what is your dream speaker...

[Tarheel_]

me? I dream (pray) of a pair of Revel F52 or JMlab Utopia speakers in my living room.

Anyone else?

[Ajani]

me? I dream (pray) of a pair of Revel F52 or JMlab Utopia speakers in my living room.

Anyone else?

Revel Ultima Studio 2 or Monitor Audio Platinum 200...

[budgetaudio76]

if by dream speaker, you mean If only i had the money speakers.

I kept reading about tannoy speakers and i would think to my self. If onloy i had the money and i would day dream. Now i have a pair of Monitor gold 12 inchers. In mallorcan cabs.

So in other words i have my dream speakers. For a steal.

[dakatabg]

I wouldn't mind if I get the kappas 9

[Luvin Da Blues]

....but a very strong running for my next speaker purchase. ML Vantage, if I can find a used/demo pair or the Ethos which replaced them.

[Hyfi]

I have heard the Utopias and many other killer speakers but after owning these Cleafields that Von Schweikert, I would go for the VR9se

[Geoffcin]

I'm sorry to say that I've never have a chance to listen to these yet. Still, I wouldn't turn them down if a pair came my way...

[02audionoob]

I'd like to have the Dali Mentor Menuet...

[JohnMichael]

Devore Gibbon 3 and for a cost no object dream the Magico Mini's.

[TheHills44060]

Audio Physic Kronos

[dakatabg]

I'm sorry to say that I've never have a chance to listen to these yet. Still, I wouldn't turn them down if a pair came my way...

wow those look so good. So many tweeters! What is the brand and model? I have never seen them before!

[JoeE SP9]

IRS-V's or Apogee Grand's would be nice but my room just ain't big enough. I'd settle for the Studio Grand's or IRS Beta's. I couldn't find a better picture of the Studio Grand's

[RGA]

Well It's my dream speaker and will be my next speaker - although if I had the cash I would certainly consider the Trenner and Freidl RA Box and Acapella High Violoncello II

But it will be an Audio Note AN E or upper J

[Geoffcin]

wow those look so good. So many tweeters! What is the brand and model? I have never seen them before!

I'm sorry! These are the Genesis 1.2. Based on the Infinity IRS tech, this speaker has garnered awe since the late 70's when the first of these speakers were designed.

http://www.genesisloudspeakers.com/g1p2.html

Dynamic compression would occur somewhere north of a realistic level B1 flyover with full afterburners ignited. (I've heard that!)

[Poultrygeist]

Field Coils

[Feanor]

This sounds like fun!!

Accepting my current listening room as a given -- a concession to sanity -- I think I stick with a planar. Maybe Sound Lab M-2PX or Magneplanar MG 3.6R or Quad ESL-2805

... ...

[eisforelectronic]

Audio Physic Kronos

Really? Have you heard the Kronos? I have been wondering how good it sounded. I have 2 friends that have the Caldera's. Very nice!!

[Florian]

Hi Joe,

there is an SG in Europe for 6K... Let me know

[Luvin Da Blues]

Hi Joe,

there is an SG in Europe for 6K... Let me know

Drool, the freight to NA would be a killer I think. SGs for the price of the ML Vantage, hmmmmm.

Very Tempting.

PS; Hey Flo, long time.

[Raj J]

me? I dream (pray) of a pair of Revel F52 or JMlab Utopia speakers in my living room.

Anyone else?

greetings from melbourne!
I have fortunately already achieved this! I have the Quad ESL 2905, driven with all conrad johnson amplification + the awesome state of the art ACT2 preamp from c-j, and everything else falls into place very nicely.
just the other night I was at the basement discs lounge listening to a small jazz group - piano, up-right bass (acoustic), guitar, drums & vocals by some lovely looking indonesian girl, sang everything from Astrud Gilberto's girl from Ipenama to Natalie Coles route 66, the sound was absolutely stunning!

went home and fired up my system - the ESL 2905's reproduced the same scale with ease, absolutely effortless... drive from the c-j amps. yes, I am already anjoying my dream system.

mind you some of those pics, especially the inifinity IRSV's I have heard them! they require a very large room, and some heavy amplification. personally I didn't like them at all! I preferred the inifinity renaisance 90's and the epsilons, much better focus and cohesiveness. then came along the sonus faber stradevari and blew the infinities out of the park! then came along the Wilson alexandria (current wilson top of the line speaker) and blows everything out of the planet! but hey, it's not just the speakers mate... you have to drive these top quality systems with some mega buck amplification, otherwise they will sound like a mediocre type; therefore with any of these huge setups, you are looking at around 300+ grand for a system, and that's excluding the cables/interconnects, add another 100 grand here so in total your lookign at around a cool 500 grand for a system like that - yea right! this is defintely a dream for many!

