What are your favorite speakers and why?

I’ve always liked the minimalist, purpose-built look of ATC loudspeakers. If I could afford a second system it would be built around the (active) SCM 100a SLT-

 

Vandersteen's 2Ci and up. They just sound right to me.

M~

 

My Revel Ultima Studios V1. They make all kinds of music sound great and are forgiving but with exceptional detail and their sound stage is wide and deep. I slapped a new pair of tweeters in a few weeks ago and now they sound even better. Stereophile and others had it correct when they received an 'A' full range rating.

 

Yes I’ve always liked them too. They just look beefy and ready to rock. Non amped for me.

 

Those are my favorite monitor speakers also.

 

My Focal 716 speakers because they were owned by my best friend that died in a car accident. His family gave them to me. They knew we were audio nuts.

 

Back in the '80s the audio dealer I worked for was a Mission (UK) dealer. To this day they are my favorite speaker line up. I've always been a sucker for monitor sized loudspeakers and currently love my D5 by the folks at Peachtree Audio.

 

I feel the same way about the Peachtree D5's. I operate s small motel and I love Peachtree products.

I have a few pairs of the D5's. In addition I have the D4's, D3's, DS4.5's and I was fortunate enough to have acquired a pair of their Era flagship D14 towers. I also have some of their center channel speakers.

I think, that at their current retail price of $599, the D5's are among the best, if not the best, bookshelf speakers, that are out there today.

I operate a small motel and I used to keep the D5's on top of a credenza in my room, powered by a small Peachtree musicBox (on top below).



I have a friend staying here and the Design 5's are currently in his room along with a Peachtree Decco65 and a small 75-Watt Martin Logan Dynamo Sub.

A beautiful and compact kick butt combination.

 

They do make tasty looking components.

 

I love my AR9's. Gigantic soundstage with a nice neutral balanced sound and thunderously articulate bass. Paired with a tube pre and an ungodly powerful ss amp they're just magically musical and thrilling to listen to. For me they were my klipschorn killers and it took me nearly a year to come to terms that the khorns had to go.

 

I like a lot of speakers, so many choices, wish I could have a few optimized systems and rooms. Same with turntables, so many very cool vintage and modern ones that I'd love to try, but just don't have enough time and space, even if the money isn't an issue, and it always is.

But right now, I've been enchanted with the Monitor Audio Platinum series speakers, not the latest ones with the air motion transformer (AMT) tweeters, which I would still love to try in a good sounding room, but the older models with the pure ribbons that were introduced around 2010. I have the smaller PL100 model, and a Monitor Audio Gold subwoofer. But the reason I really like them, and the reason I also like the GX100 speakers they replaced, is that ribbon smoothness and extension. It just seems to go on forever, so effortless, no peakiness or harshness like many of the metal dome tweeters, but it's not excessively damped like many of the soft dome tweeters either, just right in the middle. Of course, like all drivers, ribbon tweeters aren't perfect either, they don't go low without distortion, but it is predominantly second order in most of them, and can mostly be avoided with steep crossover slopes. The little woofer/midranges are pretty nice too, sandwich construction with an outside skin of their C-CAM alloy, with Nomex core, and carbon fiber inner skin.

Some have commented on the resemblance of the Monitor Audio ribbon tweeters to those from Fountek in China, and conjectured that Fountek was the supplier, but below are some interesting comments from Monitor Audio Technical Director Dean Hartley on that resemblance ...

The resemblance to the Fountek ribbon is not a co-incidence. I worked with Fountek for about 18 months to achieve a tweeter that was consistent to +/-0.5dB and one that could 'reliably' work down to 2.5KHz. All the platinum speakers are measured one by one in our anechoic chamber using our Klippel QC measurement system, so we are measuring to R&D tolerances with platinum, not standard production tolerances for our other ranges with are +/- 1dB (or +/-1.5dB with BR and RS series).

My original design and prototypes used the Fountek ribbon. We bought a batch of Fountek ribbons and found the consistency to be only in the region of +/- 2dB, which was not good enough for a range such as this (or perhaps any range of marked quality). This was apparently the best Fountek could offer us. So, we took on the task of replicating the Fountek tweeter and now have it assembled in a small high-tech factory in Asia (who also make the bass and mi-drivers for us). We improved the ribbon material, moving to our C-CAM material which we have to free-issue from Japan. There are some other changes to the magnetic circuit, transformer and of course the die-cast front plate.

