College Room Setup

[The_Source41]

After this summer I am going to be moving into a Two bedroom apartment on campus and for the first time I will have my own room at school. For my audio needs I currently have my trusty Sen HD650's, Millet miniMax that I labored over myself lol and I am mostly using my Ipod with LOD and Lossless for the source. Now come my questions. Since I am going to have my own room I am thinking I want a speaker setup. This set up will most likely be in a carpeted room that's about 300 sq feet with a bed. My desk will be in the living room since that is where the roomy and I will have our gaming computers lol. My budget is going to be around $2500-$4000 US. This Budget is by no means set in stone but am not looking to spend much more then $4000. and My plan is probably splitting it up as about 1g for speakers, 1g for amp, 500 preamp, 500 Source. Now this is not set in stone by any means. What I have been looking at so far is Wharfdale or B&W speakers. I have personally heard B&W and really enjoy them. Amps are little bit more of a mystery for me but if possible I wouldn't mind tubes since I love the MiniMax but I know they are harder to find/expensive and probably out of my range. I was just hoping to get some Ideas so I can continue my research. Something else I have come across is The Ziegler Zen Loudspeakers model MG944 and The Zen Triode Integrated from Decware. I am just looking for some guidance.

Thanks Sam

 

[Pyrrho]

If you want your money to matter for the sound, put it into the speakers. With a budget of $4000, I would put half (or more) into the speakers. At that price point, I would seriously consider these:

http://www.magnepan.com/model_MG_16

I would then look for an amplifier capable of driving them, which, if they are like Magnepan in the past, are an honest 4 ohms (by "honest", I mean they do not have any nasty dips in the impedance going greatly below the nominal rating).

I personally would stay away from tubes, as they are costly and, in my opinion, are not as good as solid state. For advice regarding that, you might want to look at the amplifier section of this site and see arguments about tube amplifiers (you may have to use the "search" function to find them).

Obviously, you should audition as many different speakers as you can stand to audition, and as many types (e.g., ribbons, domes, horns, whatever) of speakers as you can stand to audition.

 

[sholling]

I agree with Pyrrho on your budget ratios and I'll add Salk Song Towers ($2k) to the audition list. You'll find a group of happy Salk customers in their forum that will open their homes for auditions. STs are 4ohm and can take a ot of power but can be driven just fine off of an inexpensive 4ohm rated receiver. Since your goal is music then I'd reserve the rest of the budget for a really good sealed subwoofer - Hsu or Rythmik.

 

[The_Source41]

Thanks Guys. I will look into those options. My initial Idea was something like this where I would spend in one aspect of my system and then upgrade the others as I see fit.