Kuoppis
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- Jan 19, 2015
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Current products are indeed very different from Q5.
More coherent, easier to drive, more complete sound.
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Bad Speakers
- Thread starter Joseph R.
- Start date
Current products are indeed very different from Q5.
More coherent, easier to drive, more complete sound.
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
I have been a Maggie fan for decades. I still own a pair of 3.6s.
But my 3.6s have the same tweeter that the 20.1s and the 20.7s use. By the time the 30.7s were announced, I was ready to jump in. Then I learned that... the tweeter and also the midrange is the same as that of the 20.7. So the only difference is bigger and separate bass panels.
But... do the extra bass area make it twice as good? I never bothered to check. I already had a 20.7 and a nice sub that I could move around for perfect placement. I felt that I was already in 30.7 territory for much less money.
I cannot say the 30.7 are bad since I never heard them, but twice the money? That sounded bad to me.
But my 3.6s have the same tweeter that the 20.1s and the 20.7s use. By the time the 30.7s were announced, I was ready to jump in. Then I learned that... the tweeter and also the midrange is the same as that of the 20.7. So the only difference is bigger and separate bass panels.
But... do the extra bass area make it twice as good? I never bothered to check. I already had a 20.7 and a nice sub that I could move around for perfect placement. I felt that I was already in 30.7 territory for much less money.
I cannot say the 30.7 are bad since I never heard them, but twice the money? That sounded bad to me.
Well, this is so subjective.
My Usher Audio sounded terrible when they came into my house. I was scared. The problem? The drivers had the bolts badly tightened.
Another story: KEF Moon (with 6 Mcintosh). When I heard them at the opening of an audioshow, the sound was so bad that after a few hours I came back there just to criticize
irate:. The sound was as good and as real as I have ever heard -until today should i say. I was speechless. :shocking:
Ok, here we go:
B&W - they are not for me. They always cause me a great impact in the first few minutes but i get tired after a while. To me, none sounded integrated. Very good to reproduce sounds but not so much to play music. A friend of mine is going crazy with them. But he refuses to admite that the problem is in the speakers. :dunno:
Sonus Faber - the most expensive are the worst. Muffled. The worse model that I heard: the Fenice. I know who had a nightmare with them. I loved my Grand Piano Home and I have the Cremona M as one of the best achievements of the brand.
Martin Logan - the audition of a Martin Logan speaker many, many years ago, has been a memorable moment. From there on, perhaps because my degree of demand has increased, they never again have impressed me. Bass coming from the floor and everything else coming from the top.
TAD – to me, they always sounded with an exaggerated bass wich results in a tendency for a dark sound. An hifi sound but not very real.
Gryphon - I really like the definition (which is not mine): on the dark side of neutrality.
Quad - big sound but not a great sound.
Horns - Very good or even excellent with lots of material, but when I hear human voice ... Anyone who passes through a Sonus Faber (although they are not perfect) does not support a nasal or electronically-sounding human voice.
As for other brands that have already been mentioned I think they have good speakers but some will have a real value far below their price. I do not worry because they are not part of my target ($$$). Finally, I must say that I heard many speakers sounding bad, but I do not think it was their fault. Because it was easier, I watched the rough use of CD copies or files that dried the harmonics and took all the charm to the hearing.
My Usher Audio sounded terrible when they came into my house. I was scared. The problem? The drivers had the bolts badly tightened.
Another story: KEF Moon (with 6 Mcintosh). When I heard them at the opening of an audioshow, the sound was so bad that after a few hours I came back there just to criticize
irate:. The sound was as good and as real as I have ever heard -until today should i say. I was speechless. :shocking:Ok, here we go:
B&W - they are not for me. They always cause me a great impact in the first few minutes but i get tired after a while. To me, none sounded integrated. Very good to reproduce sounds but not so much to play music. A friend of mine is going crazy with them. But he refuses to admite that the problem is in the speakers. :dunno:
Sonus Faber - the most expensive are the worst. Muffled. The worse model that I heard: the Fenice. I know who had a nightmare with them. I loved my Grand Piano Home and I have the Cremona M as one of the best achievements of the brand.
