Speakers advice

Your amp will drive a very wide range of speakers, take your time and listen to as many as you can. Why is your dealer only recommending one brand?

Bcoz my dealer only carry this brand plus he accept trade in plus home demo.

i yet to hv the demo but afraid losing the bass as i first time using bookshelf spkr.

Nice electronics which will work with a wide range of speakers.

The trick will be to end up with some that suit your room (primarily sound wise but astheticly too) and suit your ears.

I would try lots of brands.

Does your dealer also sell Naim? In that case he/she should be familiar with relevant amp/speaker pairings. The Focals in question are all fairly easy to drive, so the 250DR shouldn't be limiting. Seems logical the dealer would use room size as a primary matching factor for speaker selection. Too much bass for the room makes for a gruesome and un-listenable experience. That may be the dealer's concern with larger speakers. 

OTOH, having had numerous speakers home for demo I'd say cabinet size is not necessarily a determining criterion for room fit, especially with regard to in-room bass response. It's really down to the quality of the bass. As an example, Ovator S-400 were the largest speakers I've had in my room, yet their sealed enclosure provided the best bass response. The slimmer, bottom-ported Proac D20R were too much bass for my room, as were the Linn Majik Isobariks. So you never know until you get the speakers home and experiment with the placement that yields the tightest bass for your room. From there evaluate the mids and highs.

Ideally, you should home demo all speakers - your choices and the dealer's recommendations - and decide for yourself. Trust me, it's well worth the back-and-forth effort. Overbearing bass will be immediately apparent. Also (and obviously) the Focal speakers your dealer actually has on hand for home demo could be contributing to his/her recommendations.

Finally I'd say that, if possible, get home speakers that do isobaric bass and sealed-enclosure bass. Experience what those offer versus ported bass. You're considering quite expensive speakers, so it's well worth a bit of legwork to find the best fit to your room.

Teii us the size of your room.

I thk abt 4.5 x4.5m

Im gg to demo diablo in a few days time at my home. I was wondering if anyone using diablo before w naim kit similar to mine n find the bass missing...

In fact my dealer felt Kanta is also too big for my room given that my room dont hv much space for the spkr to place far away from the back wall. At most i can give is 20cm.

I am currently using Polk LSiM 705, good bass but details, imaging seems lacking.

Core, 272, 250DR and after a lot of listening PMC 20 24. PMC, within reason, whatever size work well close to wall with slight tow in. I would be tempted to audition the next size down in floor standers or bookshelf models, but as always it's your ears and not mine that matters. Rich 

Winson posted:

I was wondering if anyone using diablo before w naim kit similar to mine n find the bass missing...

I don't think you should worry about bass missing in a small square room but for bass booming and resonance. A two way foot stander is often a better answer to such constraints. A floor stander is more difficult to place and accommodate. 

Chag -  

I guess i will hv more resolution when i hv it for home demo in a few days time.

Chag... posted:

Winson posted:

I was wondering if anyone using diablo before w naim kit similar to mine n find the bass missing...

I don't think you should worry about bass missing in a small square room but for bass booming and resonance. A two way foot stander is often a better answer to such constraints. A floor stander is more difficult to place and accommodate. 

Chag -  

But you can find bass missing in a small room, and indeed often the case with small speakers, often having the bottom octave or more missing, though it seems many people are happy take the upper bass as bass. The problem is getting down to the bottom octave or two without over-excitement of the nodes, whence room treatment can be critical. A subwoofer (or two) might be easier to site effectively in a small room than big floorstanders.

However, 4.5m x 4.5m is not small by UK standards, more a medium size, and in my opinion does not preclude floorstanders - but the bigger problem may be the fact that it is square, so the same frequency nodes both across and down the room, accentuating boom (and nulls), so placement is likely to be more critical than in many rooms, and some degree of room treatment likely to be beneficial. 

Whitst I would audition based on the dealer’s advice, if it were me I would also want to audition the bigger speakers range for comparison and to assess for myself, but being prepared for some work finding the best placement, both for speakers and listening position, (for which I recommend REW software and a measuring microphone to assist (REW is available free of charge, a suitable microphone can be had for under £100 - money well spent in my opinion).

