Help, Need the Best Speaker for music under $500.00 pair

[m500]

I been shopping around for a pair of 2 channel music speaker that would give me what I'm looking for from my 30 year old JBL. I needed something elegant looking, rich/warm mid for vocal and crystal clear high for Piano and a punchy bass for listening to R&Bs. What are my choices? Thanks. My receiver is arriving this week a Yamaha RXV660 but I still don't have a speaker yet. So far the only 3 speaker I listen to that I kind of like are in $800 range. Monitor audio radius 270, Martin Logan Montage, Definitive technology BP7004.

[bwithers]

Check out the paradigm monitor series (especially the monitor 7's) if you can get them for $500.

[3db]

http://stereophile.com/loudspeakerreviews/1204psb/

[RGA]

The best thing to do is just go to every high end dealer you can make it to and just listen to speakers in your price range and decide from that -- if we throw name brands at you you might go and look them up and then get biased towards the advertising or visuals or techno lingo -- when all that matters is how the product performs.

Phone ahead to the dealers and ask them to set up several speakers in your price range that they like or would recommend for the money...finding a trustworthy dealer is hard but not impossible and they can be more valuable than anything else as tertiary guides of information.

Then plan to spend 4-6 hours listening to the gear -- take a lunch break and come back -- or go back several times...bring your favorite music and let them play stuff you're unfamiliar with (this takes out expectation bias cues you have of the music you know well).

Don;t pay attention to salespeople who try to seduce you with ANTYTHING other than the listening sessions -- if they start blathering about the companies' reputation or the reviews (everything gets a great review but that doesn;t mean you will like it) or technobabble then it means they don't feel they can sell you on the sound (or they're just not very good staff). Try and locate a place that sells at least 5 speaker lines that seem to cover a broad price range.

It doesn't matter what your budget is you can find the good the bad and the ugly and often (though not always) the most hyped, like movies, are the least good.

Good luck.

[poneal]

best post I think I have ever read from you RGA. Something must have happened. Keep up the good work. Regards, Paul.

[abstracta]

I'm with RGA to go out and audition, but man, I still think the Athena FS-2's might be the best $500 bang per buck on the market.

[Shwamdoo]

I would recommend Epos, NHT, and PSB. They all make great speakers known for there value. Focal, B&W, and Paradigm are fairly popular brands that you should consider as well. Stereophile recommends Athena Techologies, although I have personaly never heard a pair. Other than that, there are gazilons of little speaker companies that make speakers in your price range. Like RGA said, the best way to find what you want is to call a local audio dealer and go have an audition. Don't take someone else's word for it, hear it yourself.

P.S. A great way to find a dealer is to make a list of the speakers you want to hear, visit the manufacture's website, and compile a list of local dealers that cary multiple speakers which you want to hear. This way, you can kill 2 or even 3 birds with one stone.

P.S.S YAY for dead birds...

[paul_pci]

I too agree with RGA, but will, nevertheless throw out a brand since you have a specific budget. B&W 601 s.3 can be had for around $450/pr. Great soundstage and bass for that price point I thought.

[Florian]

Best post from RGA ever, and i totally agree for the first time
If you can find a older used pair of Martin Logans or a used pair of Maggies than i personally would listen to those as you seem to listen to natural recordings. Does AN make anything in this pricerange? The only Maggies in this range is the small 299$ MMG-W or the 550$ MMG's with a 60 day trial-

[abstracta]

I forgot, this is actually the "Two Way Speaker" dinner music forum. My apologies.

The 601's have hardly would I call "punchy bass", or any B/W for that matter. I love the clarity on B/W's +$1000 offerings, but I've readily thumped my friend's 601's with my Alesis Studio monitors on the mid/low end at 1/2 the price.

I just sent back my pair of Magnepan MMG's, and one reason is I actually like R&B to sound like R&B and found the MMG's were lousy at that genre. The MMG's made Alicia Keys' sound like Cindy Lauper.

So, in all honesty, may I ask why you guys recommend B/W and Magnepan, when neither speaker is what M500 is looking for if you bothered readin his post? Maybe...Wilson?

M500, look at the Athenas. I think these guy's heads would explode if they every heard an octave below a typical two way crossover anyways.

[Florian]

May everyone listen to what they like, i recommend Maggies, Apogee's, Focal, and Avalon.

-Flo

[RGA]

Best post from RGA ever, and i totally agree for the first time
If you can find a older used pair of Martin Logans or a used pair of Maggies than i personally would listen to those as you seem to listen to natural recordings. Does AN make anything in this pricerange? The only Maggies in this range is the small 299$ MMG-W or the 550$ MMG's with a 60 day trial-

Yes Audio Note makes the AX Two at $549.00US(a $999 version with upgraded cabinetry can be purchased but apparently the cheaper one sounds better)-- so far it's my favorite sub $1k speaker. The AX One which is $350.00US I would avoid however as the front porting makes it sound too much like a boxed speaker and clutters up the vocal band a bit too much. It's not bad for $350 but it doesn't separate itself from the class of speakers in the price range.

