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Best 2way Speakers you have owned

I dunno about the best, but one of my favorites are the Marantz Imperial 6's.
I've never had anything that fancy, and I've never cared for horned speakers.
So I guess the best may be the Popk Monitor 7's with Peerless soft dome tweters I'm listening to right now. They're a well balanced sounding speaker.
Mine came without grills, and I don't care for the flat black grills that cover the whole front of the speaker that Polk used anyway. So I made my own.
I have been using a pair of Monitor 10's for some time. The 7's don't have the bottom end the 10's have, but the 7's have a more detailed sound compared to the 10's. I've been listening to the 7's most the day with my big PPP tube mono blocks. They sound great together. Below are pictures of rhe 7's and 10's for comparison.
 

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Lavane said:
I dunno about the best, but one of my favorites are the Marantz Imperial 6's.
I've never had anything that fancy, and I've never cared for horned speakers.
So I guess the best may be the Popk Monitor 7's with Peerless soft dome tweters I'm listening to right now. They're a well balanced sounding speaker.
Mine came without grills, and I don't care for the flat black grills that cover the whole front of the speaker that Polk used anyway. So I made my own.
I have been using a pair of Monitor 10's for some time. The 7's don't have the bottom end the 10's have, but the 7's have a more detailed sound compared to the 10's. I've been listening to the 7's most the day with my big PPP tube mono blocks. They sound great together. Below are pictures of rhe 7's and 10's for comparison.
Click to expand...
Monitor 7s are very nice. I remember lusting after them after I heard them at someone's house being driven by a Nikko preamp and amp setup. Maybe back in 1983 or so...
 
grindstone said:
@Ronnie T if you feel like it, talk some more. Maybe you had several of these pairs simultaneously and took notes? Not trolling, just Interested in your impressions. Shootouts, in your own house, basically. Probably most of us here at AK did similar at various times.

How have your hearing/preferences evolved by owning them, how they differed -- in whatever detail you can make time / effort to post. Please add non-functional/sidebar domestic-approval-stuff, what size room, what material...whatever you feel like posting. For the record, none of these are anything remotely similar to areas of personal focus -- not a slam, I just sort of start at 95dB/W baseline these years 2-pi space.

But you can get smooth and coherent-ish and a lot of Other Things. Are those enough, do you seek more/other? What's missing and what's exemplary?
Click to expand...
That was remarkably well-written and a great set of questions.
 
I have a pair of DCM Time Windows (Model One, I believe) and although there are 4 drivers per speaker, 2 woofs and 2 tweets, they appear to be essentially 2-way with "twin pairs" of drivers.
 
coonmanx said:
Monitor 7s are very nice. I remember lusting after them after I heard them at someone's house being driven by a Nikko preamp and amp setup. Maybe back in 1983 or so...
Click to expand...
I have a pair if the 5jr's too. They have the SL-2000 mylar tweeters though. They sounds nice in a small room. I have various smaller systems setup on either side of my bench in a small room. I wouldn't mind finding a pair of Monitor 11's.
They're a floor standing version of the 10's. Supposedly they reworked the crossovers to tune the two midbass drivers a little differently from each other?, to cancel out the slight combing effect the 10's have. I'm looking into getting a new tube preamp that has tone controls. I really like the preamp I have that uses an Aikido design, but for some speakers I have tone controls are needed to bump the bass some at low volumes.
 
GordonW said:
I technically was co-owner of a pair of Tannoy Canterbury SE's, for a while.

Almost everything else at that level I've owned, has been 3-way or higher.

Regards,
Gordon.
Click to expand...
Over all, do you have a preference when it comes to 2way, 3way, etc?
Overall I tend to gravitate to 2way designs. I only have two pairs of 3way speakers out of all the pairs I have. One pair are floor standing Technics speakers from some rack system that were given to me. They're only good for garage duty. I've been trying to give them away. The other is a pair of Celestion Ditton 300's that are just ok smallish speakers. I've had other 3way speakers over the years that were better, but thwy just didn't hang aeound long compared to 2way designs.
 
Some of the same arguments for two ways over three ways - coherence, efficiency, simplicity - also are valid when comparing one ways - full range drivers - to two ways.
One area where full range drivers differ from two ways, though is price. A single driver that covers close to full range will probably cost much more than the equivalently capable two way.
 
Lavane said:
Over all, do you have a preference when it comes to 2way, 3way, etc?
Overall I tend to gravitate to 2way designs. I only have two pairs of 3way speakers out of all the pairs I have. One pair are floor standing Technics speakers from some rack system that were given to me. They're only good for garage duty. I've been trying to give them away. The other is a pair of Celestion Ditton 300's that are just ok smallish speakers. I've had other 3way speakers over the years that were better, but thwy just didn't hang aeound long compared to 2way designs.
Click to expand...

I am agnostic to whatever number of "ways".

Among the four best speakers I've ever heard at any price, there's a 2-way, a 3-way, a 4-way and a 5-way.

I will say, it's more a sure thing, to make a world-class speaker, to have more than 2 ways. Just more flexibility to tune it exactly right.

Regards,
Gordon.
 
Have always been partial to the Spica TC-50's and Spica Angelis.

Amazing speakers in 1990. Still hold up today~~!

3005143-spica-tc-50-speakers-w-original-stands-amp-boxes.jpg


1902108-spica-angelus-speakers.jpg
 
YAY SPICA and John Bau! I worked for a VERY brief period in a wood shop on Augua Fria in Santa Fe that made the cabs for Spica SC-50. Slept on the floor in a garage down the street, right next door to a drive in liquor store. AAAIIIEEE! Livin' the dream!
 
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