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The Best 50 Dollar A Pair Speakers Ever ??

I have a pair of early plywood Yamaha NS 670s (found at the Santa Barbara Salvation Army for $60 total) that I drive with an original low mileage Sansui R-50.

I just brought home a pair of these from BB, 70.00 yesterday and today. They had one pair left.

I first set them directly on top of the Yamahas, and they sounded OK, if maybe a little less efficient. A 1/2 hour later I decided to get the Yamahas out of the room, since their cones were absorbing some of the energy from them. That, plus 1/2 hour time on them, plus backing out the freq repsonse curve deviations from nominal from the GR website using my ole yamaha natural sound 12 band equalizer, and these things are absolultely perfect. They sound as good in the current arrangement as the Yamahas, actually a little crisper.

How did I get authorization to buy these ? My wife wants to have some small sound system upstairs to augment the sound from the TV when watching DVDs or HD music broadcasts. To the rescue, for a lot less money than BB sales staff would quote, are these speakers and a yet to be purchased Sansui AU 317, which won't really take up that much room.

OK, after an hour of listening to them, I put the NS-670s back in their place in the basement and listened...well the Yamahas are about 1.5 dB more efficient, and the base is a bit tighter. With the adjustable cross-overs, you can do anything you want with the mid and highs. Overall, they are better, but these small guys are going to be just what a "Sound engineer" would specifiy in a tight space.
 
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Blackstone said:
The price swing on these Insignias is ridiculous, IMO. $35 to $80 to $50 to $88.
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rediculous, annoying, frustrating, infuriating, etc., etc.

the price changes daily. after i saw them for $49 i gave them a listen and was very impressed. checked out several rave reviews...went back the next day to see an $86 pricetag.

i'm not the type to complain about spending $80 for a pair of nice sounding speakers...just keep the friggin' price consitent. :nono:
 
rockwell said:
rediculous, annoying, frustrating, infuriating, etc., etc.

the price changes daily. after i saw them for $49 i gave them a listen and was very impressed. checked out several rave reviews...went back the next day to see an $86 pricetag.

i'm not the type to complain about spending $80 for a pair of nice sounding speakers...just keep the friggin' price consitent. :nono:
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Now they are $75 up from $70. What type of marketing joke is this?
 
I almost went out to buy a pair of these, but then a friend offered me a set of virtually unused v3 titans for $35. I decided that would be a better place to put the money. I seem to be trapped in a paradigm vortex lately, first a pair of mint condition atoms for $5, now the titans.... what next.
 
Well I got a pair for my birthday a couple of weeks ago and was less than impressed. They do image well but sound hollow and the midrange is somewhat veiled(sounds like its comming from a coffee can). They were placed on top of my Advents, about 7 feet apart with a slight toe-in. They don't really sound bad but my Advents eat them alive. It may not be a fair comparison but then again I have never heard a small pair of speakers that I like with the exception of the Baby Advent IIs.

On the other hand I moved them downstairs to my GFs systems and they sound pretty good. I have them closer to the wall and only about 3.5 - 4 feet apart with no toe-in. The amp is a Heathkit AA-1214. I played Mazzy Star's "She Hangs Brightly" on CD and was impressed with the female vocals. For what ever reason the Insignias sound better downstairs in a less than conventional setup.

One other thing I did notice is that these speakers cant possibly be as efficient as stated. At 90db SPL they should be considerably louder than the Advents (which I believe are rated at 88db) at the same volume and the opposite is true.
 
Sorry to dredge this up from the dead again

Here's my Best Buy customer "service" story with these Insignias:

I purchased my first set of these about a month ago. I came across them online and saw all the hype over them. The price was $74.00 or so, and since I had money to burn (gift certificate, you know)--and since I might be the first person in this thread who actually needed new speakers :D--I decided to jump on the bandwagon and give these a shot.

Long story short: shocked I am that when the price is rung up it's $93.26. Confused (evidently they don't know about the sale up front here, I think at the time), I asked for this to be verified. I told them about the price I had seen online, and they dilly dallied for about ten minutes before basically refusing to do that price. Surprisingly, they didn't give me the stock "well, that's online only" bit (which was not true, anyway). Plus, I could have argued that since they don't have these out anywhere and that the audio room wasn't open (it wasn't even there yet as they were renovating the store), I technically "bought them online" because they would never have made the sale otherwise. But no, the guy simply refused to acknowledge that there was indeed a sale at all.

I don't know what made me do it, but I just gave in and paid. I got the things home and after a day's worth of stressful break-in was very impressed (I'll spare you the review because I couldn't add much to what everybody else has said). Two weeks later, lo and behold, they go on sale for $69. So it's back to the store with my receipt and into the customer service line to get my price match, which was granted with absolutely no resistance. They didn't even make a record of the transaction, meaning I could theoretically have gone to every Best Buy in the area that night and done this. Aw, screw it. The gas wasted would probably cost more.