[RGA]

I

So, in all honesty, may I ask why you guys recommend B/W and Magnepan, when neither speaker is what M500 is looking for if you bothered readin his post? Maybe...Wilson?

M500, look at the Athenas. I think these guy's heads would explode if they every heard an octave below a typical two way crossover anyways.

This is exactly why he should simply listen to gear -- I agree with you on your points -- the 602S3 however does have enough bass power for most small medium rooms and is vastly superior for amplified music to the 705 and it's cheaper too.

I was impressed with the Athena floorstander and a klipsch floorstander which has high sensitivity a similar treble response to the Athena interestingly enough and can play louder with more room filling ability than these other speakers.

Your assessment of the MMG is similar to my listening with the SMG and 3.6 -- where they do seem to have it over a lot of boxed speakers is on acoustic instrumental music such as stringed guitar violin and brass instruments and vocals -- with woody instruments such as piano and amplified music with heavier drums iswhere they ran into trouble for me.

Still they are worth a try - there is a myth that boxed is somehow evil -- most all recording studios use a direct radiating boxed speaker.

[SAPSEC]

Best choices : BW-303 or KEF Q1

[Geoffcin]

Your personal insults to our character will not be accepted in this forum. Also it is apperent that you have neither the knowledge nor the experience with the given speakers. I have owned personally the real Magnepan models such as the 1.6QR and 3.6R/SE and i have driven them with exclusive electronics from Pathos and Krell. There is no doubt that Magnepan has a 99% customer satisfaction quote and that the MMG's were poorely driven and had a poor setup. The Magnepans or any other planar for that matter will not color the sound and change a females voice. You properbly just never heard uncolored sound in the first place. We make recommendations based on our experiences and share those.

-Florian

I think that my Apogee Scintilla's with a flat response to 20Hz can very well play the octave below, and besides there are two way designs from AN that reach 18Hz. This comment only shows your lack of knowledge.

First you chide the writer for insulting "our" character (I peronally didn't see any offence on his part), and then you go an insult him by accusing him of not having any knowlage of what he's talking about?

Now, these things are OK for most people posting here, but as you are a moderator now, you can't go insulting members, or claiming that their posts will not be tolerated just because they don't agree with you.

[Florian]

This was before i became a moderator, and i ment no offence. I will retract my statment and go back to listening.

-Flo

[Geoffcin]

I been shopping around for a pair of 2 channel music speaker that would give me what I'm looking for from my 30 year old JBL. I needed something elegant looking, rich/warm mid for vocal and crystal clear high for Piano and a punchy bass for listening to R&Bs. What are my choices? Thanks. My receiver is arriving this week a Yamaha RXV660 but I still don't have a speaker yet. So far the only 3 speaker I listen to that I kind of like are in $800 range. Monitor audio radius 270, Martin Logan Montage, Definitive technology BP7004.

Not as easy as it sounds. The classic "West Coast" sound that JBL has is hard to come by now. You can still get JBL by the way, although not with the "classic" sound.
While I don't really like the new sound, the flagship of the line, the E100, really cranks out SPL. They have these at Best Buy, so it's pretty easy to check them out To my ears the Athenas are the best speaker at best buy, although not by much.

The speakers that I would reccomend in the $500 range are Cambridge Soundworks M80's. With a classic real wood venier look, and the punchy sound of an acoustic suspension woofer, they might be whoat your looking for. The major difference would be that the tweeters responce is NOT forward, as you would get from a classic JBL with the "west Coast sound.

[Geoffcin]

This was before i became a moderator, and i ment no offence. I will retract my statment and go back to listening.

-Flo

Congrat's on the new job!!!

[VAB]

I agree on the B&W DM601 s3 suggestion. These have a nice open sound and the bass is deeper than I expected. As always internet forums contain a lot of VERY SUBJECTIVE information. There are too many variables at play, i.e., the room (big part), the rest of the system, personal bias etc. Go out and listen to a few brands.

[m500]

Thanks for all the advise here. I wend down to a not so local PSB authorized dealer 85 miles away from me for a good listen and ended up spending way more money that I intended to but I got my self a pair of MB Quart QLS-830 which is something I really really wanted. After hearing NHT, PSB, Waferdale and MB Quart back and force in the show room. It just so obvious to my ear that MB Quart QLS-830 is way superior then every single one of them I had heard for the pass 3 weeks of speaker shopping. So, I let my heart does that shopping instead of my brain.

[Selvyn]

What about the Ascend Acoustics CBM170 ? It seems to get very good reviews and I was wondering what you guys thought about it ? I don't see much discussion about it here and I've never heard it myself .