HiFi (Speakers) Q

ToneControl

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/B-W-DM-603-S2-floor-standing-speakers-/161543553880?pt=UK_AudioVideoElectronics_HomeAudioHiFi_HiFiSpeakers&hash=item259cbf0358

ToneControl

Hymnal said:

monquixote said:

On the subject of speaker cabling at the BBC you will find speakers costing many thousands hooked up with speaker cable that costs about £3 a metre. I wouldn't spend any more than that. 

The properties of speaker cable over very short runs is virtually irrelevant. 

I'd be inclined to agree with you on that one, to a certain extent. Theres a noticeable difference in guitar cables, IMO. You don't have to spend loads to get decent cable though. Van Damme and Sommer speaker cabling is only about a quid a meter. My personal hifi is a very unassuming affair but I guess to the guys that really go for it and are happy enough to spend hundreds of thousands on it they might as well go the whole hog and buy the cables too. No doubt said cable manufacturer has convincing looking sales spiel. 

Different kettles of fish:
speaker cable is doing a similar job to mains cable - which is why mains cable works very well for this purpose, guitar cables are more similar to microphone cables

hifi buffs are highly vulnerable to voodoo, and cabling is their weakest spot. A shop will have you paying £50 for an RCA-RCA cable almost 1cm thick, but if you pop the lid off the CD player they are recommending it for - the internal cable is tiny and thin
I have not met any professional sound engineers who believe a word of it - my mate used mains wire with soldered XLRs for speakers
RCA-RCA does not require much to get right, compared to guitar cables and mic cables. Digital interconnects should be obviously either functional or not - do they look flimsy or not? An optical cable either works or not.

chillidoggy

viz said:

Chillidoggy's your man for this. I hope you're feeling flush. @chillidoggy, over to you.

Thanks.

Hi-fi is totally subjective, just like band gear. I can say I like a particular set-up, but someone else may not, so I'm going to give some basic thoughts:-

• The sign of a good hi-fi is if you keep wanting to turn it up after listening to it for a while.
• The sign of a good hi-fi is when you turn it up, sound becomes clearer, not necessarily simply louder.
• I would always buy secondhand quality equipment, it's so much cheaper.
• I would usually buy British-made equipment.
• Amplifiers make more difference to the sound than a lot of people think.
• Amp power is desirable, because effortless power sounds better.
• Listen to as much as you can before buying.
• Try to ignore gear that has the 'wow' factor. By that I mean it might sound good to start with, but it'll be grating after a while, and you'll be looking to turn it down. A lot of Japanese amps and CD's are like that, I found. Too harsh for extended listening.
• The law of diminishing returns applies to hi-fi. And you can spend a lot on high-end equipment to get that little bit better.
• Decent cables and interconnects do make a difference in my opinion. But not the same as a different amp, or speakers.

For what it's worth, my kit (which is now obsolete) consists of a Meridian CD transport + DAC, Talk Electronics pre-amp, and pre-amp power supply plus 4 Talk Tornado 5 power amps, and Ruark Excalibur speakers. Total cost of the new kit with the custom-made stand, cable, and interconnects would have been £18,000. But I bought secondhand for 60% of that price. Am I pleased with it? Absolutely, yes, I think it's awesome.

As for the missus, well sorry TTony, can't help you there, but if the above helps, then that's good.

strumjoughlamps

TTony said:

And ... do I get better bass out of floor-standing speakers, or can stand-mounted units do the job just as well?

not better, different and another area that is very personal to your taste... I prefer bass to punch you in the gut rather than rumble through you and have always found sand filled stands with stand mount speakers to suit best, I have had several pairs of floorstanders over the years(including floorstanding versions of my current 2 sets of standmounts) and have never gelled with them although I did like the Wharfedale Diamond 8.3s I once had.

Rocker

All of what @chillidoggy said. My cents worth is to talk to your local real hi-fi dealer. Ask him about a used.secondhand system that he can supply and stand over. Listen to it before buying. Listen loud and then turn it down to almost inaudible level. The sound should not disappear into the speakers. If you like it, buy it.

Gassage

@TTony

I used to be heavily into hifi at one point.

I still adore the Acoustic Energy AE1 bookshelves. Others may be more up to date but for me they're the Hiwatt Fane of Hifi speakers- clarity, detail, warmth.

RaymondLin

Former massive HiFi nut here,  probably too much and if I had as much money back then as I do today I would have spent way more than necessary to get the sound that I and most people would be happy with.  I went to as far as making my own interconnectors, Kettle leads and have 2 pairs of VDH IC that has a carbon core?!?! WTF, these were £120 for 0.5m....I must be bonkers.

My advice is get secondhand or Ex-demo gear.  Not Ex-Demo from Richard Sounds but although Richard Sounds is a good place to get end of line out just been replaced models at a bargain price, especially for Recievers, not so much stereo amplifiers or higher end speakers.

