I'm back from my 3 audio store tours!!!!
It was a long day of listening, I left my house at 10:20 am I didn't come back until 5:40 pm, not time for lunch or break just driving from one side of the city to the other, then to downtown for the last store, I was hungry and tired but felt so fortunate for the experience I just had, that gave me a lot of more understanding of what is out there on my price range and especially something that you guys kept insisting on, the importance of making your own mind based on personal taste.
For every one of the stores I went to, I asked the rep to place the speakers together to try to simulate the closeness I have between the speakers at home as much as possible, and I sit a few feet from the speakers just like I do at home.
First Store
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Paradigm Premier 100B
- Loved them! what a nice sound coming from such a small speaker, a nice wide sound stage and a lot of details!
I asked him for more speakers on my price range he said he has the Klipsch, a few people advising me in this forum not to try it I said no
Focal (Don't remember the model)
They were $200 or $300 over my price range, but because there were a few options on the $1000 category I told the guy that I wanted to listen to them, those speakers look so nice, they were bigger and the finishing looked expensive.
To my surprise, I disliked the sound coming out of them, it had way more bass than all of the ones I tried, but the sound stage felt compressed, flat and all over the place, the instrument didn't sound separated, it was like something was off with those speakers.
After I kept asking him for another pair and he said there was nothing more in my price range, I asked him that I wanted to try the Klipsch, since there was nothing else.
Klipsch
I loved them! loved the big sound, the forwardness, the sound stage felt so big and so tall, that I had to keep checking how tall the speaker was because the voice seems to be coming from a place above the speakers.
Second Store:
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Monitor Audio Silver
Loved them! the audio was so clean, nice big audio stage.
Bower & Wilkins 607 S2
Love them! These ones have the cleaner sound of all the ones I listen to, the detail was amazing, big sound stage, I really like them.
Paradigm Premier 100B
Loved them again! big sound stage clean sound, and detail as in the previous store but maybe not as detailed as the Bower & Wilkins 607 S2
Third and last store (Downtown Toronto)
The rep asked me what amp I had at home and he came back with the A-S801 because he said it was the closest he had, that was really nice of him.
KEF LS50 Meta (blue color)
I disliked them, the sound was a bit flat, wasn't as detailed, the sound stage was wide and covering from speaker to speaker but it felt limited to the height of the speakers, it was like there was an invincible horizontal bar keeping the sound from breaking free and moving up.
No Pictures because I was tired by then and I just wanted to go home.
Bower & Wilkins 607 S2
In the same listening room, they already had the Brower and Wilkins and a pair of Totem, so after I finished listening to the KEF I tried the Bower & Wilkins again, and I loved them as much as I did in the previous store.
I didn't try the Totem because I was tired at that point and I had listened to so many good speakers by then, that I think I was ok to miss out on one of them.
A pattern started to emerged
I started to realize that other than the Focal and the KEF that I didn't like, I fell in love with every other speaker I listen to, and the pattern that was emerging was that the one I just finished listening to, sounded just a bit better than the one before. The only time it didn't happen was with the Paradigms in the second store, that as good and clean as they sounded, they didn't sound as detailed as the previous one (Bower & Wilkins) but not by a lot, honestly, at this point I don't even know if it was my own confirmation bias, so I have to listen to the two of them again in different order to be sure.
So my conclusion is that even though they all had one thing that made them stronger than the other, at that price range all the speakers I liked sounded so good, that the one thing was the factor that made them sound better than the previous one. Because as I was listening to the current one the sound memory of the one I just finished listening was already fainting and being replaced with the experience of how good the current one was sounding. I think that if I reverse the listening order I would still experience the same pattern of whatever is the current one will sound just a little bit better than the previous one.
This is when things got really crazy
When I arrived home my brain was storing all these clean sounds, so the moment I walked in I said to my wife, honey give me a sec I need to confirm something, I went to the office, unplugged the subwoofer and I said to my self let's see how good these $200 speakers really are, playing the same exact Hi-Res songs I used in every store. They sounded amazing, what a big sound stage! the voices floating over the sound stage, I heard every detail that I thought was hearing for the first time when listening to the Bower and Wilkins, the sound is so clean! I was thinking let's say this is not as good as the $1000 speakers I just finished listening to, because my brain doesn't have an accurate and reliable rewind feature, but I can categorically say that to me those $1000 speakers didn't sound more than 10% better than what I'm listening to right now.
When I was at all the stores they give me a private room so I could listen to the speakers as loud as I wanted to, well I did and in the last store I was filling the same listening discomfort, so I think the discomfort probably doesn't come from the speakers, but from the loud volumes I'm exposing my hearing to for long periods of time.
When I got home I called my audiophile friend and I told him how frustrated I was with my finding because I really wanted to buy the $1000 "better" pair of speakers, and he made a point that I think it could be valid, he said: Alex you are listening to those speakers at such a close range, that is almost like you are wearing the biggest pair of headphones ever, driven by a powerful amplifier, of course, you can listen to every detail from inexpensive but ok sounding speakers, and of course, you feel discomfort as well you have them pointing right to your ears at high volumes.
He suggested I do, what some of you guys have previously mentioned, to move the speakers' angles to the straight position, to avoid that direct amount of sound directly into my eardrums, I was reluctant to do it when you guys mentioned it because I was trying to maintain the whole triangle positioning that I always heard about, well I moved them to the straight position and it does alleviate that overwhelming amount of sound I was feeling coming straight into my ears, but better off now it sounds even better! The stage just opens up even more so the instruments are more space out!.
I don't see the 2 or 3 weeks of me having less sleep and all the energy all you guys collectively spent to help me answer the many questions I had, and the many others that derived out of your own answers, as a failure in any shape or form, I see it as an exercise of persuing data that could end up fixing a possible health problem and the by-product of it was going to result in me experiencing better sound quality.
I really haven't made a decision not to get the new speakers yet, because there is a part of me that still think I should try to find which one of those speakers have a friendly no-charge return policy or at least a very low-cost one, buy them and do a true blind test with a quick switch of a button (A/B channel) being control by someone else, if that test gives me conclusive real improvement in the more expensive speaker I'll keep it.
Again without your knowledge and more importantly your willingness of using your precious personal time, to help a stranger fix his audio issue, this would have never happened.
Thanks!!!!!!!
