Best speakers high end for Naim Components

ZACKWATER

not heard them for myself but ive heard lots of good things about Magico's, I believe they like to be well away from the rear wall so room size comes into play, I think this is the case for a lot of modern speakers

active kudos 808's is another option

failing that active

lyndon

lyndon posted:

ZACKWATER

not heard them for myself but ive heard lots of good things about Magico's, I believe they like to be well away from the rear wall so room size comes into play, I think this is the case for a lot of modern speakers

active kudos 808's is another option

failing that active

lyndon

 

I forgot.  Long, big  rectangular theatre room.  Speakers need to be within a meter of the wall.  

I think you are asking the wrong question... it would be better to ask which speakers in any given price range work best in your room. The room speaker interaction is critical, so someone else’s perfect match may sound terrible in your room. And then of course, personal taste comes in to play...

In any case, enjoy the research, but the only way to decide is in your room with your ears.

Dave.

I would say.... Harbeth... 

To be more serious, the best speaker you can get, that suits your taste and room, at least so have I learned.

There is no possible way to demo expensive speakers in my room before I buy them.  Do you really think a dealer 350 miles away is going to ship $50,000 speakers to my house, set them up, and say “no problem just play them for a while and see if you like them”.   I do not have the luxury of local dealers.  Sure, I can go to their shops, but there will be no home demo.   The dealers might allow exchange for other speakers they carry, but no way to compare several different speakers.  That’s why I’m asking for advise from this forum from people who have the same equipment.  I know, what my ears hear may be different, but I think this will HELP in making my decision.   Plus it may eliminate some brands that just don’t “work” with Naim Components. .  I guess I should have asked what brands work well with Naim. 

Okay, I understand your problem... it’s a challenge if you are a long distance from a dealer, but I still think the brand of speaker is unlikely to be the biggest factor in determining what will work.  Could you post a few more details on your room, the sort of furnishing etc., as this is often a big factor. I like the Focal Utopias, and least I like my Scala V2’s, but they like a well damped room, and need to be in open space with at least a metre behind and at the sides. If you can find someone with a similar room and taste in music it may better inform your choices.

That’s a difficult situation, given the importance of speaker/room interaction. Maybe buying used speakers that you can try and then sell on for little loss woyld be worth a try. Used speakers, at least in the UK, seem to depreciate a lot. I second Lyndon’s suggestion of Kudos Titan 808s. My dealer recently listen a used pair of these on Bay, asking price £9k. There were no bidders. 

You certainly can’t decide based on someone else’s preference, even if they have an identical system and room, unless you know that they also have an identical preference for how music should sound - but of course their suggestions  can indeed help build an audition list. 

The one thing I have about speakers is how far from perfection they are, (or virtually all are), es it seems no matter how high a price bracket you audition, there are huge differences inhow they sound. So indeed I believe an audition is imperative, especially spending huge sums of money (unless to you it is just chicken-feed), and spending that sort of money the cost of even several trips, or a tour or extended stay to audition is negligible. A key suggestion, however, is to either ensure the dealer deomoing has your existing speaker model, or take yours with you. That enables you to hear the baseline and compare differences, helping to compensate for differences from your own room. 

There are a lot of speakers in, say, the $20-70k bracket, and one way would be to simply try to hear as many as you can - they should all be exceedingly good in some way or other...  I suspect that all many of us can do is offer the ‘shopping list’ we’d consider.

Depending on the physical space you have, I’d suggest considering PMC MB2SE, maybe with the XBD add-on sub, which reinforces its already exemplary bass, or the even bigger BB5. The advantage of these, to me, is the transmission line loading, which gives the best quality of bass of anything I’ve yet heard, and the lowest of these MB2SE is good.

Another I would want to hear if it were me would be the Tannoy Westminster Royal, as quite a different beast but supposedly amazing - though maybe its high sensitivity could be a challenge if the 500s hiss as much as some people complain some Naim amps hiss.

I’d also want to hear the top ATCs.

For other suggestions I’d be browsing the internet so I’ll stop there.