I have some old B+W 602 S2, I power them with a Sony Receiver at the moment purely because I take the 5.1 feature over stereo in the front room but I have a Musical Fidelity X-A2 in the bedroom.  A really good British made amp, pretty much no features, not even a remote.  PSU is external to keep the RF interference away from the unit, just input select and volumn knob, sounds amazing.

If you end up buying Bookshelves, do put them on proper stands and not bookshelves.  You can always remedy the bass or lack of later on with a sub.  I have a BK XLS400 sub for my 5.1, it has a 10inch driver, down firing.  The thing weighs about 60lbs, it can make the sofa rumble at low volume, it is that deep.  But the best thing about it is that it looks like a side table, the right height and everything.  Very wife friendly.

http://www.bkelec.com/hifi/sub_woofers.htm

It's a very simply webpage as they are people who make subs for bigger brands then rebadge them.  With  BK sub you are essentially buying direct from the builder, comes with no badges or pretty packaing bar a cardboard box, although should you go for the Monolith sub, it comes on a pallet as it weighs 48kg.

For amps I like Musical Fidelity, Cyrus are good, there is also Naim, but you do need to demo them, different amps pair well or better with some speakers more than others.  Take your own music with you and sit down and play songs that you know inside out.

 

TTony

ToneControl said:

For "hifi", try to get large volume speakers with bigger drivers. Years ago I helped a friend select B&W 603s, which as expected did not need separate sub, since they kick out enough bass for AV and hifi anyway. I bought a used pair myself eventually, definitely far better than bose and may even pass the decor test

Thanks @ToneControl - that's where my thinking has headed.  

ToneControl said:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/

Now on my watch list ... along with some Acoustic Energy Aegis 3s.

chillidoggy said:

• The sign of a good hi-fi is if you keep wanting to turn it up after listening to it for a while.

Thanks @chillidoggy.

I think I'm looking to get more out of the listening.  Too much of my listening time isn't really listening to the music, the music is just there as background noise when I'm doing something else.  Part of that probably arises from the ease of access - ie iPods, streamed access, etc - I want to enjoy it more ... 

Rocker said:

My cents worth is to talk to your local real hi-fi dealer.

I did look for some local dealers.  The ones that used to be around (here) have disappeared, and the ones that are around appear to be high-end.  I'm looking to spend hundreds rather than thousands.  

RaymondLin said:

If you end up buying Bookshelves, do put them on proper stands and not bookshelves.  You can always remedy the bass or lack of later on with a sub. 

There are no bookshelves, so stands it would have to be.  I want to avoid the need for the separate sub though.  I'll be keeping the Bose kit in place (the wiring is all under the wood floor and channeled into the walls, so it's not coming out anytime soon) for the AV surround sound duties and I don't think I'd get away with a second sub.  Plus I'd just be perpetuating the same criticisms of bass coming from different places, and my father (who also used to be heavily into hifi) built a number of great sounding systems without the need for subs.  Not that he could tell me much about it now ...

monquixote

I also have b & w speakers (602s) and they are great.

TTony

monquixote said:

I also have b & w speakers (602s) and they are great.

TTony said:

I'll pop your floorstanders in the boot when I collect the THR10

strumjoughlamps

you not near Leicester at all are you Tony? I have some Mission 731s and some Tannoy 603s if you want to take them for auditioning, I also have a Technics CD player from the 90s when they did a bit better than budget gear, hard as nails transport and a 1 bit dac..

the Tannoys are seriously mintoid original been very well looked after, £45 and im happy, Missions have signs of use but tip top working, same goes for the Technics, quite happy to go £25 each for those.

but as I say if you are local to me come and take them for a listen to, they will certainly show you the oomph available from standmount spkrs.

TTony

strumjoughlamps said:

you not near Leicester at all are you Tony? 

No, not really (about 2.5hrs away) - but thanks for the offer.

Skipped

As always - just my opinion.

Speakers are always a problem. Next time you go into someones house....have a look to see where the speakers are. Chances are they will not be in "free space". They will have their backs to a wall.
Now......If you ask a Hi-fi magazine or a Hi-fi shop if the speakers you fancy are fussy on placement....they will probably tell you not to worry and to put them about a foot from the back wall. Of course - they will assume that there is no other furniture in the room other than your listening chair and that the speakers are nowhere near any "corners". If you do have furniture, and you do have carpets,  and you do have books on shelves, these things will add bass.
So my first advice would be to be a bit wary of floorstanders. Even small floorstanders. If the bass takes on a life of it's own because you have foolishly bought the wrong kind of furniture, and your wife has foolishly placed the furniture in the wrong parts of the room,  the net result is fairly obvious. You have now "lost" one third of your cd collection. The good news is - the remaining third which are light on bass will now get lots of playtime.  Small "bookshelf" loudspeakers produce lots of bass and if it is not quite enough you can always push them towards the corners. I think buying speakers new is essential for 2 reasons. First - there are now some mass produced giant killing designs for £200 that sound more like £500. And second....you could easily get the too much/not enough bass judgement horribly wrong , and a "proper" hi-fi dealer will let you change them.
If I were buying today I think I would get the Monitor Audio BX2 (£230) even if you buy an amp in a class or 2 higher (see below).

