Quote Originally Posted by RGA View Post
The AN J and E are standmounts but compete with full range floorstanders - no other standmount that I have heard does that for anything remotely an affordable price. All standmounts I have heard sound like puny ass little speakers and for small money that is fine but at ~$3k it's too much money IMO to live without a huge spectrum of sound.

I prefer meat on the bones to my sound even if it comes with a little bit of grit.

The Reference 3a MM de Capo and and Audio Note AN K/SPE is about the bare minimum in bass and dynamics that I would be willing to accept and reason both are in my favorites in the price class. The K/Spe is a sealed box infinite baffle design and is not strictly speaking a corner loaded design. Though because it's sealed it works well in corners. The Decapo has more frequency response issues but a darker sound makes them more inviting with poorly recorded music. The K/Spe is not nice to lesser equipment so I only recommend them in certain situations.

When Hi-Fi Choice did their blind level matched sessions with the AN J the bass simply destroyed all the other speakers in the test so they had to pull it out and put them into their full range floorstander sessions - the AN J still won amongst the many listeners and they all commented that the bass still bettered the floorstanders. So while technically they are standmount speakers because they require a stand to get the tweeter at the correct height they ought to be considered floorstanders with regards to performance. This can't be said for the likes of the B&W N805s and all speakers that size and general shape - none of them ever even remotely perform like floorstanders.

There are some big standmounts from Harbeth like the M40 that have about the same general bass depth of the AN J. But it costs three times more money and is physically a lot larger - nice sounding IMO though.
Fair enough.. We don't disagree in major way on this one... I do generally prefer floorstanders and closer to fullrange sound...

Also, I wouldn't buy the B&W 805S as I feel they are too bass light and bright... However, there are monitors that deliver bass comparable to a small floorstander (not fullrange and likely not as impressive as the AN J but still much better than the the usual monitors)... The Dynaudio Focus 140 mentioned earlier will deliver good bass (though I really don't like the tweeter - way too laid back for me)... & the Revel Performa M22 will provide good bass for most types of music as well... At $2.5K (including stands) I could live with the bass of the M22, above that I'd have to save up for $4K Towers...

So there's actually a gap in my buying range at the moment - up to $2.5K, I could live with Monitors (just not the really bass deficient, wimpy ones)... Above $4K I'd buy nothing but Towers... And currently between $2.5K and $4K, there's nothing I'd buy...