Hi Zackwater,

Loudspeakers are difficult. I live middle in Europe so not as complicated as for you but nerver the less i have 150 miles to the Kudos dealer, 300 miles to the Magico dealer but  Just 50 miles to Focal and B&W. 

To ensure a home demo I offered  to compensate the dealers with a fair amount if I did not buy the loudspeakers. No deposit apart from the travel compensation which I paid in cash when they came.  Prior the home demo I also negotiated the price so if .... everything was already agreed. I ended up with Kudos 808. I never got to listen to the Magico as I had told myself that the first speakers which fulfill all my requirements I keep. Kudos came before Magico.  

My room is 8*4,6 meters with 3 meters to the ceiling and the 808 are just giving me music as I like to here it.

Gunnar

This is a fun question, but as a "shout-out" (like on the cash cab), it probably doesn't work, because most of us have (probably) only heard these stratospherically priced speakers for a limited time and under less than ideal conditions (at a show). I know I would consider top of  the line sonus faber (and at this price point looks matter to me), would like to hear/explore raidho, and magico even burmester

Before getting a set of ne plus ultra speakers, it may pay greater dividends to optimize the room and the mains feed. Naim equipment simply LOVES balanced power (do a search on 'Equitech') that gives an improvement probably larger than the next black box step up. Many of the negative features attributed to the Naim sound (forwardness, 2 dimensional soundstage and lack of true LF extension) were abolished with the right power while the positive attributes got much better still. This was with a 552/500/DBLs. Works great on tube guitar amps too. 

And also make sure your current speakers are not only optimally placed but optimally supported. I had an ear opening experience where a set of relatively budget speakers I had were hoisted on some platforms that probably cost as much as the speakers, and the boost in performance was probably a Supercap level one and maybe greater, and I was not running back to the reference speakers that cost 10x as much. Works great with tube guitar amps too-a Vibrosonic on rollershelves. 

I have hung very modest speakers on the end of close to 100k in electronics in an optimized room with balanced power and they all sounded at least excellent. 

Many years ago, my exposure to Naim was at a demo comparing some 80 quid Mordant Short Carnival speakers passively to triamped Isobariks, but with different sources. The better source through the far cheaper speakers was convincingly better. 

The devil resides in the details, not in the fairy dust liberally sprinkled inside every extruded aluminum chassis or MDF speaker cabinet (ok, I know the Magico speakers are not crafted with MDF, but still......)

The last thing you want to do with a system that is not optimized is to examine it with the microscopic scrutiny afforded by true reference speakers, which then lets you see the pixels and not the picture. 

As an aside, the cost of a 552 plus those imaginary $70k speakers probably is around that of a Statement preamp. Until you have heard your current speakers with the best electronics, there is no point in replacing them just before you can afford to. Also if your current speakers are bi-amp/biwire capable, then try them also with a pair of 500s, or in the theme of a current thread, single wired with one 500 per channel (the sacrifice of the unplayed channel pleases the Gods of the working channel). 

Funny how life works.  Until I started reading this forum I had never heard of Kudos speakers.  I looked them up.  The titan 808 look really nice, so I checked out who was the US distributor.  It was my Naim dealer.  He offered a home demo next spring when I upgrade the 555 and 500dr.  That was way too easy.  

We spent an afternoon at Goodwin's High End in Boston.   Great store with extreme high end equipment.  Naim is entry level there!   I listened to Magico's and Rockports.   A guy I trust had raved about the Rockports, but the Magico's did it for me.   Would love to hear the Kudos.

We came home to our ProAcD40R's.    They have some attributes that few other people appreciate.   They are paid for, already set up for my room, and my wife and I have been happy with them.     Not wasting time and money on speakers has allowed me to make all the other Fraim, Powerline, DR and 500 upgrades to our system.     We do still look for speakers, but our Naim system makes everything sound good, so upgrading the electronics also upgrades the ProAcs.   I do not think ProAc is our last stop on the speaker path, but it will do until we develop the conviction about something else.    I am damn glad we did not order the Rockports based on a highly credible recommendation.   

