Audiophile Question

Graueradler

Graueradler

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Graueradler
I have an old stereo system with speaker boxes that measure about about 15 X 24 inches. I guess that probably makes the cones on the large speakers about 12" in diameter. I am not an audiophile. My wife loves to listen to music but would love to have the stereo system be invisible. Has technology progressed to where I can get good speakers that are a lot smaller? If so what kind/brand are they?
 
Graueradler said:
I have an old stereo system with speaker boxes that measure about about 15 X 24 inches. I guess that probably makes the cones on the large speakers about 12" in diameter. I am not an audiophile. My wife loves to listen to music but would love to have the stereo system be invisible. Has technology progressed to where I can get good speakers that are a lot smaller? If so what kind/brand are they?
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Technology has progressed. You can use smaller speakers - very small - and a hidden subwoofer which will be about the same same size of the speaker you have. Only now you can have 4 or 6 speakers plus the subwoofer, for surround sound for the home theater, so you have to deal with hiding those and running the wires.

Polk Audio has always been one of favorites:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_nr_p...rh=n:172282,n:1065836,n:172563,p_4:Polk Audio
http://www.amazon.com/Polk-Audio-Ch...0?ie=UTF8&s=audio-video&qid=1200841738&sr=1-3

You also can't go wrong with JBL:
http://www.amazon.com/s/sr=41-24/qi...rh=n:172282,n:1065836,n:172563,p_4:JBL&page=1

Among the brands I would buy because they were the ones to have even in the old days:


* Acoustic Research
* Boston Acoustics
* Cerwin-Vega
* Infinity
* JBL
* KEF
* Kenwood
* Klipsch
* Polk Audio

NOT BOSE! NOT SONY!

Good luck!

I'm about to spring for a home theater in a box, maybe as a temporary setup with a new HDTV. I'm cheap and want something fairly simple in my old age. I might go for the Polk one above.

The quality of those HTIB is amazing at less than 1/2 the cost of components.
 
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Absolutely. Speakers are the most subjective part of a stereo system but you don't need to have a pair of Klipschorns to get great sound. Take a look at the Paradigm Signature series for example. I love these speakers. Some of my friends really like the Bose products, and although I'm not a huge fan the speakers are small.

Find a good stereo store and tell them what you're looking for. Take a reference CD and sit and listen to several songs. My experience is that some of the smaller speakers sound pretty good at first but begin to annoy me after several minutes. The thing to remember is that nobody can tell you what sounds good to you. You're going to have to find several speakers that meet your size requirements and budget, then listen to them enough to decide what sounds good.

I'm sure Deafsound and others will have more input.
 
My k horns and lascalas take up half the living room.The old lady is trying to push for them to be invisible as well.She suggests hanging them at the hangar.I hate to see what that environment would do to em.Good thing she has a killer butt,or she would become invisible.
 
supercub185 said:
My k horns and lascalas take up half the living room.The old lady is trying to push for them to be invisible as well.She suggests hanging them at the hangar.I hate to see what that environment would do to em.
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I have a pair of Klipsch Heresys in my hangar. Believe it or not I traded a pair of Advent bookshelf speakers for them. Perfect for that environment. Tough speakers with lots of volume.
 
I wonder how the khorns would sound off that metal bldg insulation.I think i may take the lascalas down as they could be hung.The hangar 60 by 80 would be better suited to that type speaker probably.The house is not enough for em to breathe.The hangar is our hangout anyway.We have a big screen there already with satellite.We grill and cookout there all year round.Would have to invest in another amp and tuner.Just running a cheap sony there now.
 
This pro audio installer and sound engineer says: forget the hype... buy what sounds and looks nice to you.

So much depends on the room, the carpet, the furniture, your ears, the kind of tuner or amp you are using, what format and quality of what kind of music, blah blah blah.

But if you really want invisible and are up for a little remodeling, check these out- they actually sound pretty good considering what they are. You can skim and paint right over them. They are truly invisible if you install them right. Don't let the high-ish bottom response (70Hz) fool you; they will couple with the wall and produce some decent lower harmonics and subharmonics.
But you could of course have a small sub in the room, too.

http://www.sonance.com/products/speakers/detail/403
 
rottydaddy said:
But if you really want invisible and are up for a little remodeling, check these out- they actually sound pretty good considering what they are. You can skim and paint right over them. They are truly invisible if you install them right. Don't let the high-ish bottom response (70Hz) fool you; they will couple with the wall and produce some decent lower harmonics and subharmonics.
But you could of course have a small sub in the room, too.

http://www.sonance.com/products/speakers/detail/403
Click to expand...

I would also look at:
www.stealthacoustics.com

A little better response and easier to install.
 
I imagine a pair of K-horns in a hangar would make all the aircraft in the vicinity unairworthy, as their aluminum would be work hardened!:D Would love to have a pair plus a La Scala/Belle Klipsch for the center and a couple of Heresy units for the back speakers, but I'm not infinitely wealthy. Kinda like the Kohler commercial where the couple plops a faucet down on the architect's desk and tells him to build a house around it. That's what you'd have to do for my dream set up (with McIntosh electronics, of course).

