Well respected speakers that you don't like

RichardAusten said:
A speaker ought to be designed to work across a broad number of rooms. And one should not be forced to spend thousands of dollars on room treatments
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Thank you.:)
Many times at shows, the upper floor rooms are identical. So how can you walk from one room with great sound/bass, into the room next door, hear poor sound/bass....and have it be the "room" at fault?

cheers,

AJ
 
RichardAusten said:
But how many homes were set-up for audio? This is a two edged sword. Plenty of stereos sound utterly exceptional at audio shows in the same bad room as the next manufacturer/dealer. A speaker ought to be designed to work across a broad number of rooms. And one should not be forced to spend thousands of dollars on room treatments - especially not when buying speakers that follow the anechoic design school free field monitor. These speakers typically advertise their room friendliness - just stick the things away from all walls and you will get great sound. So that means they should do well in a hotel room so longs as they are away from the walls. This set-up is an attempt at quasi-anechoic conditions.

If something never sounds good at an audio show then there may be an issue because some rooms at shows should be more than good enough to represent well a stereo system. Sure some rooms are appalling but over 5-6 different rooms if something sounds great 4-5 times and another product sounds poor every time then you can kind of draw conclusions.
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Well you need to get out to more shows in the US then. Most of the hotel rooms are train wrecks that even a transistor radio wouldn't sound good in. Please tell me how any speaker can sound good in 12 x 12 square room? Or even a 14x14x14 cuboidal room? Not to mention the electricity is a train wreck and the speakers are simply showing issues elsewhere in the system. There have been at least two shows recentlty where the main power failed and the electricity was provided by generators. Or exhibitors at CES in the Venetian are forced to use limiters on the AC lines. Not to mention the AC lines in hotels were not designed for the loads they are presented with. Garbage in, garbage out.

As far as a system sounding utterly exceptional at a show: never in my experience. Every system has to be graded on a different scale at a show. I think one can pretty much uniformly say that the bass sucks in all rooms at shows. Just the degree to which it sucks.
 
Myles B. Astor said:
Well you need to get out to more shows in the US then. Most of the hotel rooms are train wrecks that even a transistor radio wouldn't sound good in. Please tell me how any speaker can sound good in 12 x 12 square room? Or even a 14x14x14 cuboidal room? Not to mention the electricity is a train wreck and the speakers are simply showing issues elsewhere in the system. There have been at least two shows recentlty where the main power failed and the electricity was provided by generators. Or exhibitors at CES in the Venetian are forced to use limiters on the AC lines. Not to mention the AC lines in hotels were not designed for the loads they are presented with. Garbage in, garbage out.

As far as a system sounding utterly exceptional at a show: never in my experience. Every system has to be graded on a different scale at a show. I think one can pretty much uniformly say that the bass sucks in all rooms at shows. Just the degree to which it sucks.
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Good post Myles. Agree, but certainly some systems mids and highs sound better than others and those are the ones I would love to take home. I try not to even focus on bass; it tells you virtually nothing at a show.
 
Myles B. Astor said:
Well you need to get out to more shows in the US then. Most of the hotel rooms are train wrecks that even a transistor radio wouldn't sound good in. Please tell me how any speaker can sound good in 12 x 12 square room? Or even a 14x14x14 cuboidal room? Not to mention the electricity is a train wreck and the speakers are simply showing issues elsewhere in the system. There have been at least two shows recentlty where the main power failed and the electricity was provided by generators. Or exhibitors at CES in the Venetian are forced to use limiters on the AC lines. Not to mention the AC lines in hotels were not designed for the loads they are presented with. Garbage in, garbage out.

As far as a system sounding utterly exceptional at a show: never in my experience. Every system has to be graded on a different scale at a show. I think one can pretty much uniformly say that the bass sucks in all rooms at shows. Just the degree to which it sucks.
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Myles you do more shows than most people ever will . In general does one type of gear do better in hotel room show setting, ie does set stand up better or horns or anything else do better on average than other types of gear. I would think high power amps would have the hardest time at a show to really shine.
 
Garth said:
Myles you do more shows than most people ever will . In general does one type of gear do better in hotel room show setting, ie does set stand up better or horns or anything else do better on average than other types of gear. I would think high power amps would have the hardest time at a show to really shine.
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Its really the SPEAKERs that have the room interaction problems.

Best performing gear is usually "cheating" setups using DSP.
 
I think you can get elite sound at a show - Wes Philips of Stereophile (I linked earlier) heard a room and claimed it to be the best sound he ever heard. Which means anywhere including audiophile professionally set-up rooms including his own. Under show conditions and from someone who has attended a lot of them.

I was at CES 2010 and the Venetian did indeed suck compared to the older Flamingo. But the Flamingo is concrete and you can work with concrete. If you can defeat slap echo you're more than halfway home. The room layout at the Venetian was largely rubbish.

Garth - the power issues would probably be worse for low powered Single Ended amplifiers than high watt SS amps. Most SS amps do not draw a lot of power. A SET is run full on all the time and draws maximum power from the wall. Kind of like running space heater or a vacuum. SS often has standby modes.

