Floorstanders for small room?

I haven't. No local dealer. I had the Excite X12s for a few days and some other bigger model. They were good speakers, but nothing to get excited about. Apparently they used to be good with Naim several years ago, but the new models have gone in a different direction. Hearing them at audio shows did not leave me super excited about hearing more.

Slotted the X2s back in - and listening to the same playlist. Things don't bode very well for the PMCs.

Seeing as though you appear to be looking for something rather 'lively' at or around the PMC 25.23 price bracket? then what about having a look at some Russell K RED 120 floorstanders, assuming that these are available to you of course. Compact too.

MangoMonkey posted:

I haven't. No local dealer. I had the Excite X12s for a few days and some other bigger model. They were good speakers, but nothing to get excited about. Apparently they used to be good with Naim several years ago, but the new models have gone in a different direction. Hearing them at audio shows did not leave me super excited about hearing more.

Hmm. Seem to like Totem but they are boring at times which is where Dyns seem to turn up a notch from Totem. Oh well. Enjoy the search. 

The situation i am going to relate shows just what the wrong sort of speakers in a small room can do. 

I have a friend who has a very eclectic system which didn't sound as good as it should have given the amount of money he had spent on all the various parts. It did though sound quite balanced and the bass his then speakers produced was no problem. tight and fairly deep though it all would have benefited from being put into a larger room. His wife just isn't going to let him put it in their lovely sitting room as it all just looks bloody awful and who can blame her! He recently decided that his speakers were not doing the business so he bought a pair of Proac speakers that have a down facing bass port. When he invited me down for a listen I had no idea what I was going to hear so I sat down expecting perhaps a just a brighter sound. I thought this as my friend is now in the low 70's and as we know we all usually lose high frequencies as we age and if that was what I was to hear it would not have surprised me.

What I actually heard was the most exaggerated bass you can imagine to the point that it hurt my ears so much I had to ask him to put on an LP hoping that might ease things. He actually thinks it's now just great which confuses me as I had always respected his thoughts but this massive change in his system just doesn't make any sense to me. Luckily for me he now had a very loud hum which needed to be sorted which took us so long there was now no time to listen again thank goodness! I am not kidding you but he must have increased the bass content six fold! 

This situation has put me in a very big quandry as i now have no intention of ever sitting in that room ever again. I know I would completely destroy my hearing if i allow that. My quandary in not wanting to fall out with my friend of 40 or more years is not the reason I am telling all this no its the situation that a pair of speakers being put into a room that just does not suite them at all. I don't actually have any opinions of the Proac's as I feel I have not been allowed to hear them where they should be, away from the rear wall instead of nearly touching it and sitting less than 2 metres away with no space behind meaning I have the rear wall only a few centimetres away, i.e in a far bigger room.

This all happened a couple of weeks before Xmas so perhaps he has now realised his mistake and has returned them to the dealer but he hasn't let me know that yet. If he is now happy so be it but I for one will not be going for another listen thats for sure, my ears are far too valuable to me. I must also add that he has no Naim gear at all, if he had I would not have written this! 

Hi MM,

as you are in the States is there a chance you can demo the Devore 88? While I couldn’t get the side-firing woofers of my Nines to couple to my room, they’re the only speakers my wife was sad to say goodbye to.

Otherwise I was just about to get either the Square One or Two from Wilson Benesch, when I stumbled on my current fj Dude. The Two might be something to look at.

Local dealer doesn't carry them. At this point, I'm really between PMCs - I like what I hear, some Totems I might try and doing nothing. Once work starts I really don't know how much time I'm going to have.

The PMCs are a little too much in the small room. I ran them in the big room for a little while this morning - few things became clear -

a) These don't get better with better upstream components. With Tidal, they sound pretty much the same at the end of nDac/Nac72/HicapDR/Nap250DR and ND555/552/500.
b) They sound a little cleaner in the big room. Hearing too much transmission line artifiacts in the smaller room.

Interestingly enough, in the small room, they sound better  with Tidal compared to Roon doing Tidal. Probably some driver effects. Way too much bass with Roon.

I might just decide to go with Totem Kins on my desktop and do away with the stack. NAD 3020D + Totem Kins are probably good enough even for the study at home. I'll bring that stack home and see if I can get by with it.

[@mention:1566878603950744] - Yours should get post of the year!

I found my Totem Forest Signatures too large for my smaller media room, so have the Totem Hawks there. They would be as big as I would go for that room. 

