SBL upgrade advice appreciated

Posted by: Harald on 06 December 2000

Unfortunately the thread archive of the old forum
is no longer in use so that I have to start an old
topic.

After many years upgrading amplification and
source my current system is NAC52, Supercap, NAP250, CDS2, LP12 and Dynaudio speakers (Contour 1.3). I would like to stop further upgrades by
choosing well-suited speakers at last.

I am tempted to get sbl's with the possibility to
go active later but I would like to consider some
other options. Which other speakers should I listen to ? Has anyone tried Wilson Benesch (Act I) and Audio Physic with Naim electronics ?

Thanks.

Posted on: 07 December 2000 by Top Cat

quote:
Has anyone tried Wilson Benesch (Act I) and Audio Physic with Naim electronics ?

I haven't tried them with Naim gear, but the Audio Physic Virgos I have on loan sound absolutely fantastic. They are a sort of cross between a round- and a flat-earth speaker insofar as they are fast, time well but also image extraordinarily well and do the hyper-detail thing. The drawback for me (and what sadly means that I am still without decent speakers) was that they have an unusual positioning requirement - i.e. firing across the short dimension of the room, about a third to half the way in (with the listening position against the wall) and very wide apart. This sort of positioning really works but is far from practical in my own (smallish) living room.

I can't recommend AP highly enough, based upon my own experiences, but sometimes you come across a speaker that just won't fit into your way of living and your listening room - the Virgo is one of those speakers (sadly for me, seeing as I've yet to hear a speaker do what it can do).

This means that I'm still without decent speakers (I'm using a pair of B&W 601S2's for now; they're actually not too bad, all things considered, but they do have their limitations and they're not in the same league, but I had them as rears, and had never tried them as fronts before).

John