I use Sopra 1s with Core/272/XPSDR/250DR and Superlumina full loom,my room is 13.5 feet wide by 15.5 feet deep.Placement is 4.5 feet from the front wall though,I have no kids or pets,so speakers sitting out into the room does not bother me.I also have Dynaudio XD 600s in the same room,they sit just behind and to the outside of the Sopras,these are a floorstander 3 way design.I listen to the Sopras 90 percent of the time,bass is not as much as the Dyns,but is much tighter,and in no way do I feel it is lacking anything.It all comes down to what sound you prefer really,but I would highly recommend a listen to the Sopra 1s in your size room,they are simply stunning in mine.Before I got the Sopras,I had Dynaudio special 40s in here,they are a 2 way bookshelf speaker too,and they also had plenty of bass in this room,but in the end I got a good deal on the Sopras,my dealer allowed me to trade the Dyns back in,so I switched to the Focals...they are much better to my ears in my room.

Hi No Quarter, thx for sharing ur experience. I will hv a demo in my hse for diablo follow by sopras 1 as promised by my dealer.

Go listen to other similar or cheaper priced speakers IMO Focal are way overpriced.

Don't restrict to one brand only.

Yes I got my Sopras for just over half price,they were my dealers pair that he had at home for about a year...they still had the plastic wrap on them,so were in perfect shape,and nicely broken in.

No Quarter,

so how much did u pay for it and in your country how much they selling for Diablo?

I live in Canada,and what I paid for the Sopras converted to pounds is 3,740.00 British pounds.I have no idea about the Diablos,you could figure that out just as easy as I could.The Sopras come with the stands included.

I don’t think I ever seen a Focal speaker positioned only 20cm of the back wall. This would be my main concern, not the size of your room. Personally I quite like standmounts... but if you like full bass you might neeed to look at speakers designed for near wall placement in you room.

Sealed, infinite baffle speakers can allow for proximity with the front wall. Great examples are with former legendary Naim and Linn models of course, but also, ATC and the still quite recent ProAc Tablette 10 if not for all the versions of the venerable LS3/5A. ????

Chag -

Winson posted:

In fact my dealer felt Kanta is also too big for my room given that my room dont hv much space for the spkr to place far away from the back wall. At most i can give is 20cm.

I tested my room and speaker/listening positions using REW software, and the optimum place for my speakers is just 20cm from the lower part of the back wall (fronts, which is what counts, about 67cm from wall). They are PMC EB1i, broadly similar in size to the Kanta 2, however a quite different design, the bass loading of which is transmission line (which in my experience is less fussy about room than some speakers) however mine is a larger room.

For that size room I would try any of the pmc floor standers.... with that shape room ultimately you could get 40 to 50hz boom....but there are allot of factors such as absorption, speaker position, listening level....etc. 

Dear all i made a blunder. My room is only 2.9x4m. Previous measurement was for my previous house... ????

While smaller in volume than your previous 4.5 x 4.5, the new room may have better dimensional attributes in that it's not a cube; presumably less bass node excitation. Many here have reported that setting speakers on the long wall in rectangular rooms is best. Something to consider and in my experience bottom ports generally work better than rear ports for near wall placement. That said, 2.9-m doesn't leave much room for speaker/listening chair placement adjustments. 

Innocent Bystander posted:

But you can find bass missing in a small room, and indeed often the case with small speakers, often having the bottom octave or more missing, though it seems many people are happy take the upper bass as bass. The problem is getting down to the bottom octave or two without over-excitement of the nodes, whence room treatment can be critical.

Very true. In my squarish room (with modest bass treatment) I eventually arrived at the conclusion that probing the deepest bass was not favorable due to node excitation. My current floor standers rated to 40-Hz played with cleaner bass than others I tried rated as far down as 27-Hz. The deeper bass response over-excited nodes in my room and muddled the overall cohesion. A case in point where less is more, and I'll take the cleaner presentation versus the deepest octaves. You can't necessarily have it all with hi-fi, and an ability to acknowledge the best compromise can be a virtue.