. Anyway the speakers were called Triton 2 and they retailed for $3000/pr. They were very clear and with the built-in amped subs, a subwoofer is barely needed with these. My father demo'd these just with a denon receiver (125 watts each) and they sounded quite good for the money. My personal favorite is still the Paradigm Signature 8, though!
Analysis Audio ,The best I have heard ! I have not heard all the top dogs ,but they impressed me . They dont seem to have a lot of dealers in the states.
I listened to the Magico Q7 at a local Boston dealer a few months ago and was taken away by the power and scale of the music. The room was big and well treated and the amplification and components were excellent. The speakers were placed slightly back mid room and maybe six feet from the side walls.
Incredible detail, staging, and sense of being at the venue. It would take serious resources to pull this system together (350K) but a true experience.
I'll hang on to my Verity Audio Parsifal Encores and Luxman gear, "But hold on to the dream.."
No I didn't but I've spent lots of time with the Aquila and that is an amazing speaker. I can only imagine what the Altairs are like. Have you compared them?
Coincident Pure Reference! Unbelievable speaker system. Within 15 minutes of hearing them I just had to have them. Seriously, my current speaker had been the Legacy Focus, a terrific speaker unto itself. But, the Pure Reference was spectacular in their delivery of music, detailed, articulate, very dynamic and open with no beaming. Walking around the speaker revealed no typical holes or beaming. Soundstage and depth are incredible. Toughest part of making a choice is the ability to get home in your home connected to your equipment to give the speaker a fair chance. That ability very much limited my selection. There any number of other speakers that may be as good such Focal Utopia, Ursher BE-20,Wilson Maxx. But it makes a huge difference to bring it home and see what synergy you have. Do that and you never be disappointed!
Lately, I have concluded that speakers have reached a level where electronic components, ac power, and cables can be more crucial than the speakers. They will clearly reveal the benefits of each. Certainly this is true of my last two speakers, the Tidal Contrivas and the BMC Arcadias.
The best speaker I have ever heard is the mbl 101E as part of a $200K system at the 2012 Newport Beach Audio Show in a relatively large room. That being said, the best I have had in my small room is a recent purchase of Wyatt Acoustics 2.8 using Audio Nirvana 8 inch Alnico drivers. I was amazed at the coherence, immedicacy, presence, and clarity of a single driver. The total price was $1500 and I find the sound much more realistic than speakers I have owned that cost up to $40K.
The Kaiser Kawero Classic is now the best speaker I have heard. I thought they sounded better than anything else at the New York Audio Show this year, much better than the top of the line TAD, Coincident, KEF, GamuT, or Raidho. I could listen to those speakers all day long...and I had never even heard of the brand before today. Moreover, they were in the LessLoss room, a company I thought was about smoke and mirrors. Go figure.
interesting...can you describe what you heard in the Lessloss room a bit more? I just looked up this speaker...very interesting. Thanks for any insights, ackowledging you were hearing at a show. Any 'flavor' of what the Kaiser Kawero Classic sounds like is helpful.
ocellia speakers or similar are the most natural speakers (for me ) they focus in music as all full range do but ..with far less distortion ...For good "hi-end" sound i ve heard many speakers , cost a fortune, some are vey good or perfect in one area or another but finally after some time you feel boring ..it is just hi fi sound very good maybe for a few hours ..but after one week or two your brain start to complain !!! something crucial is missing ...thats why i believe people start to play with accessories ...cables etc they try to make a 2-3 way speakers full of passive parts & filters to play music..in vain Of course if you have a full range speaker without the right amp ...forget it and of course any detail is important here but thats a very long story ... There is also another factor very important in my my opinion when you have to ..say what is the best speaker ... How many hours per day/week you listen music ? I think propably many people love music but, for many reasons ,they really listen (i mean serious listening)just a few hours pew week ...so the best speaker for them is the one they already have ..or they dream or they listen for a few minutes in a hi fi show ...like fireworks many hi end speakers are very impressive ...sometimes more than the real thing...but this is not music.
I second your opinion. One of the top 5 for sure. I have heard them multiple times at shows. Simply amazing. But they aren't tolerant of the wrong equipment. I want to hear a big version one day in a big room. That is what I would jump on. Although in a medium room the bass is plenty.
They are special with amazing highs, and great dynamics. The question is can they rock to all music? I want to hear them again.