as for me, I did it under 60 grand and it manages to reproduce the "absolute sound".
cheers, and enjoy your MUSIC - NOT the system!
very few so called music lovers & audiophiles can really understand this...
RJ

[Ajani]

as for me, I did it under 60 grand and it manages to reproduce the "absolute sound".
cheers, and enjoy your MUSIC - NOT the system!
very few so called music lovers & audiophiles can really understand this...
RJ

It's easy to say Enjoy your music - not the system, when you have a $60K setup... The challenge is to enjoy the music with a $600 setup...

[Raj J]

yes! I do certainly agree on that no doubt.

BUT this is where those big money spendors go terribly wrong! my system on current retail value would cost close to 60 grand - I have not spent anywhere near that! It has taken me around 20 years to get to the system I currently have!
I have worked endless hours in approx 13 different jobs spanning the USA, UK, Canada Germany, Thailand, India, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka & now Australia. hence I have worked hard and have earned it! I have mentioned before how exactly I upgrade my equipment with my respected dealers around the world. since I believe in customer relationships, being the marketing manager for a reputed training organization in Australia, it took me 5 years to get the Quads! when I buy something I carefully use it, and save as much as possible and then trade in with an upgrade purchase. if I was to buy it out right at current retail value, then my system in total would be well over 60 grand.

just because you have the big bucks and like to throw money around doesn't mean you are smart! I have come across many so called audiophiles who have outstanding speaker systems driven with some low-end yamaha or denon amplification for home theatre and they claim it sounds fantastic! to them yes perhaps, and they have spent nearly 30 grand just for the speakers and wires! but honestly a little highend tube system driving a pair of monitor grade sonus fabers or proacs beats it out of the park! in terms of musicality...

very few people in this ultra highend category ever get it right mate, believe me, and like you said since they have spent over 600 grand for a system, they cannot seem to enjoy the music when the next door neighbor is enjoying his two-in-one boom box and having parties & more chics than you can ever imagine!

all I can say is - "good on him!" well done mate and do enjoy your music.
I had a close associate (who sadly is no longer a friend due to getting my dam fingers burnt with his rich class ideals) - almost every 3-4 months or so he would purchase a new top of the line system. from magneplanars to infinity IRS, MBL, to Avant garde duo to the Trio classico, to VMPS and some other massive driver type. various amps, preamps, truntables, vacuum tube cd players, dacs, transports you name it, all top notch brands. he was a real show off and thought he had the best in the country! at the end of the day his music collection was just a handful of cd's & LP's nothing more than 20 or 30 albums, plus he never listened to one album at a stretch, not even one full track length; rather he would just listen to the opening track (couple minutes) and then switch discs to show off the bass or mids or highs or some slam here & there that the speakers can reproduce.

very sad indeed, because there was another fellow down the road who had a simple NAD system with some home made speakers and some very old proac speakers called "tablets". although this old chaps system's total cost was equivalent to 1.5m pair of audio note interconnects - the satisfaction he was getting out of his system was tremendous and this chap had more of a music collection than I have ever seen in my life! the walls were covered with either cd's, LP's or tapes... this guy had it all from Harry Bela Fonte to Gim Reeves! now this is what I call "enjoying your music"

the rich chap never ever really enjoyed his music, and this lesson I learnt the hard way. keep what you've got until you are mature enough to upgrade to the next level. stop dreaming and just be satisfied with what you have achieved. look back at those first years of your system, and see if you were enjoying your music more then compared to now with your mega grand system - if so something's terribly wrong somewhere...
plus who gives a rats about the next door's ultra highend... I am enjoying my music and that's all that matters - really!
cheers,
RJ

[RGA]

Ajani

Don't associate price with quality or enjoyment. Quality is a factor and $600 is next to impossible to create a good system with but $6000 certainly is very possible to make a very accomplished set-up.

Design, Room size, how much bass is needed, design, type of music you need it to play, and did I mention design.

Design is a key factor because if you "like" something of a certain design type then you may very well like a certain design of speaker at $4k over other designs at $30,000. I would not trade my speakers in for the majority of speakers in the $10k - $40k range that I heard at CES and other locations. Some in that range I liked a whole lot as well but still didn't do enough things better that would convince me to say it is truly worth spending the extra money. Some were designed for bigger rooms of course which if I had such a big room would make me switch. But the "design" and the quality of sound trumps the quantity of sound.

