Ever listen to a speaker with a great reputation and hate it?

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Still, I'd take my £50 MP3 player, Tripath amp and budget floorstanders any day.

What's the world come to?
Even if your statement is meant sarcastically, I feel partly the same.
About the amp that is. I bought a couple of TA2020's to try out, just for fun.
But man, these things go far beyond 'fun'. Seriously good amps for any use (I have for them).

I still haven't had a Eureka moment with speakers and source yet (although I prefer a completely digital source, as discless as possible).

Lots of ** speakers out there, even more mediocre ones. Bottom line for me is that I haven't tested all design types, so I feel inadequate to judge on the 'which "good" speakers are actually crap' topic.

Ps way cool avatar Stigerik. :)
 
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Still don't quite get what the horn part has to do with the nastiness Lowthers produce above 2k

I don't know either, but something is working. I heard Jeffery's horn loaded Lowthers and they are sweet! I was flabbergasted to find you it was Lowthers in there. Don't know how he does it.

You can moderate {edit} this, no?
I can, I do. But I can't keep up. Hope that the forum software can me modified to make the "Reply" button easier to reach than the "Quote" button.
 
Enforcing policy or internet etiquette is a tedious task (until they invent robomod ;) ) indeed.

I did think of a (good?) speaker that I could care less about;

Most of the Speakers Philips produced in the 60's/70's. I owned many, many types of Philips' products because they are widely/cheaply available here. Most of these speakers produce a dull/bassless sound.
Exception being most MFB series. And the 22rh427, the only one that I kept (this one only has a midsection that could be improved).
The rest of the units now live at friends places. Have to give something as birthday present. ;)

Don't know if these massmarket HiFi units count as the "good" stuff that is "bad" that you guys are looking for in this thread btw. :D
 
Regarding Lowther... check this one out... not wonder they sound totally awful!
Lowther EX3

Agree with Charles here. Lowthers are the worst "high end" speakers I've ever heard.

Lowthers are high end ? ............. :D errrr no !

Even if your statement is meant sarcastically, I feel partly the same.
About the amp that is. I bought a couple of TA2020's to try out, just for fun.
But man, these things go far beyond 'fun'. Seriously good amps for any use (I have for them).

I still haven't had a Eureka moment with speakers and source yet (although I prefer a completely digital source, as discless as possible).

Lots of ** speakers out there, even more mediocre ones. Bottom line for me is that I haven't tested all design types, so I feel inadequate to judge on the 'which "good" speakers are actually crap' topic.

Ps way cool avatar Stigerik. :)


Interesting little amp , not sure about the serious part 13 w@10% THD :eek:

O/T response :

PanoM , The Irony ! ..... :rolleyes:


Seriously you complain about something as trivial as me making a quote with my response :rolleyes: Then spend more band width complaining about such Well i guess it Jives with the way this romper room is run by the many who cruises it under the banner "Mod" ...... stand back !


:drink:
 
Yep, on tuesday. I went in for my first-ever audition of some B&W 803D + 802D. I told the sales guy that I wanted to listen to them with some Classe gear but they didn't carry it so he said that he had something that sounded similar so it was okay.

He had them hooked up to an AccuPhase A65 + AccuPhase DP500 (source) and it all sounded good until I started putting some rock and new age into the player. The mids and highs were crystal clear but the lows were TERRIBLE; I was devastated.

The sales guy eventually realized his mistake and recommended that we hook them up to a Musical Fidelity AMS35i and the sound came alive. Clear highs, tight bass; it was wonderful and I almost walked out of the showroom with the AMS35i.

I later found out that the price for the A65 was around 17K euros; triple the price of both the Classe Amp that I wanted to demo and the AMS35i that I did demo (it's on sale atm for 40% off vendor recommended price).

It really has me worried; I really hope the Classe doesn't sound as dead as that AccuPhase with those speakers.
 
Regarding Lowther... check this one out... not wonder they sound totally awful!
Lowther EX3

Agree with Charles here. Lowthers are the worst "high end" speakers I've ever heard.

I felt the same about all high efficiency widebands.. seriously.. I dismissed them all until I sat infront of this rig and never thought it again.. now I can't speak for anything under the A series.. but this was an eye opener for me..

scott4.jpg


but the bottom line is different strokes for different folks.. and what I think is heaven maybe hell for you and vise versa.. that's the beauty of audio :D
 
It's very interesting about Lowthers. Horn loaded (Oris 150) Lowther (PM4) is the only condition I've had a chance to listen to in my own place and long enough. I think it's great (under a certain SPL).

Unlike all critisism and those FR charts suggest, what I heard is no harsh HF, very rich (but not overly warm) mid, superb details and dynamics (comparable to good compression driver + horn combinations ), acceptable HF extension, overall healthy and even enough tonal balance, very wide bandwidth for the performace.

I'd like to add, I prefer warm balance and can not stand bright sound for long, not to mention harsh.

Of course, the usefulness of its SPL ability and how its price justifies the performance are some other stories. YMMV as always.
 
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Folks:

This thread, while interesting, seems largely flawed to me. While a number of posts have acknowledged that the rest of the system affects the sound of speakers, most of the posts here have evaluated speakers in a vacuum. I submit that unless you know the rest of (or at least the dominant) components in the chain, you can't effectively critique the speakers.

And at the risk of opening myself to ridicule, I have to say that while I have heard Thiel speakers sound awful on occasion, I have also heard some of their speakers (usually the now-outdated CS3.6 model) sound terrific.

Regards,
Scott

(main system: Maplenoll Apollo & Lyra Lydian Beta or Cary 306 / DIY Pass Ono & Pearl / DIY Pass Aleph P 1.7 / Pass Aleph 1.2 / Egglestonworks Andras / Transparent and Neotech NEI-3001 wire)
 
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