OT: Help a guy out - Audio Speakers

[William]

Time for new speakers. I built a set of floor speakers back in the day when you could get quality components from Realistic to build nice speakers. These things had great sound range from easy listening to ground pounding volume. in the last few years we had them paired with some Infinity bookshelf speakers. A while back one of the Infinity speakers blew out so they were taken out of service but had not purchased replacements yet. Noticed some buzzing coming out of one speaker this past weekend so I removed the screen to find the surround has started disintegrating on the woofer. Time to replace.

If I had my way I would just find a replacement woofer and install...but Mrs William has seen a way to finally get them out of the house...well, she wants smaller speakers anyway. I was looking into wireless but I think I'm leaning toward sticking with the old school set up. So, she wants bookshelf type speakers in the living room and of course I would rather have floor speakers. Is there a happy medium recommendation out there or does she win? If she wins, then what are some quality bookshelf speakers on the market today?

For me - what sounds good. For her - Bang for your buck.




William

[cadence90]

The Pioneer speakers designed by Andrew Jones (including the SP-BS22-LR bookshelf pair) have received consistent super-positive reviews for great sound, design, and price/quality over the past several years, often being very favorably compared to much more expensive offerings. Definitely worth a serious look.


.
.

[Likes2ridefar]

Budget? As you probably know, even for bookshelves, you can go below $100 to thousands...

[Likes2ridefar]

Elac unifi b5 are well received and about as cheap as I've heard that satisfy my snobby hearing. They aren't very pretty though.

My favorite are kef ls50. Very small and sound amazing. I had them on stools with blue tac. Unless you are a bass head, they are one of the best 2.0 setups out there.

Or go custom like I did and get Salk speakers. One of the best bang for the buck out there. I love my song towers. They are small for a tower and sound amazing. Jim is a pleasure to work with, too.

[sjbraun]

Pioneer speakers designed by Andrew Jones, the SP-BS22-LR bookshelf pair- I bought a pair of these for my son. Connected to a small digital amp, the sound is very nice.

[jtakeda]

Subscribing to this thread.

While having nothing to add besides saying "wanna join me in the hunt for AR-3s?"

I'm curious what good bookshelf speakers are out there

[54ny77]

[pjm]

The Magnapans are great but you need lots of quality amplification and a big room to get the most out of them. The Elacs have gotten rave reviews and are also designed by Andrew Jones. For more money check out Totem Acoustics. Exceptional build quality and sound.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=p1hAxMVpFQ8

[efuentes]

parts-express.com have some very nice deals on drivers if you wanna have some fun designing and soldering stuff, have not tried the ready made sets that they have, worth a look.

Saludos

[Bob Ross]

A real sleeper but quite possibly the best "sweet spot" in terms of performance-per-dollar, is the Monitor Audio Silver series.

Dynaudio Acoustics makes some lovely sounding bookshelf speakers in a wide range of pricepoints.

Not cheap, but the Vienna Acoustics Haydn Grand is possibly the best sounding bookshelf speaker under $5,000 I've ever heard.

And B&W just recently discontinued their CM1 S2 (replaced by the brand new 700 Series) so if you can find a dealer with the CM1 S2 in stock they might be looking to move them at a bargain. Fabulous sounding bookshelf speaker (though a bit deep front-to-back).

[19wisconsin64]

Good source material plus good amplification plus good speakers equal great sound. The good news for audiophiles and the rest of everyone who listens to music is that because of technology improvements all of these things have advanced dramatically in the past 30 years and dropped down in price.

Source material used to be reel-to-reel, and album, and cassette, and then MP3 digital files. Now, there are super high resolution audio files that will be able to fit on your smartphone. Currently these files are very large, but technology marches on and storage /high res audio players are dropping quickly in price. (you can get a FiiO lossless high-resolution audio player for a few hundred, or an inexpensive no-name player for under a hundred). You'll be astonished at all of the intimate detail you were missing all these years, and once you hear these details, it's hard to go back poor sounding material.

Good amplification has changed dramatically too, and the new digital Class D amplifiers are inexpensive, powerful, small, and sound amazing. The traditional type of amplifiers are still amazing, and now better than ever-you can look into (new or used half-price) Music Hall amplifiers such as the a15.3 ($550 new, $350 used, and sounds as good as the best of the best.)

It used to be you could buy $100,000 electrostatic speakers and then another $50,000 on amplifiers and sources to get great sound, but those heady days are gone. While those bits of equipment do have extra fancy names, veneers, and gold plated extruded bits, they just don't sound that much better most of the time.

These days you can also cheaply stream wireless audio to your system from your smartphone or computer by adding a tiny bluetooth receiver to your amplifier. The new 5.0 version version of Bluetooth has great range and sounds great.

Whatever you do get, speaker placement.....so important to good sound!

Enjoy the music

[mcteague]

Interested in building them yourself? Linkwitz speakers are some of the best in the world at nice prices, if you assemble the kit. I have the older Orion speakers. They do require a bit of space around them. Once heard, you will never go back to box speakers again.

http://www.linkwitzlab.com/

Tim

[blakcloud]

Best bookshelf speakers I ever heard where Harbeth PS3R. I liked them so much I bought them. I have since gone up the line, spent more money and the new speakers sound better but I got more enjoyment out of the small Harbeths.

If you don't go bookshelves, then you could repair your woofers with new surrounds and it is a do it yourself type of job. YouTube has lots of videos on repairing drivers.

[joosttx]

Originally Posted by blakcloud

Best bookshelf speakers I ever heard where Harbeth PS3R. I liked them so much I bought them. I have since gone up the line, spent more money and the new speakers sound better but I got more enjoyment out of the small Harbeths.

If you don't go bookshelves, then you could repair your woofers with new surrounds and it is a do it yourself type of job. YouTube has lots of videos on repairing drivers.

These are great speakers

[DarkStar]

I have a pair of these in my living room, not for everybody.