Sonus faber vs Marten

[RGA]

Just a note - some stores are "real homes" and as such listening in store with professional set-up - often by the makers themselves - then it should sound "better" in such stores than you will ever get it to sound in your home.

This is one kind of store for example A house in the hills with several rooms each with a dedicated stereo system.

Audio Federation - Extreme high-end home audio - Hear Everything!

[frenchmon]

Just a note - some stores are "real homes" and as such listening in store with professional set-up - often by the makers themselves - then it should sound "better" in such stores than you will ever get it to sound in your home.

This is one kind of store for example A house in the hills with several rooms each with a dedicated stereo system.

Audio Federation - Extreme high-end home audio - Hear Everything!

Negative...its not your gear.

[RGA]

Negative...its not your gear.

Not sure I understand. The idea is to hear a given product at its best - not to hear it the way it may sounds on your system. The fact what you heard in the store blows your system away in your house should tell you that you need to fix your room or replace your gear.

The premise often sighted by some audiophiles is that stores are worse because they're stores and not homes - and yet they offer zero reason for this.

The maker did not build his speakers to operate ONLY in one customers home. They SHOULD be designed to work in a number of different environments or they are LOUSY speaker designers.

I want to hear the product at its best - and if I can't get that in my home then it's the fault of my room or system. Not what the product is capable of.

Obviously a speaker like the new top Sony is great under show conditions - I can't get that because I don't have the space for the speakers - so it won't be on my shopping list - but the speaker itself is terrific even if I can't get those results in my home.

[Feanor]

Not sure I understand. The idea is to hear a given product at its best - not to hear it the way it may sounds on your system. The fact what you heard in the store blows your system away in your house should tell you that you need to fix your room or replace your gear.

The premise often sighted by some audiophiles is that stores are worse because they're stores and not homes - and yet they offer zero reason for this.

The maker did not build his speakers to operate ONLY in one customers home. They SHOULD be designed to work in a number of different environments or they are LOUSY speaker designers.

I want to hear the product at its best - and if I can't get that in my home then it's the fault of my room or system. Not what the product is capable of.

Obviously a speaker like the new top Sony is great under show conditions - I can't get that because I don't have the space for the speakers - so it won't be on my shopping list - but the speaker itself is terrific even if I can't get those results in my home.

A really silly line of reasoning. OK if your first priority is to listen to speakers. But if your interested in listening to music in you home, it's nonsense.

In a given situation a lot might be done with room treatments but there are often limits to what treatements a person can implement. Treated or not, you have listen where you live and you need a speaker that sounds right there.

[RGA]

Feanor:

No the silly line of reasoning is people who think that speaker X only sounds good in THEIR home. The dimwits who say - if it sounds bad in the store it is because the store's room is BAD and that you can't hope to hear how good it is until you take speaker X home.

The presumption is that stores are bad and homes are somehow cure all solutions. That applies to "some" extent to audio shows. I never quite get why these people think they can set up speaker X in their home and achieve better sound than the speaker X head designer setting up a room at a dealer (which by the way is often the case).

Good speakers should be designed to operate in a variety of rooms. Hence why the "best" loudspeakers that I have heard sound very very similar (and also good to phenomenal) across a wide range of rooms sizes and shapes. And some speakers I don't like that much also sound strikingly similar in every room I have tried them in. This is why many people who audition a Sonus Faber hear Sonus Faber the same way. 50 different people auditioning it in 50 different rooms and in most cases all of them draw the exact same conclusion - generally - polite laid back loudspeaker. Your preference for polite or laidback could be valid but in general most people hear them the exact same way - dealer show room or at home.

And no one is mistaking a Quad for a B&W - regardless of the room or if it has bass traps or equalizers because both speakers may produce a 1khz frequency at X decibels and sound completely different due to the sonic signature of the actual driver - a metal tweeter versus a stat or a ribbon or silk dome or what have you.

The room can be worked - if the speaker is any good and it's designed to work in the room size then it will sound as good or damn close in your house as it does at a show or a dealer. If it sounds bad there then why would it suddenly get better at home?