Martin Logan - the audition of a Martin Logan speaker many, many years ago, has been a memorable moment. From there on, perhaps because my degree of demand has increased, they never again have impressed me. Bass coming from the floor and everything else coming from the top.
TAD – to me, they always sounded with an exaggerated bass wich results in a tendency for a dark sound. An hifi sound but not very real.
Gryphon - I really like the definition (which is not mine): on the dark side of neutrality.
Quad - big sound but not a great sound.
Horns - Very good or even excellent with lots of material, but when I hear human voice ... Anyone who passes through a Sonus Faber (although they are not perfect) does not support a nasal or electronically-sounding human voice.
As for other brands that have already been mentioned I think they have good speakers but some will have a real value far below their price. I do not worry because they are not part of my target ($$$). Finally, I must say that I heard many speakers sounding bad, but I do not think it was their fault. Because it was easier, I watched the rough use of CD copies or files that dried the harmonics and took all the charm to the hearing.
Are you sure that the crossover and parts are not different?
Perhaps they are different. But a 100% price hike for a different crossover or better crossover parts? I think not.
Paul
Senior Member
opcorn:I have no comment. Coz listened at the show or someone else's place don't count in my book. I'm sure some one won't agree with me but I had experienced the room/gear/synergy will give another life on some bad sounding speakers at the show.
Penthouse-D
New member
I owned Magico Q5's when they had just come out. Nearly impossible to drive. I ended up having the best results with Spectral gear. One of my happiest audio moments was the day I sold them. I find my S3's a more satisfying speaker at less than half the price....
BlueFox
New member
I bought my original S5 unheard, but I also spent a year researching new speakers, and bought them based on what I felt were honest posts on audio forums, and reviews. I upgraded to the S5 Mk II again based on research, and my experience with the v1 S5. No regrets here.
Mr Peabody
Well-known member
Let me preface by saying, I've never heard a Magico Q series. I beg to differ, the only thing Yg and Magico have in common is both use aluminum for the cabinet. I thought they sounded quite different.
If you see the speakers I like, you'll notice I gravitate to a darker sound. Something about music coming from a dark background does it for me.
I'll have to look through my history to see if I can find the Yg thread. It was started by a new guy.
Check out those Stereophile reviews on the Yg.
If you see the speakers I like, you'll notice I gravitate to a darker sound. Something about music coming from a dark background does it for me.
I'll have to look through my history to see if I can find the Yg thread. It was started by a new guy.
Check out those Stereophile reviews on the Yg.
Mr Peabody
Well-known member
Mr Peabody
Well-known member
Mr Peabody
Well-known member
I think something like this may have been going on when I heard Yg. To be fair there are also flattering reviews to be found, and, this one isn't bad, it just points out some honest experiences. Did he say "lumpy". Also, to be fair, one should never use Bose in a thread with what is thought of as high end, it's an immediate distractor.
As written by JA
Setup
Despite its size and complexity, YGA's Sonja 1.3 had been relatively straightforward to set up in my room; the Carmel 2 proved more problematic.
When you position speakers in a room, you want the woofers' distances from the floor, the nearest sidewall, and the wall behind the speakers to be maximally different from each other, to ensure that the low-frequency room resonances are evenly spread out. (As a rule of thumb, this will be achieved if you make the difference between each distance and the next smaller distance conform to the Golden ratio of 1.618:1, footnote 1) Yet the Carmel 2's single woofer is 29" from the floor—and, with the YGAs set up in the positions where the KEF Blade 2s had worked well when I reviewed them for the June 2015 issue, that was too close to the distance of each woofer from its sidewall. As a consequence, the midbass was lumpy, and while I didn't expect the Carmel 2 to have extended low frequencies, they were missing in action.
