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


128x128Ag insider logo xs@2xmarkcdaniel
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. 
Fritz Carreras..
He will send them
to you...
you listen...
you don’t like , send ‘em back...
don’t be afraid to plug the ports if they are close to the wall.
if you want to stay closer to budget, I think the Fritz Carbon 7's may be the ones to try.
Mark,

Your question can not be answered, because only you can discover the answer by trying speakers for yourself. One speaker great in one system may not work in yours. Find an online retailer that has a thirty day return policy.

Too many variables.

The irony also is,,, You may try a pair of speakers that would be perfect for your room.  But because they were not set up correctly you'll never know.  Too many variables...

From north Georgia,  Gene