More speakerage!

[azekeil]

After last night's emotional audio-coaster we decided to pop in to Audio-T this morning to see if we could borrow something different, after browsing their special offer loudspeaker section on their website. I saw these Castle Howard S2s (image of newer S3s but practically identical looks-wise) going for £400, but in the shop they were only £350, so I've borrowed them and really look forwards to trying them tonight. Apparently they are 'smooth', which may well suit my room a lot better than anything else we've tried. Quite excited as if they work that'll be £1,000's worth of speaker for £350! :)

kissycat1000 has a pair of Naim something-or-other's she plans to try tonight as well, but she wants to try the Castle Howards on her system as well at some point, and the 914s just to see how much my room (and hifi) is affecting the sound.

Work is really busy, but we might have a break-through with the slow email problem - it looks like Messagelabs aren't trying any mail servers except for the primary - if the primary is overloaded it times out, causing delays. Sendmail immediately retrys with a lower priority mail server which works fine. If it does turn out to be the case, I wonder if they will give us some money back for debugging their servers *sigh*.

Comments

[dylan.livejournal.com]

Castle speakers generally use expensive looking wood and are great for old men who are impressed by the build quality. Don't do anything for me soundwise though. You pay the money for the real wood, best avoided. I've never heard a pair of Naim speakers I liked the sound of (although I have heard Naim amps and CDs which were ok)

Like I said, try out some Tannoys (preferably the large stand mount ones, I can lend you some stands)

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

There were some newer Tannoy floorstanders there, didn't manage to get a model number or price out of him for them (usually a bad sign), but I will try those next and/or ask for standmount tannoys if these are no good. kissycat1000 may like them though, so it's worth borrowing them anyway.

You've got some standmount tannoys don't you? Fancy bringing them with you when you come up?

[dylan.livejournal.com]

My standmount Tannoy's are monitor speakers so not much good for listening to in a home situation. Nowhere near enough bass for you either. My floorstanding Tannoys aren't fast enough for you and there's no way anyone else is having them :P I just need a house with a large enough bedroom to put them in

About 10 years ago Tannoy did some good standmounts for about £150, they should be cheaper secondhand now. I was quite impressed for the price (definitely better than my little Celestions and a very weighty sound). I'm not sure about their newer stuff. The Kingdoms I saw a few years back would look cool in your front room but I think they were about 40 grand a pair (about 7ft high and 4ft wide)

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

I found a pic online of them.. very impressive :)

Ah well it's all an adventure :) Come and listen and see what you think :)

[dylan.livejournal.com]

The pics online I found looked smaller than the ones I saw, they must have been a limited edition or something. This is a link to some Tannoys similar to what I have for my bedroom system. Very relaxing but not punchy or loud enough for you:


Here's a buy-it-now ebay item for £50 for some of the Tannoy M2s. I'd seriously compare them to other speakers you're considering


There are other Tannoy speakers on ebay, some with a current bid of 1 pound

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

Aaah. We did have some Tannoy M1s kissycat1000 was thinking of using for rears at one point - they sounded incredibly bright - painfully bright - in my room on my Marantz. I'd be cautious of them presently.

Come up and prevent me from making a terrible mistake! :)

[dylan.livejournal.com]

The M1s are the little ones, you want the bigger, older ones. Tannoy speakers in general have an over exaggerated bass at a particular frequency (they've picked a nice one though) and a bright treble, with not much mid range so they might be a bit bright with the Marantz (not sure, as I'm not that familiar with Marantz amps). Some of the older ones have an adjustable crosover to increase/decrease the treble response

Notice how those Tannoys are supposed to be used with the speaker connections at the top (I've always used mine the other way up)

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

Cool, OK. If I'm not very happy with the Castles I will certainly look into the Tannoy standmounts.

[dylan.livejournal.com]

If the M1s were too bright then you might find the others too bright too. I'm not sure as I've not heard the M1s but most Tannoys sound similar

[gerald_duck]

I'd disagree. While I might be accused of being an old man by people who had no further use for their kneecaps, I'm hardly someone likely to be taken in by pretty build quality, which is why Sonus Faber aren't my favourite speaker manufacturers.

Castle speakers don't make the mistake of overstatement. This means they can sound too polite and uninvolving with unenthusiastic partnering equipment. On the other hand, a few years ago I heard some £800 Castle speakers — perhaps this very model, though I can't be sure — through a Meridian 500 518 566.24 557 combo. True, that's £5000 of components, but it was very interesting to hear what those speakers could do with loads of precise detail pushed gently but extremely firmly down the cable.

As I recall, Alex has Marantz power amplification? That's quite gutsy; while there may not be synergy per se with Castle speakers, opposites could attract. (-8

Naim. Well, Naim. Take any old nondescript jazz trio, have it recorded by one of the audiophile labels, and a Naim system will sound like Heaven on Earth. While the demonstrator's back's turned, swap that for some Rammstein and it promptly goes to pieces. My rule of thumb is never ever to try making Naim kit play back material that's supposed to sound "bigger" than the room you're in. At the last show I visited, they kindly demonstrated that themselves with a Peter Gabriel live DVD — painfully loud, yet strangely uncompelling.

