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Midrange Speakers
Scrublet
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I just finished a move, and the only casualty was one of my Klipsch bookshelf speakers. It now sounds tinny and puts out next to no volume. After taking it apart, there is nothing obviously wrong with the wiring. Add to this an older Yamaha receiver that doesn't support codecs above original Dolby/DTS 5.1 or pass hi-def signals from the PS3 over component, and I'm ready to do an upgrade.
I found this at a buying guide on hometheatermag.com. The reviewer called it the best <$1000 receiver he'd ever reviewed. At $400 it seems amazing, with THX being the only obvious (to me) omission. THX is pretty unimportant given the room it's in. I'm looking for a set of decent surround speakers to go with this. I'm looking for midrange...I want speakers that can take advantage of the receiver, but I'm not going to be able to afford high end Bose or something. I know practically nothing about buying speakers; I'm familiar with Klipsch and Bose, and that's about it.
Anyone got advice on midrange speakers? Any comments on the receiver are welcome as well.
Edit: as far as the setup, I'm limited by price into 5.1 unless someone knows of 6.1/7.1 sets both cheap and amazing. I'm also open to doing this in increments by buying speakers that aren't sold as a set. Finally, I'm more interested in a solid set of quality speakers WITHOUT a sub (that I can just buy later) than an all-in-one set of less quality that has a sub.
I found this at a buying guide on hometheatermag.com. The reviewer called it the best <$1000 receiver he'd ever reviewed. At $400 it seems amazing, with THX being the only obvious (to me) omission. THX is pretty unimportant given the room it's in. I'm looking for a set of decent surround speakers to go with this. I'm looking for midrange...I want speakers that can take advantage of the receiver, but I'm not going to be able to afford high end Bose or something. I know practically nothing about buying speakers; I'm familiar with Klipsch and Bose, and that's about it.
Anyone got advice on midrange speakers? Any comments on the receiver are welcome as well.
Edit: as far as the setup, I'm limited by price into 5.1 unless someone knows of 6.1/7.1 sets both cheap and amazing. I'm also open to doing this in increments by buying speakers that aren't sold as a set. Finally, I'm more interested in a solid set of quality speakers WITHOUT a sub (that I can just buy later) than an all-in-one set of less quality that has a sub.
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What's a price range for the speakers? Some people would call $500 bookshelf speakers midrange so a dollar amount would help with that.
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PSN: TheScrublet
Avoid Bose like a plague that makes your balls rot off.
If you want to get all new stuff for $600, you're not talking "mid-range" anymore. In that price bracket, I'd go with Infinity. They served me well.
Could you elaborate on this? (The Bose, not my balls) Is just like Sony TVs...huge premium for no real reason?
PSN: TheScrublet
Sony TVs tend to be a little expensive, but they also tend to be really good. Probably not the optimal cost-benefit purchase, but if you drop top dollar on a Sony TV you're getting a pretty fucking nice TV.
Bose are a lot expensive, and are at best mediocre speakers. They use shitty materials, they tend to fall apart, Bose charges you $Texas when they break, and you can get far better systems for far cheaper, even if you really like the idea of having speakers small enough to cram up your bumhole.
My mom dropped something like $2500 on a system that wasn't even 5.1-capable about five years ago. Because they're small and cute. They've broken twice sense then, and she's paid about an extra $500 in repair costs since.
edit: And they tend to use proprietary connectors, so you can't upgrade them at all. Maybe they've changed this, but given their business model it seems unlikely.
edit2: There's a reason sellers are not allowed to have demo rooms set up with Bose speakers, also. See if you can guess what it is.
http://www.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl?spkrfull&1236384824&/Rega-R3--R1----R-Vox-Complete-
That's a out of budget but very good. I've heard the two front speakers and they're really good.
Would you listen to music on this? I do that and if I was you, I would get some used, older Paradigm Atoms for for surrounds ($50-$100) and then $300-$400 on my front speakers.
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I went to the Paradigm site to check out their speakers. I'm not seeing those models you talked about. I see Cinema, Monitor, Millenia, Studio, and Signature. Comments on these? Also, how well do they compare to Klipsch, which I've been using on my TV and computer for going on 5 years?
PSN: TheScrublet
Also, is there a reason you're not interested in used? Not to press the issue too much, but quality speakers don't really decline in quality or in feature set. A bad-ass speaker from 1975 is still a bad-ass speaker in 2009. The only exceptions are those that use paper for the woofer or tweeters (*cough* Bose *cough*), but those tend not to be bad-ass, anyway.
