Home speaker recommendations

In My Humble Opinion
1

One of our speakers has shuffled off its magnetic coil, so we’re looking for replacement recommendations in the $200–$400 range (or even just general brand advice).

The environment: our parlour is a rectangular(ish)-shaped 800–900 square feet. There is no television in the parlour; there is only music. Content is (mostly) losslessly ripped CDs or Rhapsody files passed through an equalizer to a JVC RX-9010VBK home theatre receiver. The receiver has main/sub-room outputs, so there are clean left and right channels (it also drives a subwoofer). We used a decent mic and the EQ’s pink noise generator to balance out the sound in the room.

The to-be-replaced speakers originally came from a Sony home theatre kit. They’re nothing special, but between their placement and the subwoofer, the system sounds pretty good.

So … before turning to an audio board that will shudder at our lack of gold plated knobs or pre-polarized LEDs, what say the Dope?

2

The Infinity Primus series is liked by the audiophile press, and the Primus P162 bookshelf is also the top pick from Consumer Reports. That goes for around $200/pair usually or the smaller P152 for $150. They’ve been discontinued in favor of the P163 and P153 which are probably the same except cosmetics. There is also a tower speaker, the 360/P362/P363 which can sometimes be found on sale for under $400/pair. Fry’s has had big sales on the P362.

PSB makes good speakers. I had their Image B25 ($400/pair) and they were great, but they’re discontinued. The new Image series is supposed to be better, but I haven’t heard them. They’re a little more expensive, but the smaller ones should be under 400. The cheaper Alpha series B1 comes in at $250 list, maybe $200 street.

B&W, or Paradigm make good speakers, but I’m not sure which models you’d want. You could see if there are any dealers around you.

If you get bookshelves, you’ll generally want stands. The cheapest I’m aware of are the Sanus Basic Foundations series. They can be had for $30/pair and they’re decent but the feet can break off if you’re not careful.

I’d keep the working old ones, as you could use them for surrounds or something.

3

When I was speaker-shopping years ago, one of the go-to brands for small-and-cheap-but-still-sounds-good was the Paradigm Atom speaker. (Paradigm makes a line of speakers; the Atoms are the small ones.)

I’d recommend going to an audiophile store if there’s one handy, so you can listen to various speakers. Good audio shops will carry gear that is affordable.
(Oh, and I do I have to include the reminder not to buy Bose?)

4

Thanks.

The current speakers are on wall mounts, so new ones shouldn’t pose a problem.

I’m glad to get some basic recc’s ahead of time—from my long-ago experience, audio salesmen are akin to used car salesmen with a penchant for homeopathy. Plus, I have limited background and understanding of what’s important. Also, won’t listening in the store be vastly different from listening at home? Sure, I should, but the overall experience won’t be the same, will it? Wherever I go, I’ll be sure it has a good return/exchange policy.

I’ve read that most of Bose is marketing hype (Paul Harvey doesn’t come cheap!), but can’t really articulate why they are overpriced or sub-par.

Any thoughts on Polk Audio or Energy? They come to mind because Newegg occasionally puts them on sale and they get fairly good ratings by users. I know most visitors to Newegg are computer-oriented, but they are generally a technologically savvy lot. Right now there are Polk Audio Monitor40 Series II listed at $120 a pair (the “regular” price is $300; Amazon seems to carry them for $321).

Also, in choosing speakers, what are the key metrics to look at? Any guidance as to pairing new speakers with a new subwoofer?

Again, thanks~

5

Polk Audio is, according an audiophile friend, a good, competent speaker. For something more high end, I would look at what Klipsch offers.

I know how you feel about going to an audio store, but someplace local might not be too bad. Around here, 6th Avenue electronics used to be pretty good but I haven’t been there in years.

anyway, if you are going to shell out big bucks, you need to hear the speakers - preferably with the kind of components you will be using. I recently got a pair of Monitor 40’s (2010 edition) but haven’t hooked them up yet. Currently i have an old pair of NHT Zero’s which I love. I picked them out after hearing them at 6th ave. They were so much cleaner and crisper than anything else in their price range that it was a no brainer.

You can also if your library has any audio magazines like Sound and Vision. I think their reviews are pretty reliable (or at least used to be) but I can’t speak for other magazines.

6

Energy has a good reputation. I’m not sure about Polk, I think they have a reputation as being decent but I don’t know if they’re known for being the best. That Monitor series seems to be the cheapest series of real speakers from a decent manufacturer. I haven’t heard them or seen a pro review, but they get good user reviews so they should be good for the price, at least.

NHT makes good speakers, but they only have one small pair that comes in under $400. (these) NHT speakers tend to have low efficiency or sensitivity, meaning they don’t go as loud on a given amount of power. Those linked ones could work in a small room, but they aren’t the best choice for filling a large room like yours with loud sound due to the single 5.25" woofer and the low efficiency.