For the amp I would buy second hand. Older integrated amps like the Meridian 551 were expensive when they were new. Maybe a grand. Now they go for £300 or less on ebay.  Is it too smooth sounding?  No it isn't - don't be silly.

Sambostar

Supposedly the B&W 603 S3 cones were better.

Them 2050i QAcoustics are supposed to be quite good new.  Look nice too.

The B&W 603 S2's will fetch over 200 or near abouts and probably will have been passed about, you can do a lot better for another £50 or £100 and get something alot better from an audiophile, or just buy new.

In general, I find the more the name of a floorstanding speaker sounds like a car, whilst it also includes a precious metal in the title you generally can't go wrong.  B&W is close.  RS8 Gold's are another example

Floorstanders do have tiny speakers in them though, this is true.

ToneControl

strumjoughlamps said:

you not near Leicester at all are you Tony? I have some Mission 731s and some Tannoy 603s if you want to take them for auditioning, I also have a Technics CD player from the 90s when they did a bit better than budget gear, hard as nails transport and a 1 bit dac..

the Tannoys are seriously mintoid original been very well looked after, £45 and im happy, Missions have signs of use but tip top working, same goes for the Technics, quite happy to go £25 each for those.

but as I say if you are local to me come and take them for a listen to, they will certainly show you the oomph available from standmount spkrs.

in case anyone is unaware, Wilmslow Audio was sold to people based in Leicester 10+ years ago, therefore there are some very good custom options available to those near Leicester:

http://www.wilmslow-audio.co.uk/how-to-find-us-74-c.asp

RaymondLin

I always had a soft spot for PMC.....if I start from scratch, I'd get a pair of these.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Pmc-Fb1-Floor-Standing-Speakers-/141527817497?pt=UK_AudioVideoElectronics_HomeAudioHiFi_HiFiSpeakers&hash=item20f3b71d19

Goes down to 25hz...that is lower than a lot of subs !

monquixote

RaymondLin said:

I always had a soft spot for PMC.....if I start from scratch, I'd get a pair of these.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Pmc-Fb1-Floor-Standing-Speakers-/141527817497?pt=UK_AudioVideoElectronics_HomeAudioHiFi_HiFiSpeakers&hash=item20f3b71d19

Goes down to 25hz...that is lower than a lot of subs !

I've been lucky enough to hear a lot of top end PMCs in acoustic rooms and they are one of my very favorite speakers. 

monquixote

TTony said:

monquixote said:

I also have b & w speakers (602s) and they are great.

TTony said:

I'll pop your floorstanders in the boot when I collect the THR10

On that subject. 

You are welcome to come and have a listen to my inexpensive NAD and B&W setup. (though it's somewhat compromised by not being on proper stands atm). 

You are also welcome to have a pair of speaker stands I've got kicking about for nowt and an indefinite loan of a Denon Mini System and a pair of small Missions which I'm not using. 

I'm done with the THR10 for the moment as well (and I've invested in a little blackstar you are welcome to try). 

TTony

Wow.

I rescued an old - c25years old - pair of Celestion DL6 speakers from the loft a few days ago.  They'd been up there (or other lofts) for about 15 years through all the cold, damp, mice, etc.  I don't actually remember the last time that I used them.  They've been in all their original boxes which must have given them some protection.  

I expected them to have disintegrated or got damaged in some way, but apart from some sort of corrosion around the metal face plate of the tweeter units (which I'll wipe off shortly), they looked fine.  Left them in the main room downstairs for a couple of days to acclimatise to the different conditions, and cabled them in this morning (Mrs TT is out ).

Easy to A/B compare them against the Bose system through the same amp.

Chalk and cheese.

Even these old speakers - which were probably only ever decent speakers in their (low) price bracket even 25 years ago - have a lot more warmth and depth and fullness to the sound.  The Bose system sounds harsh and thin in comparison.

They're just propped up on some workshop benchmates atm, just to get them off the (wooden) floor as I've got no proper speaker stands.  OK, so the bass doesn't make the floor wobble quite as much as the Bose subwoofer could, but there's plenty of other compensations in the rest of the sound.

So, what would some decent hifi speakers sound like?

HiFi GAS ...

hubobulous

IMO, speakers are definitely the key component in improving tone. I remember those DL6s and you may be underselling how good they are to yourself when considering a new pair.