When you buy a pair of relatively expensive speakers, the dealer should be responsible for setting them up in your room, but in this case, YGA's Dick Diamond and Kerry St. James visited to optimize the positions of the Carmel 2s. Diamond played a selection of recordings with which he was familiar, and kept shifting each speaker until he heard the transition between the low midbass and the mid–upper bass smoothing out. He then adjusted the speakers' toe-ins until the central image was solidly and stably defined but the top octave wasn't being emphasized. That toe-in ended up being around 5°, and the speaker positions were asymmetrical. Although each speaker was 7' 2" from the wall behind it, the right speaker was 4' 7" from the books that line the sidewall nearest it, while the left speaker was 3' 2" from the LPs that lined its sidewall. (All distances were measured from the woofer dustcaps.)
Even then, with the Carmel 2s driven by Pass Labs XA60.5 monoblocks and fed directly from a PS Audio DirectStream DAC, the speakers sounded on the lean side, with a little too much top-octave energy. Diamond explained that while these review samples had been played for many hours back at the factory, the time spent in shipping probably meant that their woofers needed more break-in. We spent the next couple of hours listening to a wide variety of music, and yes, the midbass began to free up and the lean quality decreased. These changes continued for the next two weeks of my noncritical listening until, finally, the Carmel 2s' bass balance plateaued.
Amplifiers
Other than the presence of its lowest-frequency diagonal mode, at around 32Hz, I have optimized my room's acoustics for low-frequency articulation rather than bloom (footnote 2). So even though the Carmel 2s' bass had loosened up as much as it was going to, and even with the Pass Labs amplifiers and their rather soft bass character, the YGAs still sounded more lean than generous in the lows. Changing to the MBL Corona C15 monoblocks tightened up the bass—a step in the wrong direction—though the top-octave balance was now smoother. Replacing the MBLs with Parasound Halo JC 1 monoblocks, which Michael Fremer had described as being "perhaps a tad polite," the YGA speakers sounded a touch too vigorous in the midrange, and again, the Parasound's superb control of the bass emphasized the leanness of sound. Of all the solid-state amplifiers I had to hand, it was the softer-sounding treble of the Arcam FMJ P49, which I reviewed in November, that worked best with the Carmel 2s, bringing the midrange and treble into an overall neutral balance.
As written by JA
Setup
Despite its size and complexity, YGA's Sonja 1.3 had been relatively straightforward to set up in my room; the Carmel 2 proved more problematic.
When you position speakers in a room, you want the woofers' distances from the floor, the nearest sidewall, and the wall behind the speakers to be maximally different from each other, to ensure that the low-frequency room resonances are evenly spread out. (As a rule of thumb, this will be achieved if you make the difference between each distance and the next smaller distance conform to the Golden ratio of 1.618:1, footnote 1) Yet the Carmel 2's single woofer is 29" from the floor—and, with the YGAs set up in the positions where the KEF Blade 2s had worked well when I reviewed them for the June 2015 issue, that was too close to the distance of each woofer from its sidewall. As a consequence, the midbass was lumpy, and while I didn't expect the Carmel 2 to have extended low frequencies, they were missing in action.
When you buy a pair of relatively expensive speakers, the dealer should be responsible for setting them up in your room, but in this case, YGA's Dick Diamond and Kerry St. James visited to optimize the positions of the Carmel 2s. Diamond played a selection of recordings with which he was familiar, and kept shifting each speaker until he heard the transition between the low midbass and the mid–upper bass smoothing out. He then adjusted the speakers' toe-ins until the central image was solidly and stably defined but the top octave wasn't being emphasized. That toe-in ended up being around 5°, and the speaker positions were asymmetrical. Although each speaker was 7' 2" from the wall behind it, the right speaker was 4' 7" from the books that line the sidewall nearest it, while the left speaker was 3' 2" from the LPs that lined its sidewall. (All distances were measured from the woofer dustcaps.)