But yeah, if you don't do that see what you can get with Paradigm for your money.
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If you're looking outside of the big box store brands there's just a crapton of brands, and Paradigm/Energy start at the lower end of the price spectrum. Many brands put out good sounding speakers (some in fantastic looking cabinets) and I had a lot of fun running around between various hi-fi stores with my favorite CD's and listening to various setups.
And my best value and best sounding setup came used, though that's for music listening only, and the setup is optimized for midrange performance.
Not to mention that if you're paying that much for your speakers, you need to be dropping $Texas on the rest of your gear as well, because a system is only as good as the weakest element.
Bose speaker/receiver pairs also tend to have really shitty uneven frequency responses on the high end. The company likes to lure in middle-aged people into thinking their systems are the greatest by boosting the treble in the vocals range (to make up for their normal hearing loss) and the 80Hz midrangish/bass levels (for a pleasant resonance). The result is a clear but not boomy sound that can fill a room. The vocals come in clear and you get a low sound but not that rumbling that all those damn kids are making with their speakers.
Here's the issue: it's all an illusion. And not even a good one. The sound coming out is not a good or even reasonable reproduction of the original signal. It might be pleasing but so is elevator music at first. Everything you run through the set comes out the same: tons of midrange, no bass, uneven treble. Most music sounds dreadful. Movies and games lack punch. TV is... actually, TV shows are ok.
And you will have needed to sell a few organs to afford something in their "midrange".
...and found out that Bose's flagship system didn't even produce human voice-range frequencies and was relying on acoustic fakery (subtraction harmonics) to hide the fact. And I read this directly from their website a while back so I can promise it isn't hearsay.
Where have you gotten this type of first hand experience?
High-end A/V store in my area. I don't remember the name... somewhere downtown. I wanted to see if I could tell the difference. I couldn't. It made me quite happy, as it meant I would stop yearning for expensive shit I could never afford.
Some of the price difference has to be the cabinetry, but differences in audio performance can be heard in reasonable price ranges depending upon how it's amplified and what you're listening to.
For example I've a solid-state HT receiver and two single channel tube amps (both sets about $500 each) and a set of vintage snell acoustic speakers and my paradigm front left/right combination (both full range, similar efficiency, also about $500 each/pr). If I put the Tubes+Snells into my HT setup, movies don't sound as good as with the Paradigms. If I play the music I prefer listening to through my HTReceiver+Paradigm setup, it doesn't sound as good as my Snells.
I think saying a system is only as good as its weakest element is a bit of an oversimplification. Like if the most important thing is volume on a budget receiver, your best bet might be an ultra-efficient speaker like a Klipsch.
Edit: That came out wrong, I didn't mean to imply that Klipsch speakers are only good for efficiency, they can make a nice sounding speaker.
I remember that.
High-larious.
If I'm dropping five grand on a pair of speakers, the cabinetry better be made out of fucking hookers.
A bit of an over-simplification, sure. But just a bit. The main point was that if you have a $100 speaker, you're not going to get much out of $1000/pair speakers that you couldn't get out of $200/pair speakers. If everything in your system is awesome but you're using 24-gauge speaker wire that you got for 5 cents a foot, you're wasting your money. I know that different equipment is best for different purposes, but the target audience for that info is probably not needing our advice, anyway.
You can get seriously "high end" sound for a mid-range price.
Oh, and avoid Bose. I've never actually owned any Bose speakers, but they're mainly used as the butt of jokes in audiophile forums.
A: Three. One to FFFSSSHHZHZZZZZZZZHZHZHZHHHZHFSSSSHZHHHHSHFZZHSHZHFZZZZZFFFZHSHZadder.
PSN: TheScrublet
My Dad still has the speakers, amplifier and turntable that he bought when he was in his 20s. They would have to be 35 years old.
They still work great, and they are used every day.
Buy good speakers the first time around, and you mightn't have to buy any ever again.
I thought I'd done that with the Klipsch
PSN: TheScrublet
Yeah, I still have the Yamaha I bought about 8 years ago. It works great and sounds good, and I only plan to update it because I want something HDMI compatible so I can get TrueHD sound.
Good A/V equipment pretty much lasts forever, with few exceptions.
Is this only in the x06 line? Because I have a 605 and I've seen this and I watch 2 or 3 HD movies over HDMI a week. Sounds like it might be the type of thing that happens in 0.001% of the product but is all over the internet. If that's the case, you can feel comfortable just buying one and returning it on warranty if it's faulty.