This also applies to SET amplification where to my ear relatively modest Single ended power has a certain magic and truth not captured by drop jaw prices of high powered Solid State. I also find that with the design of zero oversampling CD players. The result is that I could put together a $15k -20k system that I would take in a second over the top Wilson, Soundlab, Avalon, Vandersteen, Scaena, Infinity IRS beta(in Seoul), Quad, JM Labs rooms I heard at very very high end prices. Spending more within a company line will get you more.

The top Vandersteen or JM Labs etc will sound generally better than their lower models so if you like the house sound it is worth the money but if you prefer a competing brand's house sound better than the house sound of Vandersteen then it is very possible to like a $5k speaker over a $45k+ speaker.

The other aspect is some companies are simply more efficient or less greedy. Two companies could build very similar loudspeakers and one company may charge $4k and another may charge $14k. One company may be smaller and own their shop and have a smaller 5-1 mark-up another company may be spending more on advertising, spending large on overhead and expecting a personal salary of $5million per year while the other guy is happy to make $200,000 a year. Factor in the companies operating in China, quantity of sales or pricing to where they feel their product fits against the competition. Also, some designs may require more expensive parts to get the result they want (even if it isn't as good as what another company can achieve using less expensive parts).

To give you an example of people's views on design and price audiofederation has done a series of reviews of high power solid state and lower powered tube amps. They list them from least good to best in given areas. They have sold and auditioned them all. You will see for example that they feel ASL and Manley does better in certain areas than much more expensive Cary amplifiers. http://audiofederation.com/blog/archives/741 they note that a dash means the differences are not that large. A dash with an arrow means that basically the amps following the dash-arrow is a major step up. Price still factors in because there are no cheapies at the top but there is still a lot of cheaper amps that do better than much more expensive ones. It's an interesting way to try and evaluate and compare stuff. They did the larger power amps here and again very expensive didn't always do well - some were pretty poor for them http://audiofederation.com/blog/archives/656

[Ajani]

yes! I do certainly agree on that no doubt.

BUT this is where those big money spendors go terribly wrong! my system on current retail value would cost close to 60 grand - I have not spent anywhere near that! It has taken me around 20 years to get to the system I currently have!
I have worked endless hours in approx 13 different jobs spanning the USA, UK, Canada Germany, Thailand, India, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka & now Australia. hence I have worked hard and have earned it! I have mentioned before how exactly I upgrade my equipment with my respected dealers around the world. since I believe in customer relationships, being the marketing manager for a reputed training organization in Australia, it took me 5 years to get the Quads! when I buy something I carefully use it, and save as much as possible and then trade in with an upgrade purchase. if I was to buy it out right at current retail value, then my system in total would be well over 60 grand.

just because you have the big bucks and like to throw money around doesn't mean you are smart! I have come across many so called audiophiles who have outstanding speaker systems driven with some low-end yamaha or denon amplification for home theatre and they claim it sounds fantastic! to them yes perhaps, and they have spent nearly 30 grand just for the speakers and wires! but honestly a little highend tube system driving a pair of monitor grade sonus fabers or proacs beats it out of the park! in terms of musicality...

very few people in this ultra highend category ever get it right mate, believe me, and like you said since they have spent over 600 grand for a system, they cannot seem to enjoy the music when the next door neighbor is enjoying his two-in-one boom box and having parties & more chics than you can ever imagine!

all I can say is - "good on him!" well done mate and do enjoy your music.
I had a close associate (who sadly is no longer a friend due to getting my dam fingers burnt with his rich class ideals) - almost every 3-4 months or so he would purchase a new top of the line system. from magneplanars to infinity IRS, MBL, to Avant garde duo to the Trio classico, to VMPS and some other massive driver type. various amps, preamps, truntables, vacuum tube cd players, dacs, transports you name it, all top notch brands. he was a real show off and thought he had the best in the country! at the end of the day his music collection was just a handful of cd's & LP's nothing more than 20 or 30 albums, plus he never listened to one album at a stretch, not even one full track length; rather he would just listen to the opening track (couple minutes) and then switch discs to show off the bass or mids or highs or some slam here & there that the speakers can reproduce.