Granted most dealers I have been to suck - maybe I am just lucky to have been to competent dealers who actually know stuff about music, electronics, set-up, and products - and can repair everything.

Lastly - also tired of forumers who blather on about bad dealers when all they do is buy stuff off the net fiddle with it at home and then declare that what I heard at a dealer is bad because the dealer room is bad when they've never walked into said dealer.

I pointed out that audiofederation is an example of a dealer that is in a REAL house for the purposes of being a real room that can be typically found in the region.

Maybe if just once you actually bothered to make a trip and hear a quality audio system just once in your life you would get the picture.

[Feanor]

....
The presumption is that stores are bad and homes are somehow cure all solutions. That applies to "some" extent to audio shows. I never quite get why these people think they can set up speaker X in their home and achieve better sound than the speaker X head designer setting up a room at a dealer (which by the way is often the case).

Good speakers should be designed to operate in a variety of rooms. Hence why the "best" loudspeakers that I have heard sound very very similar (and also good to phenomenal) across a wide range of rooms sizes and shapes. ....

There's no such presumption on my part. But ultimately speakers have to work in my room, not some hypothetically ideal room, whether be the maker's, the dealer's, a hotel room, John Atkninson's, or the NRC's anechoic facility.

People talk about component synergies: the most important is the speaker with the room.

[RGA]

There's no such presumption on my part. But ultimately speakers have to work in my room, not some hypothetically ideal room, whether be the maker's, the dealer's, a hotel room, John Atkninson's, or the NRC's anechoic facility.

People talk about component synergies: the most important is the speaker with the room.

I kind of agree but only in a general way. A speaker designed for a small apartment sized living room versus a speaker designed to work 15 feet apart and 8 feet into a room that is 40 X 30 with 30 foot ceilings - and yeah room/speaker synergy trumps all. It doesn't if the rooms are all 12 X16 to 18 X 28 Whether you have carpets and Fred has hardwood - good speakers from good designers take those into account.

The vast majority of speakers on the market for example are designed for the anechoic room (or no room) response and are meant to remove the room effect - hence away from all room boundaries auditioned in the nearfield so you don't get the room's sound.

The only way the room is going to have a negative effect to these speakers is if you can't position the speaker in said "away from walls nearfield triangle" position, or if the room is outrageously out of whack in terms of size for the loudspeaker. If you hear said system in the correct set-up in the correct sized room and you can set the speaker up in your home the same way and the room size is appropriate then you can be (and should be if the maker is competent) fully assured you will get the same or very very very close to the same sound you heard at the dealer or show or buddies house.

And as I said the PROOF is the fact that people describe most speakers the exact same way - and that is because said speakers sound the same no matter what room they're in. Play a violin in your living room, bathroom and kitchen - the instrument still sounds the same. Sure there will be some difference but you're not mistaking it for a violoncello or cello - And a better instrument will sound better in the bathroom than a lesser instrument despite being a horrible acoustic space.

Room treatments fix rooms - not loudspeakers. If the room is bad and you fix it - it will be fixed for ALL loudspeakers that go into said room - especially if said loudspeakers are designed in the same general way - narrow baffle box for free standing position. A room that has a gross slap echo - has a gross slap echo no matter what speaker you put in the room. Get rid of slap echo it's gone for all loudspeakers you put in that room.

A speaker that sounds much better than another speaker sounds much better no matter what room you put it in (with room size the factor).

[frenchmon]

Not sure I understand. The idea is to hear a given product at its best - not to hear it the way it may sounds on your system. The fact what you heard in the store blows your system away in your house should tell you that you need to fix your room or replace your gear.

Hahahaha! Oh brother!

Im done RGA

[RGA]

Frenchmon

So you are saying that speakers are not designed to work in many different rooms. Yes or No. If yes you agree with me - if no you're cluless.

[frenchmon]

Frenchmon

So you are saying that speakers are not designed to work in many different rooms. Yes or No. If yes you agree with me - if no you're cluless.

I never said I agreed with that nor disagreed with that...I never even addressed that all.

But what I found laughable was you statement "The idea is....... not to hear it the way it may sounds on your system. "

[RGA]

Frenchmon

And you conveniently left out "The idea is to hear a given product at its best."