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I've been doing some researching and it's definitely a results-may-vary situation. However, if you consider the AVSForums as a relatively stable source of information, the following conclusions seem to be valid:
--For the 806 problem, this is well-known and documented. It is LIKELY it will happen to someone who purchases it.
--The 706 uses the same video processor as the 806. However, it's not documented quite as well (less posts in that forum, I have more difficulty bringing it up in searches on google). It still affects enough people to lead to discussion about it.
--The 876 is manufactured with a different processor, and appears to be immune from it.
--The 606 is "immune" from the problem. However I've dug up instances where people have had failures with it. I even saw one case where an older 605 had the problem, but that was ONE case I couldn't find anything else to support.
Edit: it also appears there is a fix for the 806s relating to a hardware mod covered under warranty. I'm just never wild about spending money on a brand with this sort of issue going around it. Also, this issue seems to happen even when selecting "Through"...it's not just a flaw in the upconvert process or something.
PSN: TheScrublet
2 Energy C-100 bookshelf speakers for $79.99. If they're as good as Paradigms, which someone said they were, then get 2 sets, find a decent centre, subwoofer, and buy the nicest receiver you can afford (A good receiver can make a lot of difference, my dad has a 5.1 paradigm setup, but just has an old Kenwood receiver, it sounds really good, but hook my new Sony receiver up to it and it sounds a lot better. (Not to say Sony receivers are the best or anything, s'just what I could afford when I was buying my setup))
But then again, those speakers are a today only price.
In the interests of full disclosure, I was auditioning some Energy small floorstanders (C5's) and also some small paradigm floorstanders (can't recall which, maybe studio 60's?) and thought they compared well. Haven't listened to the C-100's so I couldn't say if they're any good, $80 would be a steal for good performing bookshelf speakers. As in car shopping, a lot of the fun is the test drives and comparison shopping (IMO).
If you're parting together a speaker system I'd definitely try to have the front center, and the front left and right from the same model range (sharing the same crossovers and drivers). Though if you're going to assemble from bookshelf speakers you can make a single bookshelf be a center front (or center rear). The advantage of getting the center would be that bookshelves often have only a single 5-6" driver, but a center would have 2 or possibly 3.
Check out parts express as they have some apparently really good drivers/kits you can build from and save a pile of money for the sound you get.
http://www.parts-express.com/wizards/searchResults.cfm?srchExt=CAT&srchCat=769&CFID=4948800&CFTOKEN=81026052
That's my plan for my next speakers. A friend has speakers from a local Aussie kit maker, and they're absolutely awesome for the price (they have really nice Peerless and Vifa drivers in a well-built case).
They're still not cheap, though... he paid AU$3000 for a 5.1 setup, but it blows away most high-end setups I've heard (at a fraction of the price).
To further put this into perspective, true midrange speakers cost about that per pair. Once you really get into audio you either re-apply for med school and become a filthy rich heart surgeon, or you build it yourself.
Having said that it is not for the feint of heart. Once drivers arrive at your place, and after a significant amount of burning in, their characteristics will have changed from what the manufacturer assumed. The room the speakers are in and their placement also influence the sound of the enclosures. You'll then need to tune the enclosure you built, by ear, either by adding pillow stuffing, or by changing components in the crossover cirquit. Tune it by ear.
If at this point your neighbour has a moderately loud fridge you might end up in a solitary cell, calculating the thiele small parameters of it's barred window when strung with the psychologists' diaphragm.
http://www.theaudiocritic.com/
There is no sane definition of "midrange" for which a single pair of speakers costs three grand.
I mean, you can quibble over whether you're talking $300 or $500 or $700 or whatever.
But not three-fucking-grand.
guess its all relative when you have speakers that are costing in the 10's of thousands of dollars each out there... I personally think you can get great home theater speakers for under 2000 for a 7 channel set, for proper 2 channel audio, there are some bookshelves in the slightly-under-1000$ (a pair) range i could be ok with, but honestly i havent heard many amazing/great speakers for 2-channel audio for under 1500.00 or so (brand new that is, used gives you at least a 30% reduction in price)
I have relativly expensive speakers for my 2-channel system, this is after having dozens of other pair in it over the years.. I spent more trying to emulate an amazing speaker than i ended up spending on hte speakers i at one point deemed "too expensive", since buying them, i have been perfectly happy for 6 years. My theater system, is 7.2, total cost on them was less than 1/2 what i payed for my stereo speakers, yet i love them as well, for movies and games.
Basically, its all in the buyers/listeners eye/ear.