very sad indeed, because there was another fellow down the road who had a simple NAD system with some home made speakers and some very old proac speakers called "tablets". although this old chaps system's total cost was equivalent to 1.5m pair of audio note interconnects - the satisfaction he was getting out of his system was tremendous and this chap had more of a music collection than I have ever seen in my life! the walls were covered with either cd's, LP's or tapes... this guy had it all from Harry Bela Fonte to Gim Reeves! now this is what I call "enjoying your music"

the rich chap never ever really enjoyed his music, and this lesson I learnt the hard way. keep what you've got until you are mature enough to upgrade to the next level. stop dreaming and just be satisfied with what you have achieved. look back at those first years of your system, and see if you were enjoying your music more then compared to now with your mega grand system - if so something's terribly wrong somewhere...
plus who gives a rats about the next door's ultra highend... I am enjoying my music and that's all that matters - really!
cheers,
RJ

RJ,

I understand that you put a lot of work into building your dream setup. Clearly you are not one of the "idle rich" who swaps out $100K speakers as often as a pair of socks. However, my point is really that criticizing such persons, when you have now accumulated a $60K setup, opens you up to unnecessary ridicule... Keep in mind that for most persons (even many audiophiles) $60K is a ridiculous amount of money for a stereo... So whether your stereo is worth $60K, $160K or $460K becomes irrelevant and you get lumped in the same category as the crazy rich... Unfortunate since you had to work hard for your system...

[Ajani]

Ajani

Don't associate price with quality or enjoyment. Quality is a factor and $600 is next to impossible to create a good system with but $6000 certainly is very possible to make a very accomplished set-up.

Design, Room size, how much bass is needed, design, type of music you need it to play, and did I mention design.

Design is a key factor because if you "like" something of a certain design type then you may very well like a certain design of speaker at $4k over other designs at $30,000. I would not trade my speakers in for the majority of speakers in the $10k - $40k range that I heard at CES and other locations. Some in that range I liked a whole lot as well but still didn't do enough things better that would convince me to say it is truly worth spending the extra money. Some were designed for bigger rooms of course which if I had such a big room would make me switch. But the "design" and the quality of sound trumps the quantity of sound.

This also applies to SET amplification where to my ear relatively modest Single ended power has a certain magic and truth not captured by drop jaw prices of high powered Solid State. I also find that with the design of zero oversampling CD players. The result is that I could put together a $15k -20k system that I would take in a second over the top Wilson, Soundlab, Avalon, Vandersteen, Scaena, Infinity IRS beta(in Seoul), Quad, JM Labs rooms I heard at very very high end prices. Spending more within a company line will get you more.

The top Vandersteen or JM Labs etc will sound generally better than their lower models so if you like the house sound it is worth the money but if you prefer a competing brand's house sound better than the house sound of Vandersteen then it is very possible to like a $5k speaker over a $45k+ speaker.

The other aspect is some companies are simply more efficient or less greedy. Two companies could build very similar loudspeakers and one company may charge $4k and another may charge $14k. One company may be smaller and own their shop and have a smaller 5-1 mark-up another company may be spending more on advertising, spending large on overhead and expecting a personal salary of $5million per year while the other guy is happy to make $200,000 a year. Factor in the companies operating in China, quantity of sales or pricing to where they feel their product fits against the competition. Also, some designs may require more expensive parts to get the result they want (even if it isn't as good as what another company can achieve using less expensive parts).

To give you an example of people's views on design and price audiofederation has done a series of reviews of high power solid state and lower powered tube amps. They list them from least good to best in given areas. They have sold and auditioned them all. You will see for example that they feel ASL and Manley does better in certain areas than much more expensive Cary amplifiers. http://audiofederation.com/blog/archives/741 they note that a dash means the differences are not that large. A dash with an arrow means that basically the amps following the dash-arrow is a major step up. Price still factors in because there are no cheapies at the top but there is still a lot of cheaper amps that do better than much more expensive ones. It's an interesting way to try and evaluate and compare stuff. They did the larger power amps here and again very expensive didn't always do well - some were pretty poor for them http://audiofederation.com/blog/archives/656

I don't equate price with quality or enjoyment... I've heard expensive gear that sounds like crap to me... Also I agree that (other than buying used/DIY and putting a LOT of sweat equity into the project) it is next to impossible to build a truly satisfying system for $600... Also I totally agree that $6K is a very reasonable price point. My favourite small room stereo costed exactly $6K (when the components were available)...

However, I would expect that if you have $60K available there really is no excuse for not being able to put together an utterly brilliant system... Sure, you might be so rich that you trade out gear for the hell of it, but if you aren't then I would expect you to put together a fantastic system...