Quote Originally Posted by funnyhat
Drseid, I read your review of the Linbrooks and you mentioned that you initially used the taylos with the titan sub for low frequency extension. Could you tell me how that worked out, especially in terms of integration. I listen to classical mainly, so I want to have as close to full range as possible, but would also like to stay as budget minded as I can. I guess my question is how obvious is the difference between a bookshelf with a sub (even hifi quality), and a full range floorstander?
The Taylos actually matched up with my ACI Titan II (now called the Titan) quite well actually. So well that when I originally "upgraded" to the Linbrook Signature Monitors by themselves, I felt it really was a sideways move (for more overall money than a paid for the Mini-monitor/Titan II combo). That is what compelled me to get the bass modules for the Linbrooks, forming the complete Linbrook System. With the bass modules in place (creating the full "system"), the Linbrook Signature Monitors become an entirely different speaker. So the bottom line is that I had to move up to a $5K/pr. speaker to upgrade from the Taylo Reference Monitor/Titan II combo that I was using before.

The bottom line is that yes, the Taylos can work well with a sub, and while the integration may not be *completely* perfect, with the *right* one it can work extremely well. The problem is there are only two sub companies on the market IMO that can create subs that are fast enough and allow you to tweak them well enough to work with the Taylos (with the exception of the $3000+ subs on the market that kind of defeat the savings purpose)... Those are ACI and REL. Both of these companies make fabulous musical subs that have fine tuning knobs to tweak the crossover for a very good integration. The downside is neither is inexpensive (REL in particular can be *very* expensive). An ACI Titan sub goes for about $1200+ nowadays, and the Taylos go for $1600, so you are looking at a minimum expenditure of $2800 for the combo (new). The Linbrook System II sells for $3200 from Tyler and will give you a slightly better overall performance than this combo... whether that $400 is worth it depends on the individual purchaser (and their budget).

---Dave