Recommended speakers around $10K used


Looking for recommendations on speakers to audition...

Current gear: Bel Canto DAC2, via Bryston SP1 and Bel Canto Evo 2 monos, to Talon Peregrines. Love the deep, fast bass, but midrange is lacking something -- it just doesn't grab me like the Silverline Sonatas used to -- and the soundstage is unnaturally recessed... back behind the wall somewhere.

Good news: I have $10K budget, perhaps a little more, and I am happy to buy used equipment.

Bad news: speaker placement is limited. Room is smallish (14' x 17') and speakers have to be on 14' wall, pushed back toward corners with TV and audio equipment in between. Back wall is actually only a partial wall...opens onto dining room.

I'm looking for speakers that excel at reproducing guitar (acoustic and electric), image well, and go deep. I like monitors but always end up missing the visceral bass of big floorstanders. Current ideas from trolling A'gon:

- Revel Studio or Salon
- Aerial 20T
- Wilson Sophia...listened to thess recently and was impressed by quantity of bass, but it seemed a little muddy and overall presentation was uninvolving...or maybe I was just in a bad mood
- JMLab Alto Be...really liked these with Sim Audio W5 amp, but thought they might be missing the last ounce of bass. Maybe my Evos would match better? Front ported should help with placement.

Would Dali Megaline be a significant step up for the extra $5K?

Any & all opinions appreciated. Thanks.
jezzholland
I do not claim to have a golden ear, but have listened to several speakers on your list. I play guitar, so the sound of guitar is important to me too.

Revel salon auditioned in a room with some treatments on the walls, but other speakers in the room too (so a suboptimal setup) with levinson monoblocks (I believe no.436), krell preamp and a denon cd player. I don't know if it was the denon or the room or the fact that the salesman disappeared (I didn't know if the rear tweeters were on or off, etc), but the imaging wasn't comparable to the others I'll comment on below. The bass was great. Everything else sounded a bit subdued. Salons do have adjustments for bass and tweeter level, but I didn't know how to adjust them.

Wilson sophia auditioned with meridian 800/861 combo and classe cam 350 monoblocks in a dedicated treated room. Sounded great to me on acoustic and electric guitar and imaging was great. I have since listened to watt puppy 7 and alexandrias with krell amp/ vtl 7.5 and halcro preamps/ wadia cd player in a lightly treated room and the sound was totally lifeless and inorganic. During the sophia demo I also listened to Maxx 1 and WP7 and sounded MUCH better to me with the meridian/ classe combo.

JM lab alto utopia beryllium auditioned with meridian g series preamp, cd player, and amp. Imaging was great, sounded great for acoustic and electric guitar. Not quite as dynamic and "raw" for electric guitar as the wilsons, but could have been due to smaller amp, etc.

I also did demo on b&w nautilus 801(before diamond), and martin logan ascents, odyssey, prodigy. I was not impressed at all with the b&w, but source for all of these was a musical fidelity integrated amp, so likely didn't have enough juice for them. Martin logans sounded awesome to me for acoustic guitar and vocals, but sounded fatiguing for electric guitar after about 10 seconds. Each larger logan had better bass than the other. Logans apparently are very finicky to setup, though and likely this played a role.

Hope this helps.
Get a pair of Caravelles from Star Sound and a Velodyne DD-18 sub and you'll be very happy for a long time.
>Room is smallish (14' x 17') and speakers have to be on 14' wall, pushed back toward corners with TV and audio equipment in between<

At 10K, you are wasting a lot of money to place speakers as such.

Oz
I own and can recommend the Revel Studio speakers, as they are very good and a nearly full range speaker. (They have good treble extension, and the mid-range is quite good, and it has deep bass response, albeit not a deep as the Salon though.) They can be had, used, for around $6-7K.

However, if you can afford to stretch your budget a bit, you can get a truly world class speaker, IMHO anyway.
The Avalon Eidolon is one of my favorite speakers.
They typically run around $11-12K used, depending on finish, although I did see one pair go for $10K, only once though. I will point out that these speakers are somewhat difficult to drive (they like a lot of power, like the Revels actually), and are very finicky about both the associated electronics as well as their room placement. (They sound only their best with really high end amplification and need to be pulled well into the room.)
If you are going to spend the full $10K on speakers, I highly recommend that you give them a listen.

Good Luck in your search.