Personally, I am not big on going to Audio Shows because aside from power supply issues, bad rooms, it's all the people blathering away in te background - the generally monotonous music of Diana Krall and Hotel California every other rooms and piss poor MP3 players from laptops dominating the music selection.

It's just not a good place to really make a lot of insights on audio gear. Audio Shows were supposed to be intended for DEALERS to decide which brands to carry in their stores and not for the public to do serious listening and buy products because room A happened to sound better than B.

I suppose I agree with Myles - the only thing is some rooms sound a lot lot better than other rooms even when they have the same disadvantages - bad room, bad, power supply, and yet they sound a lot better.

Fortunately, in Hong Kong everyday is a virtual audio show. With 20 floors of hi-fi dealers in one building and treated rooms and set-up properly you can start at the top and listen to big Focals, Wilson Audio, Cabasse, McIntosh, Nola. Walked down a fight of stairs and audition Tannoy Westminster, Vivid Giya, TAD, Classic Audio. Go down another floor and it's MBL, LEGACY, ATC, B&W, TIDAL, Khama and on it goes. A different building will have YG Acoustics, Avantgarde, LINN, KEF Blade.

Of course finding a place to live that can support those speakers is very difficult. I pay $1800 month US for a 700 square foot apartment away from the expensive area (eesh) which limited me to speakers like the Audio Note E. Simply no space to have to pull something 3 feet into the room.
 
Richard,

I guess that is why Headfi is big in Urban Asian settings, no? Urban Europe is also space constrained and is a concrete jungle as well, so bass boom is normal. Rental prices here in CH are similar to what you pay too.

One European advantage is that the power is generally clean from the mains, and the messup happens with in-house dimmer switches and the like.

BTW, that is very cool having all those dealers in a single building.
 
wisnon said:
Richard,

I guess that is why Headfi is big in Urban Asian settings, no? Urban Europe is also space constrained and is a concrete jungle as well, so bass boom is normal. Rental prices here in CH are similar to what you pay too.

One European advantage is that the power is generally clean from the mains, and the messup happens with in-house dimmer switches and the like.

BTW, that is very cool having all those dealers in a single building.
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Aren't Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia the same too?
 
Ive always had trouble with ANY Harbeth speaker.....they just seem so lacking in dynamics and they look like a speaker from a DIY Kit....ugly and cheap looking.....as always YMMV of course;)
 
This thread is open season on everyone's favorite brand and model of speakers. The purpose of the thread was stated upfront though.
 
Did somebody just say some sh1t about my Harbeths? AWwwwww Hell naw... *takes off my earrings and shoes* It's on now!
 
volks said:
Ive always had trouble with ANY Harbeth speaker.....they just seem so lacking in dynamics and they look like a speaker from a DIY Kit....ugly and cheap looking.....as always YMMV of course;)
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Any low efficiency, limited low end extension speaker will lack in dynamics.
 
Zero said:
Did somebody just say some sh1t about my Harbeths? AWwwwww Hell naw... *takes off my earrings and shoes* It's on now!
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Why, yes they did! I think they said they look like a DIY project. Must be all of those screws run into the front baffle that stick out like a sore dic*, er, I mean thumb.
 
Myles B. Astor said:
Exactly, the only way to really judge in your room! I can name numerous speakers that just never sound good at shows and rarely at dealers that have worked wonderfully in my home eg. Martin-Logan and Magico. Same goes for Wilson.

Peter Breuninger got skewered for suggesting a small speaker might sound better than a big transducer at an audio show but that's the truth. Smaller speakers just won't excite room and bass problems like a bigger speaker. After all, how many hotel rooms were set up for audio? Answer: none.

Otherwise to me it's just hit or miss or fans talking. That's why in some way forums such as AS are more important because posters can talk about the gear and how it sounds in their system and room. (Of course there are other issues.)
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Myles,

If you are referring to the discussion comparing the X-1s and D5's, to be fair to all involved I think the issue that brought out the blow torches was related to his initial unqualified statement regarding the X-1's and D-5's that later was properly qualified to include room set-up complexity and price. Of course a speaker without bass will sound best in a room not cable of properly handling bass; I don't think that was in dispute.
 
Mike said:
A couple of others....

Paradigm S8's.....I find the tweeter very BRIGHT!

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Canton 1DC (Stereophile raved about it)....I thought my ears were going to bleed.

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For me, anything with the Merlin moniker = ear bleeding...
 
allvinyl said:
For me, anything with the Merlin moniker = ear bleeding...
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I had a similar experience when I auditioned a pair of ML Ethos speakers. They were so bright that my ears were ringing for the rest of the day.
 
I had a pair of Green Mountain Audio Calypsos. They did some amazing things and were impressive with great recordings. I hated them and couldn't wait for them to go.
 
Harbeth Compact 7 ES-2 - After all of the great reviews I bought a pair unheard. I thought they would be just what I was looking for, but they were not.
Joseph Audio Pulsar - Too bright for me. They had nice cabinets.
 
jperry said:
Harbeth Compact 7 ES-2 - After all of the great reviews I bought a pair unheard. I thought they would be just what I was looking for, but they were not.
Joseph Audio Pulsar - Too bright for me. They had nice cabinets.
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The Pulsars ? Bright ? Hmm..... never heard them described as such . Completely contrary to my experience.
 
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