Road trip to demo $10,000 speakers
I also recommend Martin Logan
Impression ESL 11A at 10,000$. It is very attractive speaker with beautiful high and good soundstage. If you go to its homepage, you can find dealers around Washington DC https://www.martinlogan.com/en/dealers |
skyscraper, These days, you can live smack in the middle of Manhattan and it won’t help you much when picking equipment. Hard to find a walk-in store, to begin with. In fact, it seems to me that Washington, DC area is much better in that sense. Let us know how you progress and what you eventually settle on. All of us here are curious and virtually playing...with your money. Charles, I am not sure if you are related to Legacy, but you did an excellent job and I will make sure not to miss their room. |
I’d appreciate your honest recommend on exact modelsskyscraper, I could not presume. I know next to nothing about your environment, level you listen, range of programme AND your particular peccadillos. For example, minimum phase error from sub 30Hz up is ne plus ultra for yhs. Accurate sound staging, rock solid focus that does not wander, accurate hall delineation, merciless exposure of recording engineer gimcrackery, proper vertical height and location. See http://www.ieLogical.com/Audio and read the Audio pages under PASSIONS menu. Many models recommended here fail miserably in that regard. Multiple woofer/mid drivers and mid & tweeters on a flat baffle fail impossibly on that metric. Ported systems have horrible low end phase coherence. Since retiring, I’ve made several road trips having avoided HiFi Dens for 15 years. I have a friend with an amazing B&W 803 D3 system north of $250k. No dealer had a pair setup that came anywhere near exhibiting their potential. One loudspeaker mentioned has a "perforated phase-aligning lens" over mid and tweet. The $12.5k model failed miserably on phase coherence, sound stage and imaging. Another $8k 2-way had the kick image smeared along a front to back slope. The point was in front of the speakers and the heft behind and out of phase! Vocal was an indistinct cloud. I recorded and mixed ref #2 above and have listened to it for 35 years. Many here will poo-poo my modest system. It fails not on my parameters because has been assembled with specific goals. My recommendation would be to have the ’squids rebuilt, get some great electronics that mate them well and match your bias. Decent cables would be nice. So would a pair of good subs - NOT PORTED!!! See http://www.ielogical.com/Audio/SubTerrBlues.php for trials and tribulations of sub integration. Bonne chance! |
