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Author Topic: your current favorite speaker you heard or own.  (Read 4849 times)

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RexAeterna

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Re: your current favorite speaker you heard or own.
« Reply #20 on: November 21, 2014, 08:50:03 PM »










I wish I owned these though:







Jbls! What's giant one on the bottom.

I always wanted pair of older jbl monitors. I actually have pair of great condition jbl 4410s locally available for trade. I feel tempted to message him to make an offer.
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''I'm a music lover. Not an audiophile.''

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shaizada

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Re: your current favorite speaker you heard or own.
« Reply #21 on: January 14, 2015, 08:23:34 AM »

I really really like speakers from the current lineup by Marten Design from sweden.
https://www.marten.se/

I basically built a system around EAR electronics (EAR 868, EAR 890 monoblocks, EAR 324, EAR Dacute) and the Marten Speakers just worked like magic with them.  They have a sense of humanity and realism that is uncanny.  The newest Accuton diamond tweeters and latest Accuton ceramic drivers in the current version of their speakers have elevated performance to levels I just never imagined.  Anyhow, I've been around the block with speakers now.  Many owned, many experienced intimately through good audio buddies.  Single Driver, electrostatics, Multi Drivers from all sorts of brands (Magico, Wilsons, Venture Audio, B&W, Estelons, Focal, MBL the list goes on...).

There is always better out there.  However, coming into a realization that "harmony" and "synergy" within components, yourself, your mind set, your life, your family, your childhood, your bringing up and even your mental being form a mind map for you as a listener... a being who is an individual with a unique listening taste purpose built for YOU.  Heck, even our ear canal shapes are different...we all just hear things differently.  So what sounds good to me, might not be the right audio food for another mind. 

Anyways, its late at night and enough of my philosophy...there is wrong.  There is right.  Then there is what is right for you.
I believe strictly in the third.  If I like the sound of a Kazoo...well damn it, that is what I like!  No one can judge you for that.

Here are the Kazoo's I have fallen in love with and own because when they speak through music, they speak to me and nothing else matters.  Completely different kind of speakers, totally different sound but equally amazing at digging out an all emotional listening response that really grabs your soul and throws it into the ethereal...

Marten Design Bird 2 speakers:






Blumenstein Naga:


« Last Edit: January 14, 2015, 09:48:17 AM by shaizada »
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DaveUpton

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Re: your current favorite speaker you heard or own.
« Reply #22 on: January 16, 2015, 02:16:29 AM »

Literally everything made by Legacy Audio blows me away. The FOCUS SE was a life changing experience for me. I now aspire to own whatever Bill Duddleston's current flagship is. In this case, the AERIS:




http://legacyaudio.com/products/view/aeris/
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Oktyabr

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Re: your current favorite speaker you heard or own.
« Reply #23 on: January 31, 2015, 07:12:23 PM »

I've been a speaker junky for a long time but my area of specialty has been upper end vintage, second hand.  To support my habit I started a brisk trade in buying and flipping second hand vintage gear in the Seattle area several years ago.  I contemplated actually starting a brick and mortar store around the idea for awhile.  I had to move to the coast where such things weren't quite as available and that's tamed this particular obsession.  And still I managed to float through a couple different pair of vintage Polk, Infinity Kappa, and lovely pair of Yamaha NS-690 (the studio monitor version, with a triple set of binding posts).

I really like Vandersteen as a company.  Their 2C series is so good that I've owned them twice and their prices have made me question if they aren't in fact the point of diminishing returns.  They just seem to do everything right...  beyond possibly aesthetics and being particularly finicky about proper room placement.

I've owned a bunch of Dahlquist and Snell too.  The DQ-20i had beautiful mids and uppers but really needed a sub to make it a full range experience.  The Snell Type A/III"i" (improved/modded) were beautiful in flame maple and staged like you really were in a concert hall...  but they weren't my favorite Snells.  The smaller Type E/II (owned twice) with it's extra rear firing tweeter and modest size made it much more enjoyable experience in typically sized living rooms.  The Type J/IV were a very neat speaker.  Trading them for some AKG K701 and an amp got me into headphones but I missed those speakers more than I had thought I would and ended up paying cash to have them back a couple of years later.  A DIY single driver solution of a similar size and character put them back on the "for sale" list again and I wish them well.