Contrary to what you might think, for the chance of a $50K pink slip, plus a security deposit, I'd think a dealer might actually travel 350 miles. It's a big ticket item and the effort should outweigh the work they have to do. I'd go as far to say as I have heard of dealers do this and working with the manufacturer who ships a demo pair to the customer while the dealer takes care of the paperwork and security deposit and shows up to do the setup.

Most on the forum will have only hifi show experience of speakers in that sort of price range. I'd also be incredibly curious to hear the new PMC Fact Fenestria . Again, few will have home experience in that price range except a small handful.

Before Focal became work horse of choice, Naim used Dynaudio Evidence to showcase Statement systems -- maybe that's one for your list as well.  

feeling_zen posted:

Contrary to what you might think, for the chance of a $50K pink slip, plus a security deposit, I'd think a dealer might actually travel 350 miles. It's a big ticket item and the effort should outweigh the work they have to do. I'd go as far to say as I have heard of dealers do this and working with the manufacturer who ships a demo pair to the customer while the dealer takes care of the paperwork and security deposit and shows up to do the setup.

Have to agree with this viewpoint . It is certainly the case in Australia. My dealer (the excellent York brothers of Audio Genesis) would have no problems with such a scenario, particularly for either long-term or serious customers. They have undertaken much longer trips for lesser value equipment. Of course around here 350 miles is just around the corner....

regards,

Giles

Zackwater posted:

There is no possible way to demo expensive speakers in my room before I buy them.  Do you really think a dealer 350 miles away is going to ship $50,000 speakers to my house, set them up, and say “no problem just play them for a while and see if you like them”.   I do not have the luxury of local dealers.  Sure, I can go to their shops, but there will be no home demo.   The dealers might allow exchange for other speakers they carry, but no way to compare several different speakers.  That’s why I’m asking for advise from this forum from people who have the same equipment.  I know, what my ears hear may be different, but I think this will HELP in making my decision.   Plus it may eliminate some brands that just don’t “work” with Naim Components. .  I guess I should have asked what brands work well with Naim. 

surely a good dealer will do that!

In my decades of experience working with customers, many people in the high end audio market; both dealers and customers alike- are often predisposed to the allure of shortcuts.    This is understandable, and we don't need to contemplate conspiracy theories in order to note this tendency.     When listeners like Ron, who is one of the most experienced Naim fans in the US, put in enough time, enough thought, and enough money into their system's, at some point, many from this elite group of committed long term fans reach beyond the "folk wisdom" of the Linn/Naim cult of thinking that was formulated in the 70's and early 80's.    When they do, they often discover that really good system set up, or really good clean AC power, including in some cases power conditioners, or superb cables, or audio grade racks, or room acoustics etc. really matter.    In reality they had always mattered, but many of these things were somewhat ignored or even outright dismissed by the key tenants of the old Flat earth "wisdom".    

It is very easy to endorse Ron's experience and his willingness to share his hard earned wisdom about careful system set up.

The challenge is that many Naim fans have probably not investigated the potential benefits of reference class speakers which they might come to love out of the misunderstanding that is so widespread in high end audio as to have become part of the received folk wisdom.     The idea I am referring to is this: if you make an upgrade ahead of your speakers and can hear a difference through them, that your speakers are fully up to your system's potential.     In practice this is sometimes the case, but often it is not.    

The shortcut version of the recognition that speakers probably matter more than anything else in the system is to assume that you just need to buy fancy speakers to gain access to a fancy system.     As many Naim fans can attest from their own experience, if your speakers are "good enough" they can foster a great experience with excellent partnering equipment, well set up, etc.     However, there are things that the best reference class speakers can do that many medium priced or inexpensive speakers simply can't.     Try to do what Skip reported in his post.   Make time to hear well set up speakers and better yet, full systems, so you can judge for yourself where on this wide continuum you fall.    Some will favor speakers over the other components.    Some will favor a great source.     Some will favor great amplification.      In the very best systems, there are no weak links, but they may not require massively expensive products.    The key thing I have found is to try to avoid the temptation of a quick fix or a shortcut.     I don't believe there are any real substitutes for careful system design and great set up no matter which components you come to embrace.

Good listening, 

Bruce