Even then, with the Carmel 2s driven by Pass Labs XA60.5 monoblocks and fed directly from a PS Audio DirectStream DAC, the speakers sounded on the lean side, with a little too much top-octave energy. Diamond explained that while these review samples had been played for many hours back at the factory, the time spent in shipping probably meant that their woofers needed more break-in. We spent the next couple of hours listening to a wide variety of music, and yes, the midbass began to free up and the lean quality decreased. These changes continued for the next two weeks of my noncritical listening until, finally, the Carmel 2s' bass balance plateaued.
Amplifiers
Other than the presence of its lowest-frequency diagonal mode, at around 32Hz, I have optimized my room's acoustics for low-frequency articulation rather than bloom (footnote 2). So even though the Carmel 2s' bass had loosened up as much as it was going to, and even with the Pass Labs amplifiers and their rather soft bass character, the YGAs still sounded more lean than generous in the lows. Changing to the MBL Corona C15 monoblocks tightened up the bass—a step in the wrong direction—though the top-octave balance was now smoother. Replacing the MBLs with Parasound Halo JC 1 monoblocks, which Michael Fremer had described as being "perhaps a tad polite," the YGA speakers sounded a touch too vigorous in the midrange, and again, the Parasound's superb control of the bass emphasized the leanness of sound. Of all the solid-state amplifiers I had to hand, it was the softer-sounding treble of the Arcam FMJ P49, which I reviewed in November, that worked best with the Carmel 2s, bringing the midrange and treble into an overall neutral balance.
Joseph R.
New member
- Joined
- Apr 24, 2017
- Messages
- 181
- Thread Author
- #33
Since we are talking of bad speakers, I hate to get started with bad reviewers. This JA guy (I know who John Atkinson is) is profit driven. Have you since noticed that every recent review contains a full page add of the reviewed piece in the same issue. This is blackmail plain and simple. I read Stereophile and “The Absolute Joke” but don’t take either one seriously. I would rather hear opinions of pure hobby-ests than to hear from these jokers. Now they are putting themselves in the “greatest audio contributors” list. Oh please.......
Agree. Looking at the pictures some people post in various facebook groups make me whince. Big expensive speakers jammed into a corner or firing into marple floors. I dont like to post negative comments to people about their beloved gear - but jeez somethimes. How much better things could be with a little bit of attention.
still-one
Active member
Oh, yes posters on the internet are so qualified to give advice.
mep
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- Dec 4, 2013
- Messages
- 5,081
W9TR
Active member
The JA speaker measurements based reviews, over time, have proven very useful in my loudspeaker speaker journey.
The two worst speakers I’ve heard tower over all the other bad speakers I’ve been subjected to:
# 1 First gen WAAM’s. Super etched, shrill, totally unmusical. Dealer showroom circa 2000.
#2 Zu Omen. Super big HF resonance made everything sound really unnatural. Very high distortion. RMAF 2017.
The two worst speakers I’ve heard tower over all the other bad speakers I’ve been subjected to:
# 1 First gen WAAM’s. Super etched, shrill, totally unmusical. Dealer showroom circa 2000.
#2 Zu Omen. Super big HF resonance made everything sound really unnatural. Very high distortion. RMAF 2017.
Randy Myers
Well-known member
I am sure it is just me but I have found more over priced speakers that I do not like. Speakers I've heard that I would take my low price (by comparison, but not low price for non-audiophiles) KEF's over... Very expensive YG's, equally expensive Martin Logan (both listened to in a room I am familiar with, a Stereophile reviewer who is in our audio club), and a $50k pair of Acoustic Zen speakers that I lived an entire weekend with at RMAF... they are terrible in my view. My R series KEF were much better in my view then any of these $50k plus speakers. Just saying.
I have listened to KEF Reference speakers and loved them.. would love to hear/own Blade 2's... but definitely out of my affordable range now
.
I have listened to KEF Reference speakers and loved them.. would love to hear/own Blade 2's... but definitely out of my affordable range now
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