Need some speakers....

[horace]

Hi folks

Having had my cunning plan to buy Ali's electrostatics cruelly blocked by my unreasonable life partner :( ( I mean, they're only five feet tall - what's the bloody problem?), I find myself forced to consider rather less enticing options.

I'm looking at either new or used with a budget of up to about £1500. This is rather more than I am usually able to spend, so I find myself in new territory. Plenty of excellent used speakers available at the £500 mark (my usual budget level) - Ruark Crusaders and Castle Howards have both appeared on my wants list in the past, but I've no real experience of what's available at two or three times that.

In terms of the sound I like, I can say that the Ruark and Castle 'house' sounds have both appealed to me in the past - in many ways, my old Ruark Templars were almost ideal. If I could find Templars-only-more-so, I wouldn't go far wrong, I suspect.

My room is 18' x 25'. I have, in the past, tried some fairly big speakers in that room (Linn Isobariks, Dali skyline 2000). In both cases (especially the latter) there was far too much bass which no amount of repositioning would cure. A case of optimism over experience. Sometimes, less is more.....

My main source is vinyl (Orbe SE, Tecnoarm, Denon 103) feeding a Marantz PM17 KIS.

In deference to swmbo (who has, in all fairness, endured some bloody monstrosities over the years - at one point I had two pairs of teak isobariks in the lounge :rolleyes:), this time I need some speakers that look as good as they sound - the kind of speakers that visitors want to stroke and which don't elicit rolling of the eyes (or worse) when swmbo sees them coming through the door.

I've no real prejudice against standmounters, but for some reason have ended up with floorstanders on most occasions.

My musical tastes are mostly classical, opera and jazz, but I do like to listen at realistic levels (and have a tendency to keep turning the wick up when I've had a few glasses of fizzy pop).

As I said, I could spend up to £1500 if necessary. A cursory trawl of the web suggests that will buy an awful lot of used speaker, but I'm not necessarily desperate to spend the whole lot.

Any suggestions for my shortlist would be appreciated.

Cheers

Martin

[Reid Malenfant]

Hi Martin :)

I'd suggest you get a good listen to some speaker by ATC ;) I'm not on about the rather large active jobs like the ATC SCM50/100, more like the ATC SCM40 (which is floor mounted) or even the SCM20SL standmounter. I see looking at the link below that they now make a floorstanding version of the SCM20 ;)

Both are very neutral indeed with excellent midrange & treble & rather surprising bass considering the cabinet size. Even the SCM20SL will easily reach down to 40Hz with quite a bit of authority.

Both speakers will need some power to drive them to high levels though, they aren't very sensitive :rolleyes:

A friend picked up a pair of SCM20SL for about £600 secondhand & said it was the best money he'd ever spent on a pair of speakers. They were about £2000 new so i should imagine you'll need to look for either secondhand.

ATC speakers (http://www.atcloudspeakers.co.uk/product.php) :)

[DSJR]

I echo the above. If you had too much bass with 'briks, then you must have a problem (unless they were very late ones?).

ATC 20's have a tight bass which rolls off at 80Hz or so. Any attempt to increase this tends to give what is called "Stunt Bass," which is a sort of boppy rather than expressive quality.

Wilson Benesch Orators were pretty good, easy to drive and work in bassy rooms briliantly. You should occasionally find some for around a grand.

The thing is, speakers which project well in larger rooms tend to be big ones which work in free space. I'm not sure the Marantz will be subtle enough (anything with the "KI" monika on is the kiss of death for me, as the tweaks are more around getting good reviews than a genuinely better product IMO.

What about Tannoys? I'm thinking of the pre HPD models which will sadly cost you around £1500 for a good pair. Efficiency and high load impedance was the order of their day and bass extension of the domestic models was a bit curtailed (you can have efficiency or bass extension in smaller speakers - Marco's aren't small.......), but they will fill your room and musical life with fun that will escape all the miniatures on stands, which may struggle to fill the listening space - IMO of course.

P.S. Smaller speakers often prefer firing down the length of the room, larger ones prefer firing across it..

P.P.S. ATC 20SL's or 35/40's will need a real muscle amp of 150WPC at least (been there and done it tons of times ;)). The Quad 606/707/909 style of amp (or any of the classic power-house integrateds from the 70's and early 80's) would be fine here. I'm told that MC2 also make some incredibly good pro amps which have muscle, but grace too.

[Dave Hewitt]

Hi;
Superb pair of Impulse H2 on ebay,very efficient horn loaded mid and bass,large scale sound,might just pip the 15 inch tannoys for scale in not too large a room.
Dave.

[The Grand Wazoo]

Did you spot these that appeared on AoS this morning?

http://theartofsound.net/forum/showthread.php?t=7881
or these
http://theartofsound.net/forum/showthread.php?t=7882

[Macca]

Hi Martin

You could consider Celestion A2 which crop up S/H for around £700-£1000 I have the Black Ash which are not pretty but there are also Rosewood and Cherry veneer versions which look very beautiful.

The last of the true Celestion speakers, made in England by professional cabinet-makers and using bespoke Celestion drivers. They do not boom providing you can put about 3' or more behind them and will go very loud with no break up. They would also suit your musical tastes and room, being designed for far-field listening in a big space.

The only tripping point may be compatability with your amp but then you will need to consider this no matter what speaker you go for.

Regards

[horace]

Thanks for all the suggestions thus far. In truth, I didn't give you very much to go on, so perhaps this will help narrow the field a bit:

I had a listen to some speakers with my amp yesterday.

The real standouts were Usher BE-718, which seemed an excellent match to the amp. In fact, they blew me away - excellent transparency and soundstaging. They simply disappeared, leaving only the music....

The only thing that stopped me buying them on the spot was a slight reservation regarding bass extension. Whilst I was amazed by how low they went (for small standmounters) I did wonder if I would miss a bit of bottom end as I am used to large(ish) floorstanders these days. Will have to try and arrange a home demo.

The little Ushers are absolutely superb.

Cheers

Martin

[Alex_UK]

Subwoofer? Maybe not what most people on here would go for, but could be worth a try?

[Spur07]

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Celestion-A2-Loudspeakers-Cherry-/260663988487?pt=UK_AudioVideoElectronics_HomeAudio HiFi_HiFiSpeakers&hash=item3cb0c8d107#ht_682wt_1139