I also had a passion for vintage AR, specifically the Teledyne era, and have owned many different models.  The speaker I still wish I had?  The original Teledyne AR9.  The AR9LSi came close but just didn't quite have that same ability to go from airy violins to tight, chunky bass like the Titanic sinking into the depths of the abyss, without ever sounding anything other than supremely capable.  Some day I may try to remake this this speaker from a DIY start.

Then I got into dipoles and had a love/hate relationship with a few different models of Magnepans and ended up living with a pair of Martin Logan SL3, which might have kept me happy for awhile but at the time I didn't really have a large enough listening room to let them blossom... and the DIY bug had already planted eggs in my brain.

Since then, a couple thousand dollars worth of woodshop equipment and trial and error I now live happily with a pair of modest two way dipole based on 18" pro woofers in "H Frame" baffles and 8" Audio Nirvana Super Eight full rangers in simple baffles on top.  A miniDSP 2x4 handles the crossover duties.  These are my third build around just the Super Eights and perhaps my last.  I'm not done with DIY yet although when I sit down for a good listen I often forget any ideas of somehow improving upon their sound.  I would like to hear (and maybe build) a pair of Linkwitz LX521, the Orion, or something very similar in design.

One of the best speakers I ever heard (in a room, with XYZ up stream)?  I once heard a phenomenal vinyl setup (probably $30K in turn table, pre and amps) playing Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon through a pair of Focal Chorus 836V, in an absolutely excellent room.  It made my jaw drop and heavily contributed to a revived vinyl habit that I'm currently in recovery from.

Part of the collection I had in 2009:


The Teledyne AR9 (I wish I had never gotten rid of!):


The ugly DIY dipoles I love to pieces now (I tell people they are a "prototype" and not worth working on serious aesthetics yet):

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Puma Cat

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Re: your current favorite speaker you heard or own.
« Reply #24 on: February 01, 2015, 12:06:03 AM »

My favorite speakers are Danish, for the most part: GamuT and Dynaudio. My favorite floorstanders are the Dynaudio Confidence C2 MkIIs, but I also like the Dynaudio I own, the Contour S3.4 very much as well. They are very neutral, but musical and never fatiguing. They are also amazingly fast, almost Quad-like, but have much more dynamic slam than Quads. They can play full-out orchestral passages and go from piano to fortissimo incredibly quickly and never even hint of break-up.

The other speaker I like very much are Harbeth 30.1s, which are very transparent and have an astonishingly beautiful midrange.

I agree tthat Quad ESL-63s, when properly set up, and with a proper sub (the best setup I've heard used a Swedish open baffle sub) and driven with quality electronics, can be amazing.
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BlackenedPlague

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Re: your current favorite speaker you heard or own.
« Reply #25 on: February 05, 2015, 01:53:37 AM »

I love my Polk 45b's and Velodyne sub.

The sub is sitting on mdf with thick foam pads from Lowes', with about 50lbs (a cinder block and two paving tiles) of dead-weight to push it down into said foam.

The bass sounds extremely accurate
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uchihaitachi

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Re: your current favorite speaker you heard or own.
« Reply #26 on: April 14, 2015, 02:07:42 PM »

Father is a Focal fanboy through and through.
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dglow

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Re: your current favorite speaker you heard or own.
« Reply #27 on: April 14, 2015, 04:14:16 PM »

Hello, all... first post.

Favorite speakers owned:

1. Maggies, Maggies, Maggies... MG12s, to be exact.
    I love me some planar magnetics, whether attached to my head, or not.

2. Joseph Audio RM7si
    Excellent small floorstanding boxes – my 'public instruments' of choice until dipoles won me over.   
         walk the plank

   
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uchihaitachi

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Re: your current favorite speaker you heard or own.
« Reply #28 on: April 14, 2015, 04:45:13 PM »

Hi, all when I try to attach photos it leaves img img in brackets??

Also is there a way to get to the last post directly rather than scrolling down?
« Last Edit: April 14, 2015, 08:41:20 PM by uchihaitachi »
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