Tannoy speakers are good all-rounders. My hunch is that with random amplification they'll sound better than the Castles, though Castle will beat them hands down if really allowed to shine.

I'd say, incidentally, that floor-standing speakers are clearly superior at the high end, and stand-mount better at the low end. In the kind of mid-ground being considered here, I think you just have to compare on a case-by-case basis, always remembering you save £100 on models you don't need stands for. (-8

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

Marantz PM-80, yes. I'm hoping that the amp will 'brighten up' the Castles, but not have them reproduce too much of the splashy treble the Marantz seems to produce, plus hopefully it won't be too much for that harsh echoey room (which really needs good thick curtains on the window etc).

Fingers crossed, eh? Bargain if it works :)

[dylan.livejournal.com]

What I meant by the Castle/old man statement was that I don't think they're going to have the power and punch that azekeil needs, you've seen his music collection and the amout of Nine Inch Nails type stuff. I've heard some of Castle's range and although ok, I've always preferred something else (eg Kef reference). For the price he's looking at a lot of that is going to go on the wood, whereas £500 standmounts are likely to be fairly good and better suited to his room which has the tendancy to make speakers boom.

As regards Naim, they do some things ok but other companies (most notably DNM) do it with better bass, less harshness, better dynamics and rhythmn (ok, so DNM aren't cheap or sturdy). You either love it or hate it, personally I hate it, I have found all of their demos very uninvolving, they didn't have the "makes you want to tap your feet" appeal. I felt impressed that the speakers could go that loud and show so much detail but didn't actually enjoy what I was listening to. I did find the Nait 3 and some of their CD players ok though. I don't rate their speakers at all, all the best Naim systems I've heard have been playing through other speakers.

From what I've heard of floorstanders they're not generally fast or punchy enough for me, and the ones below a grand didn't sound too good. Above that there are a few ok ones I've heard (eg Audio Physic), but they're a bit out of his price range.

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

..even £500 is pushing it. £300 is my sort of budget at the moment - £350 if they're really good.

Ah well, it should be an interesting match at any rate.

[dylan.livejournal.com]

I was meaning £500 when they were new, approx £200 second hand should get you something good. I've not heard any £500 floorstanders I liked.

[gerald_duck]

Speaking in relativities, Wharfedale, Celestion, Ruark and Castle all make reasonable stuff around that price.

Yes, you can get better stuff that costs more. If I put myself in a critical listening mood, I hear limitations in just-about everything these days. I've probably only heard genuinely flawless music half a dozen times in my life. (-8

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

Stop depressing me!

I am happy to settle for listenable, better, not lacking for now.

[gerald_duck]

Sowwy. :-p

There's satisfaction to be had from a good system at almost any level; I got my first "proper" system back in 1990-1, and it cost about £1250 all-told (Revolver turntable with Linn K9 cartridge, Sony Walkman Professional, Musical Fidelity B1 amplifier, Rogers LS4a speakers, Heybrook speaker stands, Target turntable support, Linn K20 speaker cable). That kept me happy for about half a decade.

Conversely, I'm now beginning to hanker some system upgrades to cope with DVD-Audio, not least because Mike Oldfield has re-released Tubular Bells!

[dylan.livejournal.com]

Half a dozen? That many. you must have heard more systems than me. I've only managed it once (and some of the not good systems cost 60 grand or more)

[gerald_duck]

Well — I don't have specific events in mind, but certainly I was thinking mainly about live acoustic music!

[dylan.livejournal.com]

Ah, ok, that's more likely to sound better than CD. I've at least heard one home hifi I liked so that does give me hope

[gerald_duck]

Off the top of my head, if we plonk the listener in an anechoic chamber, surrounded (in 3D) by about twenty speakers with temporal accuracy down in the low microseconds, tiny harmonic distortion, full phase coherence and 140dB SNR, played from a source with picosecond jitter that can be accurately converted and amplified… then we might finally reach perfection.

So far as a single listener is concerned.

But we can't make that yet, and it might not work very far from the "sweet spot", and it could be tricky to integrate into a domestic listening room.

Ah well — at least those of us in the business will be able to keep selling upgrades for a while yet. (-8

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

You could have a mejigger in the remote that transmits your position to the CPU of the setup and have that adjust the sweet spot to approximately 1 foot behind and 1.5 feet up to approximate the head. If it could do orientation as well then it could make it so that the stereo imagery was correct no matter your orientation.

Finally it could have a few mic's on the remote to sense how it was receiving the sound and tweak it a bit more for that ;)

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

Or just use a fantastic pair of headphones and a sub :D

[gerald_duck]

Sometimes people want more than one person to be able to listen to a hi-fi. :-p

Also, integrating the sound from the headphones with that from the subwoofers (you'd need at least four, in fact) would be easier said than done. If the subwoofer's in the corner of a largeish room, you need to pick what's coming out of the subwoofer 2cs before it hits the listener, and hi-fi isn't prescient.

Besides, if you know a way to make a fantastic pair of headphones, you should be applying for a job with Sennheiser, or Stax, or somebody. There are only a few models of headphone vying to be best in the world; I've heard most of them, and frankly you could trounce them given five grand or so for a speaker-based system. (-8

[serena-lesley.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately I left most of my 'demo' CDs at azekeil's, but I don't hate them yet. See for first impressions. :)