Thinking of upgrading my speakers and in the past have just gone with what I thought was a great deal, sometimes that worked, more often it did not!
Have a shortlist right now of those 3 speakers.
Focal Aria 936 Elac Adante AF-61 Von Schweikert VR-33
Presently using Triangle Altea ESW speakers.
What am I lacking right now? Possibly some lower bass, the Triangles are superb in the mids and upper registers but you can definitely tell they are a little limp below 40hz. And at the end of the day even though I consider them to be fantastic speakers, they were after all only 2k brand new so there are likely better options out there to consider.
So thoughts and impressions on those 3 speakers or any serious contenders in the same sort of price bracket, I am looking at used examples only so think 3k max.
Will be driving them with an Ayre AX-7E integrated which I will NOT be changing anytime soon (famous last words I know!)
uberwaltz how are the speakers settling into your system? Yesterday I had a sweet audition with an Ayre AX-5 Twenty Integrated amp. Very nice sound indeed.
Work is brutally busy with 70 hour work weeks away from home and then a mile long honeydew list when back at weekend.
Maybe put 8 hours on them last weekend if that, going to be some time before serious hours as we are busy from now till xmas. Oh well thats why I get paid the BIG bucks...lol.
Absolutely! It does take time and income to pay for our wonderful hobby. After 100 hours, you will notice a difference for the better. Then another 100 hours and soforth... Keep us posted after each 100-hour increment until you feel the speakers have bloomed to taste.
Unfortunately I am working away all week, something has to pay for this hobby ... Lol.
However as of Sat night with only maybe 2 hours on them I was not happy. But there have been suggestions here I need to act on when I get home until then its Dell laptop speakers and Tidal for me this week!
uberwaltz a Florida room is a nice addition to any home. The challenge of room acoustics can be figured out by treatments. How are you liking the 936? Happy Listening!
They retail at $2499.95 each, now they are $1999.95 ea., on their web site. I suppose they are on sale ( it seems everyone is now selling them at 4K ). As far as they being a matched pair, knowing Yamaha, I am sure the tolerances are quite close between each and every unit. I would like to hear them. When I had NS 1000s, I enjoyed them very much. Enjoy ! MrD.
Be careful when ordering. None of the sellers are indicating " each ", as these retail for $5000. a pair. A few folks ordered, thinking they were buying a pair ( the ads say " speakers ", plural ), but they only received one speaker. Just what I am seeing. I would be interested to hear them, as Yamaha can build anything they want. Enjoy ! MrD.
The total lack of any review AND the fact they're Yamaha would nix them from my consideration before I bothered to go on the fool's errand of tracking a dealer down. Besides, those are priced along the lines of the 726 which kinda tells you what they think the sound is worth in the marketplace.
You were probably trying to get the best possible bass response from speakers with weaker bass up to now, but these aren't those speakers. I've gotten the best results by keeping an open mind to placement and trying things that shouldn't really work but do. Like there's no great reason to think having them closer together would make for a wider, more spacious sound, but that's what's worked for me. Shuffling them around is cheap!
Well one change would kill two birds there then. If i pull them more intogether say 7.5 to 8 feet apart that would give and unequal corner distance, easy change to try. Tbh in my room I have not had ANY speakers in tighter together that the present 10ft, maybe I have been missing setup altogether for a while!
I think unequal distances from the corners of the walls will help. There's a formula in the manual that's supposedly ideal, but I never had much luck with it. My right speaker has no corner and the left is about 3.5' from the side wall. The left wall is also consumed by a gigantic patio door with vertical "S" curve blinds. They look tight, but they also make for a good surface for sound to be diffused from. For a long time I had mine 9+ feet apart. 7' is much better in my space. I get wider imaging and better center fill.
As well documented over the years I have a terrible acoustic room which is one reason I had gone to the Lyngdorf 2170 for the room correction to help.
This it did but there were other factors I ended up not liking too much on that amp and now use an Ayre ax7e.
Room is 4 walls of glass and a tiled floor....lol. And in case you are wondering how? It is actually an extension that was built on back of house as a Florida/sun room,hence the sloped ceiling as house is 2 storey and 3 sides of glass windows and 1 side of double glass sliding doors back into main house. Have three huge soft sofas in there, large shaggy rug covering most of floor and wood window blinds on all windows and this helped a lot on any configuration of system. Oh and a sloped ceiling raising up back towards where the equipment and speakers are. When I do move house I will have a better room but this is what I am dealing with right now.
Best position I have found for any speakers in here has always ended up being roughly the same.
Approx 10 feet apart, and 3 feet in from back wall and side wall. Toed in so if I am the dead center at approx 7.5 feet distance, then they would converge approx 3 feet behind me. By trial this has always given best results prior to the 936. The DeVore Gibbon sound REALLY good set up like this .
Working away all this week so will not get any time to play until next Sunday.
