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Totally overwhelmed (speakers under $5k)

I am newer to the audiophile community and don't have much in the way of higher end gear to be honest.  I have been upgrading things as I go with my home theater (now Anthem receiver, Martin Logan speakers, and SVS sub) and am now wanting to upgrade my music system that is in my home office.  It is currently equipment that was originally in my home theater that has been replaced.  So I have a BasX preamp, 7 channel solid state BasX amp running 2 channel, T2+ speakers, and cabling all from Emotive.  The wires are basic copper speaker wire with banana plugs on the ends.  And I have an RSL Speedwoofer 10"  subwoofer. My source is Amazon Music HD on a Macbook Pro fed to the preamp by an optical cable. All in all it sounds pretty good but I want to take it up a notch.  

The other day I spoke with James at Raven Audio about cables and he said suggested that I would actually get a lot more bang by upgrading my equipment than worrying about my cables (which is fair).  Of course he is a fan of his own brand's amps and speakers but he also said very good things about Dynaudio and Focal (which I do have some experience with for car audio and headphones).  In doing research on the Raven Audio speakers, I have seen people lauding the Tekton Moab, Aperion Verus III, as well as others.  When I do searches for "best speakers under $5000" I get lots of mainstream review sites that talk about brands like Definitive Technologies, Polk, KEF, Klipsch, SVS, and more.  But they generally don't talk about Ravel, Tekton, or any of those. I assume it is because they are too small. 

Honestly though, at this point I am overwhelmed. Too many brands with too many speakers and where I live there are not a lot of shops to go listen to these higher end speakers. I have seen lots of debates on here along with folks that really have their definite opinions.  Here are my requirements and hopefully I can gain some knowledge, insight, and direction from folks on this site that have much greater experience than myself. 

1) I want speakers that are clear and clean with lots of detail.  But I also want to be able to just listen to the music, being immersed without having my ears ringing from the sharpness after a bit.

2) I want to be able to plug them into my current preamp and solid state amp and be able to enjoy them as is.  Later on, if/when I decide to change the amp to a tube amp, I want them to be able to work well with those characteristics too. 

3) I want the new price to be limited to $5k and under.  I am open to used in the right circumstances but hoping to get a smoking deal on some used $15k speakers (like some Legacy's) is just wishful thinking at this point.  With new, you know what you are getting and will have a warranty.  

4) I listen to all sorts of music so it needs to be able to switch between rock, heavy metal, classical, jazz, hip hop, bag pipes, and everything in between.  

5) Subwoofer is optional.  I have the Speedwoofer currently which is know is not perfect for music (ported).  I am fine upgrading to a sealed SVS at some point or getting towers that don't even need a sub. I actually have an older pair of Infinity SM 125's that I got close to 30 years ago that don't really need one.  

6) Aesthetics are a plus but not a requirement.  I am a function over form guy.  Some of these B&W's, Focals, and others look beautiful compared to the Moabs which are more utilitarian but I am not stress about it. 

7) Size can be whatever.  Again, the Moabs appear to be massive and that is fine but so is something that is much smaller.  The room is roughly 14' by 24' with 9' ceilings.  While it isn't an auditorium, it isn't just a small room either.  

Ok, I think that covers it except to say straight up, I don't tend to care for negativity.  If you have heard something and you don't care for it for X, Y, and Z reasons, great, please say so.  But please don't put something down because you don't like their marketing or you believe that it has to be a $100k system to be worthwhile.  Thank you in advance for your responses. 

ddonicht
helomech
1,702 posts
 

Of the more mainstream brands (Focal, B&W, KEF, Polk, Paradigm, Goldenear etc.), Revels are definitely some of the best. A $3K Revel speaker will generally outperform a $6K B&W or KEF speaker IME.

There are better speakers but determining the best speaker within your $5K budget will require some legwork with in-store auditions or home-trials. There’s just no getting around that because 99 times out of 100, the flavor-of-the-month reviewer or forum darling won’t meet your expectations. No speakers under $10K do everything great, let alone new speakers under $5K.

 

The most common deficiency I notice with speakers under $5K is bass quality. Most have ill-defined bass or are lacking in dynamic range. The speakers that do have good bass (Revel Performas for example) lack the top-shelf midrange that you can get from a $5K Spendor or Stirling Broadcast speaker.

One brand that manages excellence in most areas (only real exception being imaging precision and depth) is Spatial Audio. IMO, they are probably making THE best overall <$5K/pair speakers of any manufacturer at the moment.

