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Putting the finishing touch on my budget $3,000 system. Which speakers?

34dean

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I’ve built my budget system and one piece remains to be found, speakers.
Here is my set up:

Adcom GFA545 Power Amp
AP Holman Pre Amp
Musical Fidelity V90-DAC
Onkyo C-7030 CD Player
Kenwood KD550 Turntable (New AT cart)
Polk Audio PSW505 Subwoofer

Leaves me around $1,200 for speakers. Here are a few on my consideration list:

Quad S2
Wharfedale Linton
KEF LS50
ADS L910
Elac UB5

I need stand-sitters as I do not have room for floors.

I’d appreciate input and suggestions to finish off my system. Thank you!
 
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Speakers are a very personalized choice based upon your musical tastes and priorities.

With that budget, I'd buy a pair of Magnepan LRS and subs in a heartbeat. But then I prefer acoustical music types and don't play at high levels.

Curious about this comment: "I need stand-sitters as I do not have room for floors."

Where do you intend to put the stands - other than the floor?
 
Speakers are a very personalized choice based upon your musical tastes and priorities.

With that budget, I'd buy a pair of Magnepan LRS and subs in a heartbeat. But then I prefer acoustical music types and don't play at high levels.

Curious about this comment: "I need stand-sitters as I do not have room for floors."

Where do you intend to put the stands - other than the floor?

I have nice slim stands already. Any floor speakers of any size will not work for me. Maggies would be at the top of my list otherwise.
 
Sorry, but I seem to be missing something in your space requirement. The LRS is 14.5" wide while the ADS 910 is 19" wide. Have you got stuff at floor level that takes up space below where the speaker box would be?
 
I’ve built my budget system and one piece remains to be found, speakers.
Here is my set up:

Adcom GFA545 Power Amp
AP Holman Pre Amp
Musical Fidelity V90-DAC
Onkyo C-7030 CD Player
Kenwood KD550 Turntable (New AT cart)
Polk Audio PSW505 Subwoofer

Leaves me around $1,200 for speakers. Here are a few on my consideration list:

Quad S2
Wharfedale Linton
KEF LS50
ADS L910
Elac UB5

I need stand-sitters as I do not have room for floors.

I’d appreciate input and suggestions to finish off my system. Thank you!
ADS910
 
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Sorry, but I seem to be missing something in your space requirement. The LRS is 14.5" wide while the ADS 910 is 19" wide. Have you got stuff at floor level that takes up space below where the speaker box would be?

910’s might be too big for my stands. But other furniture prevent floorstanders.
 
910s are designed to be mounted close to the floor (and came with custom stands just for that purpose). I don't think you'd well served with them, plus due to their size and weight, there's the very real possibility that someone could be injured by them, since it would probably be a balancing act to put them on stands other than their own.
 
If you can DEMO, DEMO & DEMO some more and let YOUR ears be the deciding factor especially if your comfortable spending $1200.

You mentioned the speakers you are considering, what about those has you considering them?
 
If you can DEMO, DEMO & DEMO some more and let YOUR ears be the deciding factor especially if your comfortable spending $1200.

You mentioned the speakers you are considering, what about those has you considering them?

Reviews and input here and on other forums.
 
Jamo C103, also in high gloss black or white. Original retail $1800 but due to some crazy Amazon sales a while back they show up from time to time on eBay well within your budget. I have a pair in high gloss black and they're fantastic. If you go this route give them 50hrs to break in before final judgement.

06-IMG_1393.jpg
 
I guess I'm confused on the space restrictions, as well. If you've got the floorspace for stands, you've typically got floorspace for...well, floor standing speakers. No?

Anyway, I've had good luck with Axiom Audio out of Canada. Their M5HP speakers are in your budget and sound great. I also have a pair of their smaller M3's but they're probably a bit too low-spec'd for your setup.

Good luck.
 
You've got a good front end ..The Apt and the Adcom can both be revealing ..
Take your time and listen to a lot of speakers .. hard, but not impossible to achieve these days. Audio salons are mostly long gone ..
Limit your purchases to things that you can send back if they're unsatisfactory ..
Study the Speakers that you can get hold of under those terms ... you want to hear them in your room with your system..
 
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Jamo C103, also in high gloss black or white. Original retail $1800 but due to some crazy Amazon sales a while back they show up from time to time on eBay well within your budget. I have a pair in high gloss black and they're fantastic. If you go this route give them 50hrs to break in before final judgement.

View attachment 1825396
I admit I've never given Jamo speakers a single thought. Somehow my brain associated the name with the likes of Soundesign and Lloyd's, etc.
 
I really like the Wharfedale Lintons. However, they are 12 inches wide, which is wider than most floor standing speakers. Most of the recent tower speakers are between 7 to 10 inches wide.

ADS speakers are nice sounding to my ears but the L910 is quite large and 19 inches wide. I doubt it would fit in your space requirements. If you can fit them than you could fit most floor standing speakers.
 
I admit I've never given Jamo speakers a single thought. Somehow my brain associated the name with the likes of Soundesign and Lloyd's, etc.

That's too bad, they were a highly regarded Danish company and their speakers are quite nice, and expensive lol. They were bought by Klipsch a few yrs ago and shortly there after their last Flagship line of speakers showed up on Amazon at crazy prices.