 

Three Revel speakers mentioned here. The M20s were Stereophile Class A rated. The Revel Performa M22s were not tested by Stereophile, but the improved M22 mid-bass driver offering lower distortion would likely also get a Class A rating. Like myself another stated here his Revel Performa M22s were his favorite too.

 

Of course you do.

 

They do. for a home, their integrated's are compact and have a fine furniture look to them, not some big box store looking crap or some of the off the wall weird audiophile looking stuff.

Not a good photo, but in the background, is their Era Design 14 tower speaker, a beautiful compact tower speaker that you could put in almost any home or office. It is so nice sounding and has the nicest cherry finish. If you do the knuckle wrap test, there are zero cabinet resonances, it feels like you are knocking on a tree solid trunk, really!

 

I have to agree with you on the LS3/6. The only reason I didn't keep a pair was that I preferred the musicality of my Spendors - as they have an unusual charm that's hard to put into words. The Stirlings have to be among the top 3 most accurate (as I perceive accuracy) speakers I've heard. They produce crazy-realistic and well-defined string tones.

 

Those will almost certainly be my next upgrade.

 

That is some great praise for the Spendors!
I wish I could hear them at some point as I have read so many positive things about them.

 

The 3/6s are better speakers in the areas that most people here would value. Both pairs had less than 50 hours on them when I made that assessment and the Spendors have improved a good bit. No doubt the 3/6s would've improved as well - the pair I bought had been sitting static in inventory for 5 years. One of the best systems I've heard, cost-no-object, was a pair of SP100s driven by roughly $60K in front end gear, and hooked up with hardware store Romex.

 

This is a Line Magnetic 518iA, SET that can deliver 22-WPC

I have a pair of Rogue M-150 KT88 monoblocks. Since I enjoy listening to my stereo a lot, I'm burning two quads of KT-88' every time that I light up the M-150's to power the A7's, it is more, way more than what is necessary, given that the A7's are around 100-dB efficient.

I have several tube amps and I can drive the A7's to a moderately loud, room filling volume, with a small single ended pentode Decware amplifer that is rated at 3.9-WPC, because the speaker's are so efficient. Prior to the 518iA, I have used three other tube amplifier's over the past year that were rated between 28 - 36 WPC and that, for me is the sweet spot of large power tubes, KT88's, EL34's and KT77's, in a class A/B configuration. The tubes are not run hard, they sound better and last longer.

With the A7's, they are providing me with more quality power than I will ever need. The SET at 22-Watts, is still more power and very strong but naturally sounding bass.

 

While not under-estimated by the pros who review equipment, I think Revels rival many far more expensive brands that people are always yakking about, but at a far lower cost.

My Studios were Class A Full Range and they were less than half as much as the next cheapest speaker. The Studios were 12K and the next cheapest speaker was over 30K!!!!!!!!!!!

 

I think I'll go with Steve Hoffman's Audio Note E/Spx AlniCo. Oh wait. I did. For medium sized and smaller rooms.

Large room I would go with Acapella High Cellini. But the system required to make it sing is altogether another price range that is totally out of my league. Unless Herman adopts me, or you guys can let me know of a rich single woman. PS I don't mind being a kept man.

Maybe I could start a go fund me page for $500k Audio Note/Acapella system.

 

My favorite speakers are my B&W 702 S2. I'm always amazed by how good they sound. Among the very few speakers I tried, all less expensive, those were the best and they give me a lot of pleasure.

 

I heard a pair of those at a local shop recently and couldn’t agree more. I wanted to get a pair but my room is just a bit too small... I really wanted to make them work because they might be the best speakers I’ve ever heard. Beautiful aesthetics too.

 

I've enjoyed my Sony SS-M9's for twenty years. Have heard many other great speakers over the years but never felt moved to change...

 

I'm on my third pair of PMC's so I guess there's my answer. They rarely get a mention in this forum, perhaps because they've seemingly struggled to get an effective US dealer network set up. I got on board with them when the old i-Series was still being made. The new generation PMC's are a different creature. To me, they soundstage and image like nothing else I've heard, the clarity is stunning and they are great all-rounders that perform well at lower volumes but can pulverize if you want them to. Just love 'em.

D.D.