Mine didn't change much at all from out of the box to a few months in so far as I noticed. I listen about 11 feet away. Mine are about 7' apart measured from the front corners and they're 22 inches out from the wall. Mine are toed in a good bit. Rather than guess at degrees I'm going to say it more colorfully. If dead on is "0" and right at my head is "3/3rds", then mine are at about 2/3rds from "0" or no toe in. I find that significantly toeing in speakers leads to odd comb filtering effects from the room as you move for and aft and they get more severe with toe in unless you prodigiously treat the room. Those things have very smooth off axis response so toe doesn't have insane effects on their tone or balance, but it does change how they interact with the room. And if they are sounding closed in, lacking width, depth, and height, those are definitely room interaction issues. I have a dining room coming off my living room and that thing was a serious SOB to deal with because it had it's own resonance totally separate from the living room that made the sound glare and wander on account of those 936's having such smooth off axis response. I threw some thick curtains over a folding screen and that totally killed the room. Once I was able to toe them out without that room being a real pain, the sound just exploded in physical dimension. I'm not sure I agree with no toe in. It's something to be experimented with. Same with how far out from the wall they are. Loose, booming bass makes me think they're too close to a wall. I'd say 22" (measuring from the rear, closest corner) is probably a minimum, but it sounds like you're working with the same kind of area I am. To best describe my room at the moment....
Speakers about 7 feet apart, 22" out from the wall. I've got 36 sq/ft of 2 inch acoustic foam tiles scattered about the wall behind my chair. Behind the speakers I've got 1 inch of foam and thick carpet, which I do intend to replace with something now that I know what works. Between the speakers on the wall I've got a curtain with thinner looped carpet behind that. And I have a 3'x7' sheet of 1" foam on the ceiling which makes a tiny difference and I had it so I just pinned it up there. Those things are 91db sensitive on center, but they are very smooth off axis which means they're really injecting a lot of sound into the room that needs to be managed a bit and sound just bouncing around will destroy their imaging.
If you don't like the way they sound, positioning and room acoustics/treatment is your problem. Break in will barely change the sound after the first 10 hours or so. The main "break in" that happens is the speakers coming up to room temperature after sitting in a freight truck/warehouse for however long. Tell us more about the room and the way the speakers are set up now. Did you get rid of the toe in like I suggested earlier?
uberwaltz give the speakers time, at least 200 hours, then start w/ room placement.After 500 hours you will be set and rewarded at the same time. Keep me posted w/ 100 hour-mark updates. Happy Listening!
Interesting. My last pair of Focal Chorus 826v worked best with some serious toe in for my room. In fact since then nearly all speakers have sounded their best in here in roughly same position with same toe in. So that is how I plonked the 936 down.
Mapman. Early days on the Focals yet and yes there is a good reason the Triangles had bested much more expensive speakers in my system. They would probably do better with a tube amp though as always been very forward in presentation but not fatiguing if that makes sense.
Right now the DeVore Gibbon 8 are #1 of the 3 pairs here. They just do not do anything wrong or call attention to themselves in any area. Polite was one remark,I may just say they pass along the music without adding any further inflections. But as I said very early days on the 936, they need more hours for sure.
Well the 936 arrived and in system and definitely not quite what I was expecting, yet at least. Kosst and any other actual owners, if you bought new how long break in did they need? These are new so obviously not sounding their best but I have not found the speaker house sound to change drastically with break in. Right now they sound very closed in, bass is loose, vocals and acoustic guitar a little wooly. They look good though.... Lol.
I heard the 936's a while ago. Left me scratching my head, not in a good way or a bad way, just a bit perplexed. To my ears, they didn't fall on the usual scale that runs from bright/forward/analytical to warm/laid back/musical. I found it hard to find the right adjectives to describe the presentation, the tonality, the timbre. It was different. Quite detailed, certainly, allowing you to listen into the music, and certainly far from unpleasant. Having heard Audio Note AN-E's years later, and allowing for acoustic memory, I'm going to say they didn't sound, to me, as natural as the AN's did, but again I'd be hard pressed to come up with the right adjective to describe how they departed (just a little) from that ideal of naturalness. We'll be curious to hear your impressions.
Great MJK avatar, btw. Caught APC concert in 2000. Was great. Went to a John cougar Mellencamp concert about three years ago. found out puscifer played the theater the night before. I almost cried for having missed that opportunity.
Never too late my friend ProAc have been on the edge of my radar for a while but you have to cull the potential suspects at some time or another … lol. We will see how the Focals fare once here and hopefully can step off the speaker merry go round for a while
I know it’s late, but I did hear the Elac Adante floorstander and large monitor a few months ago. Not to my liking I am sorry to report. Especially the tower. Boomy, sloppy bass. To me, an unrefined sound. Room and speaker/seat placement were less than ideal so i’m sure SQ could be improved upon. I also heard persona 3f in same room. They were in a different league in terms of refinement. They too were not at their best due to set up/room. IMO the problem for the Elacs ***that day, in that room and to my ears***is that they did NOT sound surprisingly good for a speaker half the price of the $10k personas. They sounded like a speaker with a much much lower price tag. I have no idea how they sound compared to other 5k speakers as i’ve not been auditioning any. I did hear some proac D30R last week that were just under $8k ( I think). The proac and the Treo CT are the 2 best $8k speakers i’ve heard so far.
