Bring your wife with you to Axpona or similar show. Since you’d like her to pick, just let her pick the speakers, but not without hearing and seeing some alternatives.
WAF Speaker suggestions
I am looking to replace my current speakers and need advice. I currently have a pair of Vandersteen 2ce sig speakers that my wife says look like coffins in the living room. I love my wife more than the Vandys and so am looking for replacement speakers. I need a smaller footprint speaker to make her happy and I would like a speaker that has a sound that is less laid back than the Vandys.
New or used speakers are fine. My budget is $2000-$2500. Listening room is the living room (15ftX20ft with 15ft cathedral ceiling.) I listen mostly to jazz, classical, and blues. Equipment is a Classe CP-800 preamp, Classe CT-2300 amp, TEAC CD-P650 used as a transport, and a Macbook for streaming music.
My research has lead me to the smaller footprint Dynaudio and Focal speakers but I do not know how well these speakers pair with the Classe amp and preamp.
Any help/suggestions will be greatly appreciated. Thanks
New or used speakers are fine. My budget is $2000-$2500. Listening room is the living room (15ftX20ft with 15ft cathedral ceiling.) I listen mostly to jazz, classical, and blues. Equipment is a Classe CP-800 preamp, Classe CT-2300 amp, TEAC CD-P650 used as a transport, and a Macbook for streaming music.
My research has lead me to the smaller footprint Dynaudio and Focal speakers but I do not know how well these speakers pair with the Classe amp and preamp.
Any help/suggestions will be greatly appreciated. Thanks
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To echo the earlier Spendor recommendation, the entire A and D lines are available in Satin White (at a cost though..) https://www.spendoraudio.com/wp-content/uploads/JoA3211-Spendor-Retail-Colour-Palette.pdf |
OP, I’ve posted bits and pieces of my speaker search across various threads but basically I just went to 4-5 dealers within 100 miles few times each over 4-5 months and listened to everything I could in the $3-7k range. For speakers I could tell weren’t for me, I’d eliminate them after 20 mins of listening. For those more interesting I’d listen for an hour or more, ideally over a couple amps. Now obviously not true A/B testing always cause often different dealers/rooms/amps etc but was best I could do. I can’t give you a final list 1-20 (or whatever #was) cause didn’t approach that way. Rather, I just kept track of current front runner and nearest runner ups and kept testing them trying to knock them off their perches. By end I’d probably listened to D7 four-five times and Dyn, Vandy at least two-three. The D7 rose to top and stayed there for me. I loved the LPZ tweeter (in house design by Spendor like all drivers in D series) and for me was what gave them the more lively/energetic/less laid back sound vs Vandy. When i had convinced myself I liked D7 better than anything I could get for under $7k (my budget) and important to me to have heard in person, I decided to do something dangerous and audition a few in the $7-10k range. Coming from B&W speakers purchased in 2000, it was only when I convinced myself that I liked the D7’s better than the $9k Bowers 804d3 that I was ready to pull trigger on D7. I cant remember full list of what I auditioned but included various (typically several) models from Spendor, Focal, Dynaudio, Vandy, Paradigm, Bowers Wilkins, Martin Logan, Magnepan, Rega, Goldenear, Linn, Macintosh, Kef. Probably forgetting some ... Three house sounds best to my ears were Spendor and then either Vandy or Dynaudio (didn’t differentiate between them bc they were always a bit behind Spendor for me). |
- 60 posts total