As it is, I enjoy my two Heresy speakers with my Denon amp. A little massaging of the signal, and I don't really need a separate sub-woofer. Of course, I'm not listening to hip-hop at bleeding eardrum levels, either.

Go with a pair of Heresy speakers, says I. I like mine. You can get them in raw birch where they can build into the wall, if you have plenty of space behind the wall (a little over a foot, I'd guess). Install them where the midrange and tweeter horns are about eye level when sitting down, but don't obstruct them with junk--you'll lose a lot of the highs and possibly mess up the stereo image (but understand there will be a slight degradation of the bass output of a Heresy).

Have fun picking and choosing. Go listen to them and a lot of others, but be aware that a lot of shops massage the signal as well as the room environment to make their speakers sound good.
 
in defense of Sony speakers, I have a little tiny pair that I absolutely love. I take them with me whenever I go to a studio that I'm not familiar with.

I have to agree....go with what sounds nice and looks nice. Take your favorite CD or your Ipod down to Audio Mart or whatever, and try a ton of speakers out.
 
Thanks for all of the responses. Looks like this is going ot take me awhile. I love the idea of building the speakers invisibly into a wall. Unfortunately, that would mean re-papering the entire living room. The wall paper is over twenty years old so I'd not expect it to still be available. If I could find it, it wouldn't match what has been on the wall for 29 years. It is probably also too heavy.

Do these multiple speaker with center channel sets require an amplifier with multiple outputs? My amplifier is 30 years old and just has left channel/right channel outputs. Do new amplifiers have more outputs? Am I going to need a new amplifier too?
 
Graueradler said:
Thanks for all of the responses. Looks like this is going ot take me awhile. I love the idea of building the speakers invisibly into a wall. Unfortunately, that would mean re-papering the entire living room. The wall paper is over twenty years old so I'd not expect it to still be available. If I could find it, it wouldn't match what has been on the wall for 29 years. It is probably also too heavy.

Do these multiple speaker with center channel sets require an amplifier with multiple outputs? My amplifier is 30 years old and just has left channel/right channel outputs. Do new amplifiers have more outputs? Am I going to need a new amplifier too?
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Yeah. Get a home theater (audio/video) receiver and you'll have all of those speaker ports, or get a home theater in a box and you also get the speakers and the DVD player.
 
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mikea said:
Yeah. Get a home theater receiver and you'll have all of those speaker ports, or get a home theater in a box and you also get the speakers and the DVD player.
Click to expand...

Indeed. They are a lot of product for the money nowadays... I've worked with the Yamaha and Denon ones, but there are many more out there.

Might be time to retire "old Bessie" to utility duty in the garage or hangar... ;D
 
gibbons said:
Find a good stereo store and tell them what you're looking for. Take a reference CD and sit and listen to several songs.
Click to expand...

FWIW, I have one particular track that'll tell me really quick how the frequency response is for any given system. It's Frank Sinatra, I Get A Kick Out Of You. I don't think every single recording has this, but on the particular recording I have, there's a nice fat bass trombone pedal tone right after the first line. ("I get no kick from champaaaagne," BAAAAAAAAAAA!) It's amazing the number of systems I've listened to that on where it's very muffled. So, that's the first test.

Then, I test the high response using drum & bugle corps music. A good example would be the 1999 Madison Scouts' Jesus Christ Superstar show. I'm looking for a particular timbre when the horn line is at full volume such as toward the end of Trial and Crucifixion.

Heck, I'll attach a test track with some snippets of the above for ya.

As far as speakers go, the Klipsch in-wall ones are nice. I don't think you should have to re-paper the wall if you do the installation right.

The speakers I've been most impressed by were Canton speakers - I don't know much more about them 'cuz I couldn't afford them myself back when I was installing them, but here's a couple of anecdotes for ya:

1) I was installing a new stereo/home theater/DSS setup for a guy at his vacation home. We got the speakers and such installed first, and while I was working on programming the remote, Channel 999 or whatever the "promo" channel that you get before you activate service is was on. They played a little musical interlude jingle that actually made me jump because I felt like I'd been teleported into a theater all of a sudden. Even more impressive is the fact that this happened before we installed the subwoofer!

2) My business partner picked up a pair of used Canton speakers for himself after our client's had impressed us so much, and of course we had to, uh, test them. :D The sound was so clean that despite having music cranked really loud on these speakers only a couple of feet away, we were able to easily converse in normal tones. It was really weird, but really impressive!

http://www.cantonusa.com/
 

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I love my M&K's (Miller & Kreisel). I spent a pretty penny back in 2000 on the THX series, on the advice of an audiophile that said the speakers were the most important part to "invest" in. They're great for music and video, and were used by LucasFilm as the reference speakers while mixing the newest Star Wars and also the LOTR movies. I'll never have to buy another set of speakers!!

They're just fantastic. Unfortunately, they went out of business earlier this year, but one of their dealers just bought their assets and production rights (in Germany), and the website is back up...
 
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