Shopping for New Speakers

R

rafaelrsv

Audiophyte
Hi, I've been improving my system (modestly, I don't have that many economic resourses), and now I'm going to change my f/c/l speakers. After reading much and some listening, I'd got to a list of four options that look good, so I like to ask if some of you can help me, leting me know what one option would you choose (please one, the one you'll buy).
I know that my ears are the last and most important factor, but it would help me to have some input from other entusiast.

1) Paradigm Studio 10 V.5
2) NHT Classic Three
3) Aperion Intimus 6B
4 Definitive Technology Studio Monitor 450

Thanks for the help.
 
lsiberian

lsiberian

Audioholic Overlord
Hi, I've been improving my system (modestly, I don't have that many economic resourses), and now I'm going to change my f/c/l speakers. After reading much and some listening, I'd got to a list of four options that look good, so I like to ask if some of you can help me, leting me know what one option would you choose (please one, the one you'll buy).
I know that my ears are the last and most important factor, but it would help me to have some input from other entusiast.

1) Paradigm Studio 10 V.5
2) NHT Classic Three
3) Aperion Intimus 6B
4 Definitive Technology Studio Monitor 450

Thanks for the help.
I suggest you go listen to as many speakers as you can. Then come back with a list.

You can free demo the Aperion's so do so.
 
chris357

chris357

Senior Audioholic
i wish i was shopping for new speakers :)

I agree with the previous poster listen to as many as you can in as similar a system as you can to what you ahve at home.

if you are working with one store who is not a big chain they may let you take them home for a few days to listen.. I'd ask if that was a posibility.
 
F

FirstReflection

AV Rant Co-Host
From the list that you've given, it would appear that you have a fairly decent budget. That gives you many MANY choices, which is a blessing and a curse.

Before I can recommend anything, I need to know more about your room. Audio is a system. The room and the speakers must work together. Some speakers are designed to work particularly well in certain kinds of rooms, so knowing about the room is very important so that I can recommend speakers that will work particularly well in your room.

People always say, "listen, listen, listen". I'm not fond of that advice. The reason I'm not fond of it is because:

1) Unless you are listening IN YOUR ROOM, you really cannot possibly know how the speakers' more subtle nuances will sound once you get the speakers home. And...

2) People say to go out and listen without telling you what you should be listening for!

You might LIKE a certain speaker. Big whoop! Liking a speaker doesn't mean that it is accurate and more importantly, liking a speaker that you hear in a different room doesn't mean that you will like it in YOUR room.

Listening to many many speakers in many many rooms IS a good idea, so long as you are very familiar with accurate sound and you know a lot about the particular characteristics of each speaker and each room.

With a lot of experience, you can start to get a very good understanding of what a certain speaker characteristic will do when you put it into a particular kind of room.

For example, you can learn that a speaker designed with very wide and flat dispersion will almost always give you a very wide sweet spot. But in a large, reflective room, that kind of speaker will produce strong reflections off of the walls and in a large room, where the walls are far away from you, those reflections will reach your ears with enough of a delay that you will hear them as an echo. So that would be a bad thing! On the other hand, in a small room, the reflections will create a comb filter response, which the human brain can easily ignore (so long as you are not rocking from side to side :p ) and thus, the sound will be clearer in the small room than in the large room. If the room has lots of absorptive materials, however, then the reflections will be curtailed and you can likely use those speakers in any size room so long as it is not reflective.

But how do you know if the speaker has wide, flat dispersion? How do you know if the room is reflective or dampened? Well...that's all a matter of experience, asking questions, reading, etc. etc.

But to me, the point of a forum like this one is that you can take advantage of other people's knowledge! Should you listen for yourself a lot? Yes! But you should not just rely on what you like. While you are listening, you should be reading about speaker design, reading reviews, learning about room acoustics and talking all of it over with knowledgeable people.

So I don't like the "just go out and listen" advice - it is over-simplified.

If you can give me lots of details about your room (pictures are a BIG help ;) ), I can help you to understand some of the acoustic characteristics of your room. That will lead to recommendations for certain speaker characteristics, which will, in turn, lead to specific speaker recommendations :)
 
J

just listening

Audioholic
Definitely agree with others in here, you need to experience the speakers in your own home. Aperion and NHT now that they are Internet-direct allow this. I can tell tell you that the Aperion 6B's are very similar to European monitors in that they are not forward sounding, but do offer terrific detail once the volume gets up beyond 75db. Their customer service is awesome, period.

What electronics will you be driving the speakers with?
 
R

rafaelrsv

Audiophyte
From the list that you've given, it would appear that you have a fairly decent budget. That gives you many MANY choices, which is a blessing and a curse.

Before I can recommend anything, I need to know more about your room. Audio is a system. The room and the speakers must work together. Some speakers are designed to work particularly well in certain kinds of rooms, so knowing about the room is very important so that I can recommend speakers that will work particularly well in your room.

People always say, "listen, listen, listen". I'm not fond of that advice. The reason I'm not fond of it is because:

1) Unless you are listening IN YOUR ROOM, you really cannot possibly know how the speakers' more subtle nuances will sound once you get the speakers home. And...

2) People say to go out and listen without telling you what you should be listening for!

You might LIKE a certain speaker. Big whoop! Liking a speaker doesn't mean that it is accurate and more importantly, liking a speaker that you hear in a different room doesn't mean that you will like it in YOUR room.

Listening to many many speakers in many many rooms IS a good idea, so long as you are very familiar with accurate sound and you know a lot about the particular characteristics of each speaker and each room.

With a lot of experience, you can start to get a very good understanding of what a certain speaker characteristic will do when you put it into a particular kind of room.

