New Speakers

[Sammich]

For several years I've been using a kenwood KA-31 amp wired to a pair of 100 watt 8 ohm floor standing 3 way speakers.

The KA-31 is rated at 40 watts RMS per channel I believe, and with the kenwood speakers it gets loud, and sounds very good.

Unfortunately however, the unit is getting old, and has been repaired many times and I recently built a dual mono LM3886 gain clone with a nice stiff regulated power supply.

I'm looking to purchase a new pair of speakers to use with my gain clone as the kenwoods are old and terribly beat up. I'd like them to be 8 or 6 ohms, nice and loud with accurate clear reproduction, and deep bass.

I don't really want to go broke buying them. The room they will be in is fairly small, maybe 10 feet by 12 feet, give or take.

What do you guys recommend I look at?

[Mikael Abdellah]

I would suggest something with a very light cone, since I suspect (I don't have alot of fact to back this up) that the LM3886 will have a hard time controlling a lot of moving mass. A fairly large 2-way system is what I myself would chose. I have had a little bit of experience with the LM3886 and I must say I like it a lot.

[edit] It's been a while since I listened to them, but the Paradigm Mini Monitor is a great speaker as far as I can remember. What is you budget?

[Sammich]

A few hundred dollars per speaker I'd say.

Good deep tight bass is a must.

[BHTX]

If you like OB, Darrel at Hawthorne Audio is coming out with a much better upgraded version of his Silver Iris in the near future, which is what I'm currently waiting on. It will use one of the highly regarded Radian compression drivers...but the price definitely won't be the same as the current Silver Iris, that's for sure. If a strict budget is mandatory, I'd say give the 10" Silver Iris a try, with 1-2 of the 15" Auggies in each OB per side...with the gain clone powering the Silver Iris' and a good pro amplifier or plate amps driving the augmenting woofers. Depending on your room and seating location and whatnot, I'd guess that it would probably more than satisfy you. Supposedly an awesome bargain for what you get.

Edit:
Before hearing a set of OB speakers, I was hesitant at first and figured the bass wouldn't satisfy me. Upon hearing a friend's custom OB setup about a year or so ago, I was hooked. Since then, I've been wanting to build something, and have considered many other options other than OB. After a long time of searching and reading, OB still seems the most interesting to me. And for a first project, it couldn't get any easier!. The Sterling Silver Iris isn't out yet tho, which is what I'm eagerly waiting on.

http://www.hawthorneaudio.com/
http://www.hawthorneaudio.com/forum/
http://www.hawthorneaudio.com/catalog/

[Sammich]

Are they really capable of nice bass without an enclosure? O.O