Wiltshireman posted:

The situation i am going to relate shows just what the wrong sort of speakers in a small room can do. 

I have a friend who has a very eclectic system which didn't sound as good as it should have given the amount of money he had spent on all the various parts. It did though sound quite balanced and the bass his then speakers produced was no problem. tight and fairly deep though it all would have benefited from being put into a larger room. His wife just isn't going to let him put it in their lovely sitting room as it all just looks bloody awful and who can blame her! He recently decided that his speakers were not doing the business so he bought a pair of Proac speakers that have a down facing bass port. When he invited me down for a listen I had no idea what I was going to hear so I sat down expecting perhaps a just a brighter sound. I thought this as my friend is now in the low 70's and as we know we all usually lose high frequencies as we age and if that was what I was to hear it would not have surprised me.

What I actually heard was the most exaggerated bass you can imagine to the point that it hurt my ears so much I had to ask him to put on an LP hoping that might ease things. He actually thinks it's now just great which confuses me as I had always respected his thoughts but this massive change in his system just doesn't make any sense to me. Luckily for me he now had a very loud hum which needed to be sorted which took us so long there was now no time to listen again thank goodness! I am not kidding you but he must have increased the bass content six fold! 

This situation has put me in a very big quandry as i now have no intention of ever sitting in that room ever again. I know I would completely destroy my hearing if i allow that. My quandary in not wanting to fall out with my friend of 40 or more years is not the reason I am telling all this no its the situation that a pair of speakers being put into a room that just does not suite them at all. I don't actually have any opinions of the Proac's as I feel I have not been allowed to hear them where they should be, away from the rear wall instead of nearly touching it and sitting less than 2 metres away with no space behind meaning I have the rear wall only a few centimetres away, i.e in a far bigger room.

This all happened a couple of weeks before Xmas so perhaps he has now realised his mistake and has returned them to the dealer but he hasn't let me know that yet. If he is now happy so be it but I for one will not be going for another listen thats for sure, my ears are far too valuable to me. I must also add that he has no Naim gear at all, if he had I would not have written this! 

What that demonstrates is not the wrong speakers for the room, but the difference in two people's taste and liking for bass (and one wonders which, if either, is close to the 'real thing; (the sound of the music as intended or as played live - when with some music it would be enough to feel through the vibration of your clothes...). I've certainly known people who have a strange aversion to bass, and others who revel in it - but what is right for the individual is what they like.

As for destroying hearing, for the time you are likely to be a visitor, it is not so much the frequency but the sound pressure level, and if only there as an occasional visitor for just a few hours it can be pretty loud before risk is significant.

It’s a lot like food. There’s authentic, and then there’s adapted to local tastes. 

I stay away from stuff that’s too authentic. Or from too generic. Somewhere in the middle is a happy medium / contemporary fusion.

I purchased a pair of Totem Sky towers for the second smaller system a month or so back & have been very happy with the choice.  Being they are in the second system (which is in the family room, not my dedicated room so not as critical with the sound), I only listened to them at the dealers before their purchase.  Could have brought them home for a home demo, but Totems generally take some time to run in & the dealer demo's weren't close to being broken in.  I took a chance from what I've heard from them at shows, etc & don't have any regrets.  They are a very musical speakers that's just fun to listen too.  Now they are currently being driven by a Nuprime IDA-8, so I feel the speakers are being held back by the electronics but with better gear upstream, I feel they are rather revealing for their price range.  Bass output is great for their size (room size 12x19')  & don't find them forward sounding in a non treated room but the IDA-8 is probably considered on the warm side of neutral.  I also find them very natural/good timbre for their price point.  They do take time to fully run in, another dealer who's ears I trust said min 100 hrs & they will get even better at 3-400hrs.  Probably have somewhere ~100 hrs on mine & can say that while they still sounded not bad when new, they have improved & opened up, etc.    

As mentioned, the Tribe towers might also be a good match to room size & your front end if budget allows.  I have only heard them at show's but the size of sound they were able to throw (& the amount of bottom end) in a rather large demo space (larger room was split in half but still had to be at least ~ 20 x 20' with probably 15' ceilings) was impressive to say the least.

Both of these will play well fairly close to the rear wall, I'm currently ~12" from the rear of the speaker to the wall.  Haven't played with positioning too much but had to pull them out slightly from where I started as they became too bottom end heavy (bass quality still wasn't too bad just more bottom end then I wanted).