For example, you can learn that a speaker designed with very wide and flat dispersion will almost always give you a very wide sweet spot. But in a large, reflective room, that kind of speaker will produce strong reflections off of the walls and in a large room, where the walls are far away from you, those reflections will reach your ears with enough of a delay that you will hear them as an echo. So that would be a bad thing! On the other hand, in a small room, the reflections will create a comb filter response, which the human brain can easily ignore (so long as you are not rocking from side to side :p ) and thus, the sound will be clearer in the small room than in the large room. If the room has lots of absorptive materials, however, then the reflections will be curtailed and you can likely use those speakers in any size room so long as it is not reflective.

But how do you know if the speaker has wide, flat dispersion? How do you know if the room is reflective or dampened? Well...that's all a matter of experience, asking questions, reading, etc. etc.

But to me, the point of a forum like this one is that you can take advantage of other people's knowledge! Should you listen for yourself a lot? Yes! But you should not just rely on what you like. While you are listening, you should be reading about speaker design, reading reviews, learning about room acoustics and talking all of it over with knowledgeable people.

So I don't like the "just go out and listen" advice - it is over-simplified.

If you can give me lots of details about your room (pictures are a BIG help ;) ), I can help you to understand some of the acoustic characteristics of your room. That will lead to recommendations for certain speaker characteristics, which will, in turn, lead to specific speaker recommendations :)
Hi, thanks. I don't have photos of my listening (and watching TV) room, but some details are:
- 16' long X 9.6 wide.
- The equipment is located near the rear wall.
- The back is open (doesn't have rear wall).
- The roof has about 8' heigth. It has like a plaster "false ceiling".
- My receiver is a Pioneer VSX-1018 AH-K.
- My DVD player is an OPPO DV-981H
- I use a PS3 for BluRay
- I'm using now JBL E30 and C30.

Hope it helps.
 
R

rafaelrsv

Audiophyte
Definitely agree with others in here, you need to experience the speakers in your own home. Aperion and NHT now that they are Internet-direct allow this. I can tell tell you that the Aperion 6B's are very similar to European monitors in that they are not forward sounding, but do offer terrific detail once the volume gets up beyond 75db. Their customer service is awesome, period.

What electronics will you be driving the speakers with?
Hi, I have listened to some of this in a store. But really is very hard for me to take the speakers home to try, thats one of the reasons I'm looking for help. What I have are:

- Room 16' long X 9.6 wide.
- The equipment is located near the rear wall.
- The back is open (doesn't have rear wall).
- My receiver is a Pioneer VSX-1018 AH-K.
- My DVD player is an OPPO DV-981H
- I use a PS3 for BluRay
- I'm using now JBL E30 and C30.
- Mirage Omni 8 Sub.

Thanks.
 
F

FirstReflection

AV Rant Co-Host
Your description certainly helps!

You didn't mention whether you have any acoustical treatments on your walls or ceiling or whether your floor is carpeted or a hard surface - if you could update us on that, it would paint a better picture :)

For the moment though, I'm going to assume that your room is not covered with acoustical panels and make some basic recommendations based on that.

Your room is quite narrow. That means that side wall reflections will be quite strong, but they will have very little delay from the direct sound. In essence, your brain is going to be able to ignore much of the reflected sound, but it will also "sum" much of the reflected sound with the direct sound. What you will likely find is that a speaker with a little bit of a high-frequency roll-off is going to sound best in your room. It'll also help to pick a speaker with wide, even, but sloping dispersion as this will help to make the room sound acoustically bigger to your brain. Narrower vertical dispersion will be more important for keeping sounds highly intelligible as you are more likely to have unwanted reflections from the ceiling and floor than from the side walls (and no wall behind you).

With those characteristics in mind, if we are sticking with the speakers that are already on your list, I would lean towards the Paradigm speakers. As with most of the speaker companies who took their design cues from the research done at the NRC in Canada, Paradigm subscribes to the sort of gently-rolling off-axis response that I described, making them better suited to an untreated room than something like the NHT speakers which have more high frequency energy. That is no knock against the NHT speakers, it's just that, in your particular kind of room, the NHT design is more likely to sound a bit harsh and very likely to sound more forward than is really accurate or natural.

The Paradigm speakers are also quite easy to drive and your current receiver will be able to power them nicely and without any worries or issues. The Paradigms also have the advantage of simply being excellent speakers - highly transparent and neutral with refined sound quality that is likely to "play nicely" with most rooms (should you even move in the future and bring your speakers along with you ;) )

If you had a much larger room, I would likely lean towards the NHT speakers more. But that is why it is so important to know about your room!

Now, with that said, I would be remiss if I did not also recommend to you the Ascend Acoustics Sierra-1, which are close to the same price range and are marvelously transparent speakers.

If you have a preference for more bass energy, the Sierra-1 will deliver that. However, to be completely honest, I may still lean towards the Paradigms in this case. Depending upon how close the speakers are to the walls, the Sierra-1s might get a little too bass heavy in your room. The Sierra-1 are also more difficult to drive than the Paradigm Studio 10s, so with your current receiver, the Paradigms will be an easier load.

Bottom line, if it were my money and I were going to be listening in your room, I would choose the Paradigm Studio 10 v.5.


I'm sure others will have differing opinions, but that is what I would recommend and I hope that it helps :)

Good luck in your decision!
 
R

rafaelrsv

Audiophyte
Your recommendations are very helpful FirstReflection, thanks. To end this, before bothering you, I don't have accoustic treatment in the room, and it have hardfloor. The speakers are about 1.5 feet from the back an side wall (around 4 feet apart of each other).
 
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