The best part about it is that, had BB given me the price they should have the first time around, there's no way I would have wasted an evening trekking down there for what amounts to $5. Given that, they just lost themselves $5. Reading this forum and others, I'm seeing a lot of similar stories, which only confirms the notion that BB has really gone downhill in the area of customer service/satisfaction in the past decade or so.

It's a shame, too. The Insignias deserve a better sole proprietor. :pity:
 
Yea, Best Buy and customer service NO LONGER EXISTS!!! And that is coming from a Best BUy fan boy who bought EVERYTHING there!! I used to spend 15 to 75 a week on media but they finally gave me reason to look elsewhere. I now get all of my DVDs for 2 to 3 dollars a peice and CDs 1-2 dollars. I need to be a little patient as it takes a while for the stuff to filter down into the pawn shops.

Back to an on topic post - how do these compare to the $15 presidians?
 
Fletch said:
Yea, Best Buy and customer service NO LONGER EXISTS!!! And that is coming from a Best BUy fan boy who bought EVERYTHING there!! I used to spend 15 to 75 a week on media but they finally gave me reason to look elsewhere. I now get all of my DVDs for 2 to 3 dollars a peice and CDs 1-2 dollars. I need to be a little patient as it takes a while for the stuff to filter down into the pawn shops.

Back to an on topic post - how do these compare to the $15 presidians?
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quick link to the thread on the Presidians: http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=143601 and it sounds like you'd need to do some mods to improve the sound enough to where i'd imagine they could keep up with the insignias. Even then i'm not sure they'd measure up. The presidians make noise out of the box, and i'm not sure it's fair to ask them do to much more than that for $15. I have a pair.

I haven't heard the insignias, but I'm guessing that you're probably better off to buy those and save yourself the time/energy on the mods. plus the insignias look way cooler (for what it's worth).

thoughts from others?
 
Got myself a pair of vision ds1 bookshelf speakers for 5 euro's ( 7 us dolllar ) in a carbootsale last autumn. Made by B&W and, by the look of it, DM 601 clones. They sound great, my wife has reposessed them though. For her 'music room' as they have proven to be a great help for her while rehearsing with her flugelhorn.
Update 080210: Well got them back from my wife. Partex'ed them with a set of Bose 2.2's.
She's happy and 'm happy
 
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Fletch said:
Yea, Best Buy and customer service NO LONGER EXISTS...
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This is sadly what frequently happens when a company has a strong market position. They keep knocking down competitors, becoming more and more dominant. Soon, they'll knock out the remaining competitors like Circuit City and really have everyone by the balls.

I have never liked Best Buy and I doubt I ever will.
 
iphasic: Yea, I was just wondering as I have apair of Insignias and got the impression from the other thread that the Presidians may be worth grabbing for a mod down the road. Plus I have a pair of large and obnoxious KLH speakers (900B?) that I need something to replace.
 
Fletch said:
iphasic: Yea, I was just wondering as I have apair of Insignias and got the impression from the other thread that the Presidians may be worth grabbing for a mod down the road. Plus I have a pair of large and obnoxious KLH speakers (900B?) that I need something to replace.
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i bought them with the intention of modding (new at it, so no great loss if i screw up). if you can find a pair, grab 'em. i mean, they're 15 bucks.
 
I just got THREE pair of the insignias. Let's just say that I got all 6 of them for a package price that handily beats any price at Best Buy.

I heard them at the seller's house, but not yet in my own abode. (Won't have time for that for several days.) They sounded too bright at his place, but I reserve judgement until I know that they are broken in and I can hear them in my own space, on my own gear.
 
You can't go wrong there. They do sound bright though although mine are not in an optimal space. Great imaging though.
 
well apparently they are "onsale" for 75 bucks....down from 87 bucks....

So much for the deal....

Ill probably stop by the store and give them a listen and watch for them to go onsale CHEAP.
 
For that kind of money or less, I find plenty of speakers that are tons better. But I guess if all you're after is just a small bookshelf speaker, they are something to tinker with.
 
The chap I bought them from was using the 3 pair for 5 channel surround (was keeping one of them in the box, still in the wrap). He pointed out to me that they aren't shielded, so not everyone can use it as a center channel (he had a projector).

Why on earth would they not have come up with a matching, shielded center channel for this model? I imagine that a 5 speaker package with an acoustically-matched center, for a nice package price, would sell very nicely.

Won't be able to fire mine up for several days. The frequency response curves that I've seen on the web don't appear to show any gross high frequency peaks. So it's odd that they should have a bright character to them.
 
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