If you like the X2's, what about the X3's?  Believe these will also work in smaller rooms & are a great speaker, for me they were more then I wanted to spend for the second system.  The Spendor A7 is also worth a listen if budget allows, I've heard this at my dealer's in a smaller room & was impressed.  It is a better sounding speaker then the Sky tower but here, at over double the price it should be.

I'll try to listen to the Towers before making a decision. Until then, the X2s are good. I've got the Titans planned for the big system - so probably not a great idea to spend $$ on the PMCs right now.

The PMCs are growing on me though... (Maybe it's the Fact12s I need and not the Titans). :-)

The other thing is though - I don't remember the last time I actually sat down and did some real listening. Maybe anything would sound wonderful if I did that.

The Fact 12s are great speakers - yes, not as capable as the MB2, but I thought they’d be great as long as not trying to play on too large a scale.

daren_p posted:

The Spendor A7 is also worth a listen if budget allows, I've heard this at my dealer's in a smaller room & was impressed.  

Amen. I suggested the A7 or D7 earlier in this thread for the same reasons.

Mohit, get yourself to Gig Harbor Audio and give Spendors a listen. Well worth a trip across the Tacoma Narrows bridge. Erik is a unique dealer with a very different sales approach; he has no sales approach, only customer satisfaction in mind. A very different listening experience in his unconventional shop with an eclectic mix of brands.

Seems Erik may have 'discovered' the key to selling :-)

Yes - good reminder. He also has the shahinians and the neat xplorers.

Why not move up the Kudos range? When I tested X2s I decided to go for the C2s as I thought they were better. There are higher-end ones available in that family. Have had them in small rooms with not much problem, though they've always been about 30cm from the back wall.

I had the C2s at one time - too big for that room. 

Back in the day I kept bouncing around changing things. I finally took my wife along to listen to speakers at a dealer. She chose Rogers LS3/5a's and we had the same system for 36 years (true). When I finally decided to upgrade I sold those speakers for $1,000 in about an hour. They were a bit battered and cost only $450. It turns out I could have got $2K for them.

More recently I went through the same process constantly changing things. The first time my wife heard Harbeth 30.1's she turned to me and said "now that is perfect". I had been married long enough to get the message. 

Unfortunately, circumstances forced me to sell off my audio system. When things changed I began looking for new speakers. After trying different speakers I couldn't find ones that didn't have a problem in my small space. I finally did what I should have done in the first place, i bought 40th Anniversary Harbeth 30.2's. They work perfectly in the small space and remind me of what my wife liked so much. I'm now content. If my wife liked them, they must be the right ones.

Bud

Stephen Tate posted:

Seeing as though you appear to be looking for something rather 'lively' at or around the PMC 25.23 price bracket? then what about having a look at some Russell K RED 120 floorstanders, assuming that these are available to you of course. Compact too.

Has anyone heard these yet?

Back in the day I kept bouncing around changing things. I finally took my wife along to listen to speakers at a dealer. She chose Rogers LS3/5a's and we had the same system for 36 years (true). When I finally decided to upgrade I sold those speakers for $1,000 in about an hour. They were a bit battered and cost only $450. It turns out I could have got $2K for them.

More recently I went through the same process constantly changing things. The first time my wife heard Harbeth 30.1's she turned to me and said "now that is perfect". I had been married long enough to get the message. 

Unfortunately, circumstances forced me to sell off my audio system. When things changed I began looking for new speakers. After trying different speakers I couldn't find ones that didn't have a problem in my small space. I finally did what I should have done in the first place, i bought 40th Anniversary Harbeth 30.2's. They work perfectly in the small space and remind me of what my wife liked so much. I'm now content. If my wife liked them, they must be the right ones.

Bud

Well Bud, at least your clearly beloved wife is one  good constant. ????

ATB Peter

I have always really enjoyed Totem speakers. Another brand that is here in the US that matches we'll with Naim is Dali.  If you have a chance give an a listen . 

Good Luck

I'm not sure if/when I would switch from the harbeth m30.1 but i could definitely use a bit more and fleshed out bass. I've long been a dynaudio fan (never owned however) and just heard the c30 and s40. I think I would want a floorstander - the c30 is more of a wishful thinking - $$$$.But (if in no rush) their is a new line coming- "evoke" (I started another thread on them). From what i have found they seem to be priced more like the excite line and worth considering.