Well, no hidden agendas, but everyone has biases and preferences, and different tendencies when it comes to sensitivity to details. In other words, while we tried to take out variables to make the comparison fair, there are always qualifiers to what we conclude, like the fact the we used a tube amp and placed the speakers for best imaging. Most people won't have either in their installation.
The agenda was not hidden, but it was getting the best fit for Sonnie's room. I just hope that people take the observations in that context and realize that speaker selection is a very subjective and personal preference. What surprised me was how similar the observations were, even though we come from very different places with very different experience and preferences going in.
We have the grammar/spellcheck setup for Thursday, so hopefully we are near the finish. This is quite detailed, but it should be worth it. It should be published by the weekend... hopefully... fingers crossed.
I am pretty sure that once the article is posted it will ignite a firestorm. We will just have to wait and see if it's a brush fire or if it's scorched earth.
I am pretty sure that once the article is posted it will ignite a firestorm. We will just have to wait and see if it's a brush fire or if it's scorched earth.
I hope not. Controversy would be an easy way to stir up posting, but that is not what we are after. We really tried to give each speaker a fair listen and tried to point out what we found to like about each. And there was much to like in the group of speakers we chose.
Just finished reading through this thread. One of the reviewers said the final two have similarities and its pretty obvious to me its the Magnepan and the Tekton Lore as the final two. With the Lore being the winner because of better bass.
Sorry to ruin the fun but after reading this thread I read the "$2,500 shootout thread" at the speakers section of this forum and this is what was posted by the reviewer.
$2,500 Speaker Evaluation Candidates
We had soooo much fun doing the $1,000 speakers evaluation, we are going to have a $2,500 speaker evaluation... consisting of a maximum of 5 (five) speakers costing no more than $2,500. Likely we will stay in the cost frame of $2,000 - $2,500.
These are not necessarily for me, but we will have a voting poll and winning speaker like we did on the $1,000 event. I won't say that I ain't gonna keep a pair... you never know. They will have to be awfully good, no doubt. Just in case, we will stick with black in a non-sheen finish. We must be able to power them with the Rogue Cronus Magnum Integrated Tube Amp at about 100 WPC.
Tentatively I have on my short list the following:
MartinLogan ElectroMotion ESL at $2,195
Tekton Pendragon at $2,499
Emerald Physics CS2P at $2,490 (thru Underwood HiFi with discount)
Those are just a few I am thinking about for now... nothing definite, but one thing we did learn is that even with two day there just isn't time for more than about 4-5 pairs of speakers. Maybe we do 5 this round and then have another round with 5 and then have two speakers go head to head. At any rate, we are going to limit the number of speakers to a max of 5 for this round. It will likely be on up in the Fall/Winter before we do this... possibly November/December or even January/February. Nothing like preparing ahead of time.
EDIT: Once we get up 10-12 nominees (or more)... we will have a poll to select the top 5 for this event.
Just finished reading through this thread. One of the reviewers said the final two have similarities and its pretty obvious to me its the Magnepan and the Tekton Lore as the final two. With the Lore being the winner because of better bass.
What do you find similar about these two? They are on the opposite end of the spectrum in terms of sensitivity. Of course, all of the speakers were much more similar than you would expect, considering the very different technologies, so maybe you hit the nail on the head. But I ain't tellin...gotta wait for Sonnie, and who knows, maybe he changed his mind since he has had all those speakers laying around his house since we left.
It is coming. There are many pages to edit, and lots of notes to look back over to review to make sure that we don't mix things up or mistakenly attribute something that we did not experience. There is much to read about each speaker. Lots of credit has to go to Wayne for his work on this. I just kinda went along for the ride and enjoyed myself.:yes:
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