Yes I know you did, lol, I read your thread here from back then when I researched the gibbon8!
I would agree they are very musical, best I can describe is they do not seem to add or subtract anything. Nothing shouts out like wow, hear this bass or treble etc.
They just get on with the job. Polite is a decent description and maybe not ideal for rock but right now they are a refreshing change from the Triangles. They are excellent still imho but are definitely an acquired taste as they are very in your face and immediate if you understand. Be interesting when the 936 show up. 3 way speaker battle!
I had a pair of Devore Gibbon 8 speakers back in 2011. I drove from Rhode Island to Annapolis, Maryland and back home (800 miles) on Dec30, 2010 to pick them up from an Audiogon member. I paid 1800.00 for mine back then. I felt they sounded best on Jazz music. The bass in my living room didn't go that low but I had great luck integrating a Paradigm sub into the system. For whatever reasons, it worked really well.
I had the set up for about a year before selling off the speakers and sub as I felt the highs were a little too polite on Rock music. They were a real fun speaker though. They are extremely musical speakers and I am glad I got to experience the Devore sound. I got to talk briefly with John Devore in the elevator at RMAF last year. He is a very nice guy and invited my wife and I up to their suite to listen to the 0/96 speakers. If I ever set up a third system, it will be either the Devore 0/96 or 0/93 speakers with a nice Line Magnetic integrated amp.
The Devore speakers really sound more like music than speakers if you know what I mean. Enjoy!
Well I could not resist and while waiting for the Focals I saw a pair of DeVore Gibbon 8 for sale at very fair price and bought them as I knew no matter what they could have a home in the second system.
But of course I had to hook them up in the main rig first....
Well first impression was nothing too special and could not really put my finger on it until I examined a little further. The speaker s/n specify L and R and I had placed the L on my seated L position, this placed the tweeters to the outer edge of each speaker. A quick Google check of a few images all showed them set up with tweeter in so L on speaker meant L from the amp forward. Swapped them round, fiddled with toe in a little and tried again.
Whoa! It was like I had plonked down a totally different pair of speakers, now the muddled soundstage and presence was gone replaced with a great dynamic projection of the music without any one area calling attention to itself.
I sat and listened to a complete Joe B album then some Prince, then realized I should be doing work around the house...lol.
The Focals are going to have their work cut out when they arrive!
May I be the first to congratulate you. It is always exciting when getting a new piece, especially so for speakers. Best of luck with them, I hope you love them.
Not the most scientific measurement, but using an audio analyzer app on the Pixel 2 my 936 measure pretty flat down to 35Hz in my room listening to Mickey Hart's Temple Caves, and it sounds like it. Can't think of much that has notes much lower than that. Just thought I'd throw that out there.
Yes, I also sit ~10 feet from my speakers. From the Focal web site on the 936: "Appropriate for rooms measuring from 270ft2 (25m2) and from a listening distance of 10-12ft (3m - 3.5m)."
For the 948: "This is the ultimate loudspeaker of the range for rooms measuring from 320ft2 (30m2) and from a recommended listening distance of 12ft (3.5m)." My family room measures about 270 square feet, but the ceiling steps and bevels up to 10 feet, and the room is open to the breakfast nook and kitchen. So, there is a lot of cubic feet that is open to the speakers.
That's useful as my listening position is approx 10ft from each speaker. So the 948 may not even work to its best in my room. Agreed 37 and 39Hz is going to be near impossible to hear the difference, you may just get a "feel" for a little more depth to bass but that's about it.
There's practically no difference in bass between the 948 and 936, and I've listened to both for several hours. Their flat response is 37 and 39 Hz respectively and 31 and 32Hz -6dB. I defy anybody to hear the difference. The much bigger difference is where the tweeter and mid-range cross over. You may like the voicing of the 948 better. I will say listening to the 926 and 948 side by side, the 926 sounded better inside 12 feet. The 948 didn't really come together until you're more like 15 feet away from it.
I know with 8" woofers you would have thought a deeper quoted response than 37Hz. But to put into perspective the low E string on bass guitar is 40hz approx so for rock music more than adequate.
Maybe not so much for classical or chamber music with deep pipe organs and the like.
@ uberwaltz Yeah, that's my question as well. Focal doesn't really rate the 946 that much deeper than the 936, and others have said the 936 is fine. But I'm just a sucker for big floor standers.
Not quite sure I have ever felt the urge to get out of bed in the middle of the night to listen to music....yet.
However I do get your sentiment.
So I have also a pair of 948 on the radar as well, these are fairly local( in same state at least) and would be able to drive and listen to them. Still a foreign environment and system but might get a better idea.
Not sure how much more bass the 948 would yield over the 936?
That's exactly my feeling with my 936's. Sometimes I'll get up out of bed in the middle of the night just to listen to something after having them for 2 years. It just never gets old.
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