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Bookshelf Bake Off

Fellow Audiogoners,

Lend me your ears.  I live on a farm in South Georgia and have a 3+ hour drive in any direction to audition anything.  The price I pay for land, peace and horses I suppose.  I am putting together a secondary system and can't audition everything I have interest in, so I am hoping you can help me shorten the short list to a manageable set of maybe three (two would be even better) auditions for bookshelf speakers. They will be driven by 2 x PS Audio M700 Monoblocks, Schiit Freya+ tube preamp and a Mytek Brooklyn DAC+.  The space is fairly small at approx. 10'x20'.  For a number of reasons, floorstanders are not a possibility, hence the call for bookshelf speakers.  I would like to keep the budget in the $2K range, +/- a reasonable %.  I am not someone that feels the need to max the budget, i.e. linear correlation of price and quality, so feel free to suggest high value brands/models less than the max budget.  I have a pair of Focal Aria 906 in another system and very much like their sound, but want something a bit warmer with similar (or better) resolution.  Deeper low frequency extension would be a plus.  The brands I have narrowed the field to are:

Revel
Legacy
KEF
Monitor Audio
Sonus Fabre
PSB

This list is not written in stone, just my initial list after research.  Feel free to suggest anything I have omitted that warrants consideration.  Thanks in advance for your ears.

Mark


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thehorn
111 posts
 
I’m with glennewdick, ProAc D2 are a great reference.

Although grinnell is bang on the numbers too, Reference 3A de Capo i’s are easy to drive and have a superb frequency response. I put them 2nd only because they vent out the rear which makes them a little less versatile.

jsautter is also correct bringing up ATC, a very reputable speaker, especially their active speakers. Fellow audio buffs have criticize their passive speakers as really hard to match appropriate upstream components to.

One speaker that’s getting ink in these parts, and they’re only $1500 bucks, is the Vincent LS208’s. The German’s tend to know what they’re doing, personally I can’t vouch for them, but like I said, they’re getting ink.
gadios
94 posts
 
Mark,

There are enough suggestions that you will be checking them out for the next 10 years. 
There are many good suggestions above. Some absorbing panels may help your chances for great sound. 
Best of luck!!
markcdaniel's avatar
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markcdaniel OP
45 posts
 
@gadios How right you are! My shortening of the short list has become an epic fail, but I do appreciate everyone putting their 2 cents into the pot. Although my original objective is in ruins, the outcome of this thread is better than I expected. Thanks everyone for taking the time. I’ll let everyone know what I end up doing. 
If anyone has other thoughts/suggestions, feel free to pile on. The thread is not dead and I will keep checking as I figure out what to do next. 
Cheers.

Mark
jtgofish
490 posts
 
The Osborn Eos Reference is great bookshelf speaker and fantastic value.Maybe not as good as a Dynaudio Confidence C1 Platinum [which I think is the best you can buy] but close and about a third the price.The tweeters in both are absolutely top shelf .
trainsam
5 posts
 
I currently drive a pair of PSB bookshelf speakers with PS Audio Stellar Monoblock 700 amps. I find them to have excellent clarity, crisp highs, very good midrange and very good bass down to about 45hz. I supplement the bass with an old Orb Audio 8” sub and it gets down to around 28hz, remaining very clean. These speakers will go louder than I can stand with no distortion. It took me quite a bit of up and down, shifting them around, and fixing the toe in before I got them to disappear, but that isn’t unusual, depending on the room. PSB wasn’t on my list, but a local dealer had some and I was impressed enough to try them. I don’t regret it. The clarity and low noise factor is outstanding. 
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