Time to get new speakers

[Ron Wagstaff]

Are you going without a center channel?

I'm thinking there's very little to lose if I go with a centre speaker, so I probably will.

A subwoofer seems more debatable, especially if I get floorstanding speakers for the front two.

 

[Ron Wagstaff]

Welcome to the club RW. I agree with Neil, tricky one to answer and hopefully you will get a lot of answers here. There will be no right answer and I'll give you a couple of my thoughts and experience.
Prior to my current set up I had 5.1 R/L front floor standers with smaller center and R/L surround. My current set up are all bookshelf and one sub, 5.1. My new set up in a few weeks will be 5.1 with 3 subs, R/L front floors, two rear surrounds and one center with 4 ceilings, Atmos.
If you are like me, a gearhead sometimes it's easy to forget the goal and that is to listen to music in a comfortable space.
Your sitting and listening space, how you create that has a lot to do with your experience. Walls that reflect, absorb, etc will all affect your speaker source. I have used different speakers over the years, but the ones that have captured my heart and soul have been the B&W and Kplisch brands.
I look at all of this as a hobby, so try not to go too fast, adding little pieces, waiting awhile before a next piece, is a good way to go. Like a home train hobbyist, the fun is building the track and town, the watching the train go round is the fruit of your passion.
This site from Wendy Carlos is very good to study and will help you on your personal journey.
http://www.wendycarlos.com/gosurround.html

Just read through the Wendy Carlos article and found it a great read. Appears I have a near optimal layout, by default not by design.

I remember listening to Switched-on Bach on vinyl when it first came out; she recorded that when she was known as Walter Carlos.

 

[Ron Wagstaff]

Tricky one to answer without knowing more about your set-up, how good (or bad) your room acoustics are, what your budget is etc.

...but I would say this: Acoustic Energy made/make really good speakers. I don't know what your satellites are but I have (aged/vintage) Aegis Evo Ones as my rears (part of a matched set with their Aegis Evo Three floor standers as fronts) and I know I would be hard pressed to find anything better without spending an arm and a leg. Their low frequency response is also incredibly good for satellites.

WRT a sub my view (and I know I'm going to get a lot of people disagreeing with this one) is that if you have good floor standers as fronts, you can easily get away without a sub in a small room. My Evo Threes go right down to 35 Hz and I get great bass response without all the hassle of tuning the bass without my sub. I still run the sub because of all the play testing I do, but I know I would be perfectly happy without it.

I'm thinking I might go down the Acoustic Energy route. I've set up a saved search on eBay to inform of all new listings.

It appears to me the Aegis Ones and Twos are the same speaker except that the latter is on a pedestal. Are the Three significantly better than theTwos? Are the later versions of these speakers very much different from the originals - or is it just styling?

 

[Neil Palfreyman]

It appears to me the Aegis Ones and Twos are the same speaker except that the latter is on a pedestal. Are the Three significantly better than theTwos? Are the later versions of these speakers very much different from the originals - or is it just styling?

The AE legacy ranges are quite confusing in terms of names and generations: For example the Aegis, Aegis Evo and Aegis Neo were all different generations (different designs)

I can only speak with authority for the one's I have, which are the Aegis Evo Three (front floorstanders), Aegis Evo One Surrounds and Aegis Evo Centre.

On my set the mid/high drivers are identical across all three, but the Centre has an additional mid driver and the Fronts have an additional bass driver. All have bass reflex ports which you can "tune" with foam plugs - useful in a small room if the speakers are close to a wall.

When I last used them, albeit several years ago, AE support were very friendly and very helpful. In fact I had lost my foam port plugs and they sent me a new set free of charge.

You could e-mail or phone them to ask about their legacy products.

My guess (and it is a guess) is that there will be differences in the drivers between the Ones and Twos, but providing they're part of the same range they will be "matched."

 

[MidiMagic]

I have the fun of making things work for both quadraphonics and Dolby.

I had (and still use) the four studio monitors I bought in 1974. They are the channels used by the Dolby processor, and can be used with its 6-channel input by the quadraphonic system.

I then added 4 smaller identical channels and speakers for use with center front, side wing, and center back in the quadraphonic system. I am now adding two more channels for vertical directionality.

Only one snag developed. My Dolby processor expects exactly the same equalization for the center channel and the main speakers. There is no provision for EQ-ing them separately. My speakers need separate EQ, so I am feeding the center speaker from the quadraphonic section and have the Dolby processor using a phantom center.

I added a subwoofer only because I could not hear what was being added to the master CD below the low response limit of the studio monitors.

 

[ssully]

Amir over at Audio Science Review is doing tons of speakers measurements these days with a Klippel device, which is comparable to anaechoic room measurement. So you don't have to rely on the usual anecdotal reports that are all over the map. You can actually investigate which speakers measure well. Audio Science Review (ASR) Forum

 

[bluelightning]

Here is another set of bookshelf speakers I find interesting. And hard to beat the price. Not sure about shipping cost to the UK though. They have a full line using the same ribbon tweeters, including towers, and Atmos in ceiling speakers where the tweeters angle is adjustable. I really like the products this company puts out.

airmotive B1

Wow. I had no idea Emotiva were making loudspeakers as well!