If said product sound MUCH better someplace else then you know what that product is capable of doing - and if you can't replicate that in your room with your system then your room or your system is at fault NOT the product.

An example of this would be my view of some panel loudspeakers - I had a judgment of them based on a number of years of listening to them with highly regarded solid state amps - in almost every case all of them sounded like utter crap. I tried them for over a decade in many different rooms with many different amps and it was almost always very underwhelming.

Then big panel lover and owner morricab I noticed was running entirely "wrong" amplifiers with said panels. Wrong in the sense that it is not a pairing I would have considered based on the spec sheets of the speakers and amps (and the fact that most panlphiles keep blathering about kilowatt amps are needed). What do you know he was right - and now hearing such combinations it was not really the speakers I was having issues with it was the speakers letting me know how truly bad the SS amps sound. For those of us with HF hearing it is stunningly apparent - those without may not be aggravated by the bad HF sound.

But if I took these speakers home and ran them with SS gear I would not hear what the speakers were actually capable of - so I would BLAME the speakers because after all my SS amp has enough power and has good specs so it must be the speaker's fault. If however I heard what Morricab heard with better gear I would not draw that initial conclusion and rather than blame the speakers in my room - I would put the amp on A-Gon immediately and get something that sounds good.

This is why shows and dealers can be vastly better than home auditions - because at a show or a dealer you often hear "the manufacturer's intent" with a mix and match you almost never achieve any sense of synergy. Why? Because most people own a system - say an Arcam amp, Cambridge Audio CD player, Wharfedale speakers, and some sort of wire.

This took said audiophile 5 years to build. He goes out and reads a magazine that Musical Fidelity is good - so he replaces the arcam amp with the MF. It's great he says and buys it. And then 3 months later something else is bugging him. And so the endless rotation of gear begins.

It is far better to actually know what the best sound is first - to actually know what a company sounds like. One eway is the complete system approach like Linn, Audio Note, Rega, Krell, Roksan, Grant Fidelity, and a number of other companies.

You have a baseline sound - you know what they're going for. You have no clue with most companies who don't make systems. The exception to this are those with common partners - Dynaudio with Octave amplifiers, Bryston and PMC and Bryston Magnepan, ARC/Wilson, Acapella/Einstein, Magico/Technical Brain, Boulder/JM Labs.

When you hear the best of these and you like one as your favorite then you have a baseline to get that sound in your house. It may mean buying the smaller version of the speaker but same house sound.

It is entirely logical to start here. This is not to say that down the road you may discover a better preamp from someone else but it makes more sense to start with an out of the box synergistic stereo system than playing the rotate the gear guesswork.

People on forums who give a list of three integrated amps they want to buy - all had good reviews which one should I buy. The Krell owner will say Krell - the NAD owner will say NAD, the Bryston owner will say Bryston - it's a joke since in almost every case - the person has never heard the amp with the OP's speaker and certainly not heard the OP's speaker with all three amplifiers.

Where I agree with you is if you have a SS system of Bryston lets say, and you listen to my speakers on tubes and love it then you may question whether it will still sound good in your room with SS amps - so you would want to try it at home to see how much worse it will sound (and it will sound so much worse on SS gear). So if this is your case it makes sense - but my case would be that the reason it sounds so much worse is because of the SS gear and not your room being slightly different than the show room.

So I do get your argument that if you are going to buy a product you want to hear how it plays well with your stereo system - I suppose I am looking at a bigger picture approach (which I admit is less financially feasible). My approach is saying to buy a complete stereo system - which is a large outlay of cash compared to buying a new CD player and 2 years later an amp (which is what most of us can only afford to do).

Still if you own B&W and Bryston and you love Dynaudio and Octave and your plan is to buy Dynaudio/Octave but you can only do one first - THEN I would agree with your point. You would have to take the Octave home first to see if the 40 watts will play with the B&Ws better - or would it be better to bring the Danes home first and run the Brystons. But the end goal is still the Dane/Octave you loved - and it will very likely sound very much the same as if you heard it in the showroom floor that is comparably sized to your home's living room.