Just heard the Wilson Sophia - and it was twice as much as I wanted to spend. But it was amazing. Might have raid the college fund. Heard it against a pair of avalon, bw 804 and 803. Am going back to hear a watt puppy 7.
Lloydelee21, what I loved about the Kaiser Kawero was their wonderful natural tone and their spookily real soundstage (they created a terrific image that was deep and behind the speakers...with my eyes closed, I felt like the musicians were really there..no BS when I say that, because few speakers I have heard do it convincingly, despite claims to the contrary.) They had very satisfying bass that went deep but did not seem artificial, overwhelming, or overemphasized. They sounded great with every genre of music played in the room. Unfortunately, the LessLoss vendor was mainly playing jazz and classical, with only a little blues thrown in. So hard to know how they would sound playing rock. I suspect they would sound great.
Mcondon - thanks for taking the time! Sounds intriguing. Intrigued by the ribbon? tweeter. I have seen many a discerning audiophile speak of these speakers...i have heard they are coming out with an all-out assault speaker to compete with the likes of XLF and Q7. Should be out later this year...presumably much bigger and much more capable of serious bass.
Jmaffia, tell me what you like better when Wilson Sophia's or the Wilson Watt Puppy's 7. My favorite color of the Watt Puppys was in Bugatti Blue. Here's a pic. http://app.audiogon.com/listings/wilson-audio-watt-puppy-7-cleaned-and-refurbished-buga
I heard the Genesis 1.1s...but completely and i mean completely reworked...external Dueland Silver crossovers, ribbons, etc. It is to date the finest sound i have heard and by a wide, wide margin. I have been to Sound by Singer, Extreme? in Turkey, Audio Exotics in HK, KJ & Metropolis in London, A10 in Amsterdam, a few spots in Cambridge, MA, Madrid Spain, and elsewhere. I have heard at least 4 installations of Wilson X1s, X2s, XLF...plus Tidals with full Sunrays dual tower subs, big Thiels, ML CLX/Descents, Maggie 3s, Apogee Stages, SF Strads with subs...nothing prepared me for this. Or my wife who kindly joined me (and also has heard the XLFs, Strads, X1s as well). She, having minimal interest, has patiently taken the time when asked to listen to a few systems and provided comments. In her mind, as my own, there is no contest to what we have heard to date.
The system was in high-ceilinged room (maybe 15') and 17' by 30'. A panetheon of Kondo electronics...Gakuons, M1000, DCS Scarlatti, poured concrete flooring that had been physically separated from the floor that sustained the speakers...you name it. But in the end, i strongly suspect the noise floor, detail and human-ness of all sounds was from the extraordinary dedication to electronics...but the sweeping stage was the speakers:
- It made the X1s and XLF installations i heard sound artificial and small by comparison. Dire Straights on Walker Proscenium III...was the last track of the evening, and the scale of the stage (not soundstage...i mean the stage where they were playing)...eclipsed that of the XLFs. OK...different room/different system...but this was not a close contest, and while i would NEVER say NEVER on the XLF sounding bigger in a different room...it would have to reach so far to achieve what i heard last nite, i personally am extremely skeptical it would do so...again having heard big Wilsons in 3-4 set ups in different rooms, some also very large and professionally treated (unlike the set up last nite which had no treatments other than isolation).
- the clarity of detail was so effortless, that listening to deep house, you could hear mumbles and little voices that i honestly think the artist never thought anyone would ever hear, and the words just lifted out of space into the room like they were always there and you knew what words he was saying as easily as if my wife read them to me sitting next to me.
- Audio Exotics in Hong Kong had done a tremendous effort in bringing forth detail from my music...and i had until last nite heard its equal...but unlike trying to compare Tidals to XLFs...where i honestly felt both were contenders...you could choose one over the other, prefer one over the other...extrapolate whether it was the room, or the digital front end...but you could at least make the case that the speakers were contenders to each other...i do not find either to be a contender compared to what i heard.
they're utterly and positively insanely good. I have my own opinions. I make mistakes. I could be making one here. But i have heard good electronics before, quite a bit of it actually. I can extrapolate what the Kondos may be doing, and i have auditioned the Scarlatti before...electronics dont do to a pair of speakers what happened last nite. Its the speakers. If I could ever get my head around how to get a pair, and find a house/room big enough to fit them...I obviously would do a far more extensive test, audition, but if i had to [off hand] provide a measurement of scale/effortless/sheer beauty and resolution that is utterly 'there' without any sense of force whatsoever...its XLF to Sasha (NOT Alexia...which is far closer to XLF than XLF is to last nite's highly modd'd Genesis 1.1s with dual tower subs]. For me, they were that good.