 

 

 

thirtythree
18 posts
 

Those Spatial speakers are sleek af. Wish I could hear them in person!

scott99
12 posts
 

I’m doing a similar search for <$5,000 speakers; a bit of a diverse selection I admit. Current contenders are:

  • Salk Sound Song3 Encore
  • Philharmonic BMR Monitors
  • Revel F206 (or 226Be)
  • Ascend Acoustics RAAL Sierra Towers

Spatial Audio huh? I’m surprised I’ve never heard of them before. I’m heading off to the internet to see what I can learn.

mofojo
2,303 posts
 

You probably want something fairly efficient especially if you may want to look into tubes down the road. Honestly if you are stuck on new, Tekton would be a great choice. If you would consider used, well that opens up a whole new world.

 

Go back a few years and you can get a world class speaker for 5k that will spank almost or maybe everything for 5k new.

ddonicht OP
14 posts
 

Thank you to everyone who has replied.  There has been lots of fantastic information here.  I'm around Portland, OR and there are only a couple of higher end shops around that I know of.  I honestly have no clue about a club or anything.  

So taking some of the advice I ended up getting a pair of LSA 20 Statements, an Audio-GD R28 DAC/Preamp, and a Silver USB cable all together under my budget.  This is letting me replace not only the Emotiva speakers and preamp, but also my Drop Grace DAC and 780 Headphone amp powering my Dan Clark Ether CX headphones.  Effectively great simplifying everything.  

Walter at Underwood HiFi was great to chat with and has been very helpful with questions, even after I received the items this past week or so.  

Now, for the equipment itself.  Everything was received fairly quickly and in proper order.  The cable is pretty straight forward and is replacing a fairly decent cable I was already using with the Grace DAC. There isn't much difference there.  But as I said, this simplified my system so the USB to optical connector and optical cable to preamp went away.  So did the Emotiva preamp.  The R28 powers my headphones with a 4 pin balanced cable that is locked into place at the connector.  Since I was already using a DAC and headphone amp, sound quality hasn't changed much on that side. It all sounded great before and still sounds great.  My neighbor who is into audio stuff checked out the system and he said this headphone setup sounds better than his which uses a tube amp and $2k cans.  I will freely admit that made me feel pretty darn good.  

As for the speakers, they are still breaking in so I won't say too much at this point.  I will give them the 200 hours Walter recommends and then post a review here.  First impressions though...they are gorgeous and very solid.  They appear to be well constructed and produce pretty good sound out of the box.  I ran them continuously the first 2 days and then during work hours the next two.  The first day I had them directly on my hardwood floors.  The next day I installed the included 3 spikes on each and had them sitting on the little metal disks (so they didn't dig into the wood). There was a slight change to the sound when I put them on the spikes but to be honest I wasn't comfortable with how stable they were at that point since I have kids, dogs, and cats not to mention my own klutzy self. I order some decent sized rubber speaker feet that they are on now.  I have 4 under each speaker so they don't feel quite as easy to push over.  

Even though they are not broken in fully yet, the sound is fantastic.  The copper beryllium tweeters are very clear.  Mids have been clean as well.  And the bass (yes, someone was absolutely correct for calling out my spelling in my previous reply lol ) is good.  I have lost a little punch on the lower end because the system as I was using it before had an RSL Speedwoofer sub along with the Emotiva T2+'s.  The sub's bottom end is around the same level as the LSA 20 Statements but it was powered so my Emotive BasX amp didn't have to push those frequencies and could focus on 80 hrtz and higher. As such, I was probably over-bass'd before and what I have now is probably more accurate for the music. 

My neighbor was again impressed with this setup when I showed it off to him even without it being properly broken in and he is used to his high end B&W's.  I have discovered with this that the Emotiva setup I have is really pretty decent.  I hate the word but the synergy of using a full Emotiva setup (except sub) is actually a thing and they do a pretty good job.  But, what I have now seems to have stepped it up a notch or two. Even more if you want to add in the form over function piece of the rosewood finish...they really are pretty.  

Now, next up for me will be to focus on power and cabling.  My house is newer so I am not dealing with older wiring and I really don't want to have to wire in a dedicated line.  I did order a more audio friendly outlet and will wire that in one of these days probably after I am done breaking my back putting in a patio for my backyard.  I will also get a power conditioner to plug into that instead of my relatively simple surge protector.  Then new speakers wires, rca's, and power cords.  Eventually I will replace the amp as well. The Emotiva BasX I am using only has RCA connectors.  I know when I went from RCA to balanced cables (3 pin) on my headphone setup, sound was a little clearer and more powerful.  I imagine that holds true in this instance as well.  I may get another solid state or I may go with something like a Raven tube amp.  We will see where things take me at that point. 

Thanks again for everyone's input and assistance in my journey so far.  

 

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