Ever discover cheapo speakers actually sound...

Has anyone ever tried 30K speakers driven by, say, 1K of electronics? And if you haven't--anyone willing to send me such speakers? I certainly have the 1K of electronics and it would make an interesting experiment and the results would contribute to the thread.

I gotta say Shadorne if you haven't tried what Pedrillo is talking about and have added as much opinion to this thread as you have you look foolish. How can you presume that he must possibly have something wrong in his system? He did say that an A/B showed that the Merlins are leaps and bounds better. I don't mean to be critical either but I must say I disagree with almost everything you said.

Pedrillo, I know exactly what you are talking about. I've done the same thing before and been amazed at how good a 500.00 speaker can sound on great gear. That same speaker was a real snoozer hooked up to a sub 1000.00 system but when hooked up to my main rig, WOW! I've experienced this more than once as well. I've also tried to drive expensive speakers with cheap gear and there my findings were that it didn't sound good. If I had to choose long term ownership of say a Creek or NAD integrated driving 10K speakers or 10K of amps and preamp driving 500.00 speakers I'd choose the latter.

Oh and yes I do believe that speakers that were sitting around cold and uplayed could improve quite a bit after playing them for a while. I've heard the same thing myself, maybe not quite to the degree that you describe.

I currently have weather-worn Realistic Minimus 7's ($100 retail back in the 1980's) on my deck that sound fantastic these days with my current system....leaps and bounds beyond what they sounded like with much lesser gear that I have used them with over the years.

It shouldn't be that surprising. JBL/Harmon has the resources and expertise to be able to put out a halfway decent product at that price. Depending upon how they chose to voice the speaker it could be non-aggressive sounding and its faults being subtractive in nature. I would think that a well sorted out system would make most low cost, but not cheap, speakers sound pretty good.

Good gear overcomes poor speakers due to the gear's musicality. If your gear sounds transparent, natural, liquid or airy any speakers can latch onto it. When the electronics lack these qualities speakers have no means to produce them. I'm not saying good gear can fix your speakers or room; simply that the gear informs speaker behavior way more than speakers do the gear.