Hands down, the Infinity Reference Standard II A system. Back in 1988. Nothing like them ever since. Nothing else has even come close, but surprisingly enough my Bose 901 Vs deliver, in their own limited way, a pleasing result that surprises sometimes the same way that Infinity system did..... :-)
Since numerous responders have mentioned Sound Lab electrostatics as their choice, I would like to add that they have only continued to improve over the years. The latest improvement is the Toroid II transformer in the back plates, which has increased their efficiency and resulted in a noticeable step-up in everything they were always acclaimed for.
I worked at Radio Shack for 5 years or so back in its hifi heyday. Those were my least favorite popular RS speakers. Tried to talk people out of buying them, except maybe when a good sale ran. They always sounded like all the bad stereotype things you hear about horn speakers, boomy bass, shouty and shrill. Maybe with the right tube amp that RS no longer sold. That was the heyday of the SS receiver/amp, mostly made in Japan.
There's something worth paying attention to, as we talk about "best" as relates to speakers there's a big difference between those costing over $50k, under $10k, and somewhere between.
Yet there are those notable speakers that don't break the bank and we find guys having tens of thousands in components due to the fact that the speakers fully reward the extreme gear.
Look at the level of cable that seems "right" for an $80k set of speakers, we think nothing of that audiophile spending ten or twenty grand on speaker wire and the interconnects are no price bargain either. Yet the same system and wire can be put to any level of speakers and you will never hear them sound better, you will never hear more audiophile qualities out of them.
Big guns audiophile sound can be had with some of the sleeper speakers out there like Magnepans, and there is an array of components that perform way beyond their price point, same for wire.
I used to put a giant killer system together for less than the cost of a set of the monster speakers typically associated with six figure systems. Even my best value wires that cost a fraction of what they outperformed still put the wire at over the cost of the components. Heck, I was using $3500 power cords on $4000 monoblocks. But here's logic for you that's inescapable, if you are going to put a $4000 amp up against a $30k amp and that amp sounds better with a $3500 power cord the $4000 amp has to get the same power cord and wire to be fairly compared. So what if the power cord costs as much as the amp, where does your logic sit on which you'd rather have, the $30k amp and $3500 power cord or the amp and power cord as a combo that soundly out performs the more expensive combo? For some people it's more about how much it cost, for others it's about what it sounds like. Audio gear doesn't lie, and the only way stellar sounding speakers can compete with those costing vastly more is to be on an equal system footing. So we find ourselves working systems up from speakers that have huge performance reserves, and there are a lot of them out there.
The best speakers I ever heard were on the best systems I ever heard.
Vapor Audio Cirrus Black - after being moved from home for work for the last 3 months, I finally got home this week and fell in love with them all over again. For my ears they're just the perfect balance of all the audiophile buzz words.
Vapor Audio Cirrus Black - after being moved from home for work for the last 3 months, I finally got home this week and fell in love with them all over again. For my ears they're just the perfect balance of all the audiophile buzz words.
BP7000sc OK,OK I have not heard any speakers over $16,000, but I have heard most of the more available speakers under that number. I owned Linaeum Model 3s for years (Sad story about that company and technology). I tried Def Tech Mythos when I thought I was going into "Home Theater". The theater idea was a joke but I discovered that I did like the Mythos as standalones for music. Moved them into the listening room and liked them very much. Broke an input and called Definitive for a replacement. Had a great discussion and asked them what was the best speaker they had ever made. "The BP7000sc" they said. We talked some more and it turns out they still made that model even though they don't advertise it much. Long story short (too late for that, I see), I bought a pair. WOW! I have a large-ish room (5400 cu. ft.) and these guys fill it up. I like the bi-polar approach. And get this - because of the built in 1500w bass amps, they are so efficient (92db I think) that they can be played with 8 watt tube amps! The midrange is superb - great layering and depth. Spot-on timbre. Treble is goes way up, no sibilants. Unforgiving on bad CDs. Bass is prodigious yet tuneful when dialed in. Only weakness I hear in this speaker is that the bass and the rest is not quite as seamless as it could be on some material. Still working on this. Seriously, open your minds and give a listen.
Doc77, aren't you more than just a Vapor speaker owner? Don't you work shows with Vapor Audio? If you are promoting at shows for them doesn't that cross the line here?
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