Klipsch is known for making high-efficiency speakers, so they may be a good choice if you want it loud but they don’t generally have fidelity quite as good as some of these other brands.

Don’t get caught up in specs unless you really want to take the time to understand them. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. I’d go by reviews, reputation and you should get a chance to listen to them yourself; at least there should be a return policy if you order online. Speakers with bigger or more woofers will generally be able to handle bass better at high volumes, because even when you’re using a subwoofer the main speakers have to handle the upper bass and some of the middle bass.

You do need to check the minimum impedance that you receiver can drive. If you drive speakers with lower impedance than that, the amp could overheat (hopefully it would shut itself off) if you play them loud for a long time.

For magazine reviews I’d recommend Stereophile and Soundstage. They both do objective measurements which help to cut through the bullshit. Even if you don’t understand them, John Atkinson of Stereophile makes comments at the end of his measurements on whether they’re good or bad.

If you’re going to do surround sound, you may want a new receiver as the new ones have all sort of useful features, often including auto calibration using a microphone. They also have better ways of generating surround sound from a stereo source, such as Pro Logic 2.

If you’re comparing speakers in a store, try to get them set at the same volume. Otherwise, the louder pair will usually sound better just because it’s louder. Or course, you might also want to test how loud they can get, but for general sound quality you want to compare them at equal volume.

7

I think my Newegg addiction is showing. They often have good deals on Polk and Klipsch—often enough for me to resist the impulse purchase. Actually, if I can bear the sound for a couple months, we’ll be into Black Friday territory.

I don’t mind putting in effort in learning what to look for—starting from complete scratch may be a bit more than I can reasonably take on, but looking into the main factors and how they balance out doesn’t seem too daunting. I think what I’m trying to accomplish is to make sure I get speakers that are capable of working with/taking advantage of the receiver’s output (e.g., I don’t want to buy something that’s more sensitive than what it’s receiving) and to figure out what subwoofer will be best matched to the speakers (or even what crossover settings to use on the receiver).

Note there’s no surround needed. The den houses the theatre, so it has the Onkyo self-calibrating receiver and surround sound. We spend a few hours a day in the parlour with music either in the background or main focus. We do occasionally listen loud, but I’m primarily interested in getting a full range of sound at modest listening volumes—I’d like to hear the subtleties without having to crank it up.

On an anticipation note (and perhaps prompting new speakers all around), how do theater-in-a-box speaker kits compare to purpose-bought speakers? That is, there are several configurations out there, from 5.1 speaker kits to separate satellites/centre channel/subwoofer options. Do the latter bypass the former by an order of magnitude, or is it mild degrees of difference?

8

I am in the process of building a HT with 7.1 surround. All of my speakers are RBH.

Not sure how they sound, as the installation is not finished.

9

See, sites like that CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!

Okay, Lurr quotes aside, that’s exactly the intimidating front I’m faced with. There are seven bookshelf speakers listed. What’s the difference? Do I just go by price?

Speaking of which, I’ve been saying bookshelf bookshelf bookshelf, all because it’s pretty much what I have now. The speaker wires are in-wall, so could I also be looking at in-wall speakers? Are there downsides to those?

10

When I was designing my HT, I did not have the time or inclination to go out and perform “listening tests” on speakers. Even if I did, I would be limited to only the speakers sold at the AV shops. Not to mention that my hearing is not all that great to begin with.

So I simply went with reputation. I wanted speakers that…

  1. had a good reputation amongst HT and AV folks.
  2. were not very cheap. (Sorry, but if a speaker is very cheap, there must be a reason.)
  3. were not ultra expensive. (I stayed away from high-end/esoteric/audiophile speakers. Not only are they outside my price range, but I’ve heard many are actually crap.)

So I signed up to the AVS Forum and spent a few hours perusing the speaker forum. The same three or four speaker brands were talked about the most. One of the brands was RBH. From what I gathered, it was a no-nonsense company that manufactured high quality speakers at reasonable prices.

Of course, what’s reasonable to me may not be reasonable for you. My RBH front speakers were $700 each.

11

My center channel speaker is an in-wall speaker. This is it. My four rear speakers (here and here) are also in-wall.

There are pros and cons to in-wall speakers. I like them because they look “cleaner” and they’re “out of the way.” The following are drawbacks:

  1. They don’t sound quite as good as free-standing speakers, all else being equal. I doubt I would be able to tell the difference, though.

  2. You have to cut a big 'ol hole in your wall.

  3. You can’t pivot the speaker.

12

I’ve had Bose, NHT, B&W, Klipsch, Cerwin Vega!, and (way back in the day) Sansui. By far, my favorites would be B&W and Klipsch. The CVs were very large and had huge sound, the NHTs were overpriced, and the Bose 901s, while popular, were somewhat muffled compared to the CV speakers. B&W makes speakers for all budgets, with the high end running around $35,000/pair. But you can get perfectly acceptable bookshelf models for a few hundred: I think I spent about $1500 for all five of mine.