A member here alerted us but I was too late.........for that sale heh heh heh.

The sales were brief but I was lucky enough to catch one about 3 months later. Only purchased one pair, realized my mistake but only minutes later I was too late again.

A month later I nabbed 4 more pair, they're now residing in Australia.

Here you go, check out this review of their Flagship model the C-109, the C-103's big brother.
https://blog.son-video.com/en/2015/05/review-jamo-concert-c109-3-way/
 
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That's too bad, they were a highly regarded Danish company and their speakers are quite nice, and expensive lol. They were bought by Klipsch a few yrs ago and shortly there after their last Flagship line of speakers showed up on Amazon at crazy prices.

A member here alerted us but I was too late.........for that sale heh heh heh.

The sales were brief but I was lucky enough to catch one about 3 months later. Only purchased one pair, realized my mistake but only minutes later I was too late again.

A month later I nabbed 4 more pair, they're now residing in Australia.
I just looked up some info on them. It looks like after Klipsch bought them out manufacturing was moved to China. From some of the reviews the earlier Jamo speakers are regarded pretty well.
 
I just looked up some info on them. It looks like after Klipsch bought them out manufacturing was moved to China. From some of the reviews the earlier Jamo speakers are regarded pretty well.

Check out the link I just added to my last post, it's a review of their Flagship model the C-109.

Some other great Jamo speakers, the R 909
glamour.jpg
4.jpg

Or the slightly smaller R 907
209jamo.142447.jpg

https://www.jamo.com/products/r909#
 
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Jamo C103, also in high gloss black or white. Original retail $1800 but due to some crazy Amazon sales a while back they show up from time to time on eBay well within your budget. I have a pair in high gloss black and they're fantastic. If you go this route give them 50hrs to break in before final judgement.

View attachment 1825396
I have a pair of these that I managed to find for cheap, which I bought largely on the recommendation of this guy. I've been really happy with these things and I can clearly hear that they do some things much better than my other set of speakers, Elac Debut 6.2s, which I also enjoy (and now have running as remotes on another room), but not as much as the Jamos. I don't know about the UB5s but the 6.2s have a kind of smoother, more polite character to me as compared to the Jamos, which are punchier and livelier sounding. The Jamos have faster, more punchy bass and more presence in the high end. For my ears/setup/room the high end is just a bit much but that's what tone controls are for and rolling off the treble just a bit makes 'em about perfect, tonal-wise. I would rate the Elacs as very good for imaging, but the Jamo's even better. Not just the whole stereo separation thing is really apparent with these but also forward/back depth... and I really like that!

Though the Jamos are just something like 1 or 2 dbs more efficient than the Elacs, they seem to go a fair bit louder. This is something that might be of concern with the UB5s as I know that they're less efficient than my 6.2s. Your amp it seems is rated at 100 watts, which is more than what I have at 70 watts but not dramatically so and though my amp can drive both sets of speakers to sound very nice for low to mid level volumes (and up to mid-high), the volume of either set seems to be capped at far less than the "house rocking" volume that I sometimes like. Granted, my Jamos do better and I'd think much better than UB5s but neither go as loud as what I remember my old set of Mirage bookshelfs were able to do. Those speakers didn't sound like anything special but they seemed to be much more efficient than either of these. My plan is actually at some point to get the more powerful version of the amp that you have, the GFA 555 and use my Marantz 2270 reciever as a preamp for it. I have a feeling that with 200 watts behind them that the Jamos will be as loud as I want them to be, particularly for my smallish house. I suspect that they may have more presence somehow at lower volumes as well.

I'd think about what you really want from your speakers. If you are listening more for beautiful tone and less for presence/punch, then the Elacs might actually be a better choice than something like the Jamos. I do find that the Jamos sound great to me for everything from acoustic jazz to heavy rock and roll, but I'm also not listening to lots of string quartets or choral music... Unfortunately, it seems that many, if not most modern bookshelf speakers are somewhat inefficient and even with 100 watts, they might not go really loud, but then again, you might not care about that. If you do, I would shop with efficiency in mind... or with your budget, you could get a really nice pair of speakers (my Jamos were just $320, nearly new) and still have plenty of $$ to upgrade your amp to something with more wattage, like maybe the GFA 555 (that I'm totally coveting!). With that plan, you could sell the amp that you have and partially fund a new one. You already have a sub, which is going to make any of these speakers more satisfying.

I have to ask: why not consider towers? if you're planning on having these things on stands anyway it seems that they wouldn't be taking up any more floor real estate than a tower with a small footprint. I feel like in the used market there may be better deals on towers (from folks who move to smaller digs maybe?) than on bookshelf style speakers. Floor standers are also very often more efficient than their bookshelf counterparts...

Also, I have to laugh at you calling your gear a "budget system!" No doubt to lots of folks on this forum it is, but for most folks in the real world it's far more premium than that! It seems that you likely have a bigger investment in your gear than I do and I consider what I have to be very good, if not quite on the level of the super-high end that some folks here own. If it makes my music sound great to me then it's really all I need and I feel pretty close to getting there...
 
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