Recommendations for speakers in the $500 range

[bry72]

Hey guys,

I posted a thread on another forum looking for speaker recommendations that are going to be used in my living room for watching movies and listening to streaming music. The three speakers that were recommended are Wharfedale Diamond 10.2, Kef Q300 and Ascend CMT-340. The fourth are the Focal Chorus 706V that I found looking at online reviews.

I contacted someone at Ascend and they recommended posting here even though this is an Ascend forum.

Just as I did on the other forum thread, I'm going to give some details of my set-up and the limitations that I have.

The room is 12 feet by 14 feet with the standard 8 foot high ceiling. I have an Epson 8350 projector and a 110 inch projection screen on the 12 foot long wall. I have 24 inch speaker stands with Cambridge Model Sixes. The speakers I buy are going to replace the Model Sixes.

Because of the screen size, the speakers are spaced 10 feet apart and one foot from the wall. The only flexibility I have on repositioning the speakers is putting each speaker six inches further to the left and right of the screen. I am stuck with them being one foot away from the wall.

I live in an upstairs apartment so having a subwoofer or tower speakers are out of the question. Book shelf speakers with some good bottom end are what I'm in the market for.

The woman whom I spoke with at Ascend stated that the CMT-340's are good speakers but might not have the bottom end that I'm looking for. She recommended the Sierra 1's which are considerably more in price even if I buy the B-stock models. (If I go with the CMT-340's, they will be "B-stocks").

I'm a realist and know that I'm not going to find any book shelf speakers that are going to give me the bottom end that a subwoofer has. However, out of the four speakers listed above, the low end frequency on the Wharfedales are the lowest at 40 Hz.

I should point out that these will be the only speakers in my set up. The Model Sixes are being replaced because yesterday I heard a strange buzzing sound and after removing the screens, I saw that the woofer on both speakers was ripped. Not sure how I managed to do that seeing that I don't play them very loud.

Feel free to recommend other speakers in the $500 range that you think are worth looking at.

[FirstReflect]

Hello!

That's a tricky pickle :) I completely agree that, out of Ascend's own lineup, the Sierra-1 would be the best choice. But I completely understand your need to stay within a set budget.

How important are the looks and physical size of the speakers to you? If you're ok with ugly and big, I'd actually recommend the Behringer TRUTH B2031P (the "P" is for passive, which means that you power them with a normal AV Receiver or amplifier. There is also a B2031A where the "A" stands for active, and those have amplifiers already built into the speakers, which is typically for professional studio use)

If the B2031P are too physically large (and they're quite big, at 15.8" tall x 10.1" wide x 10.5" deep and weighing just over 25 lbs) there are the smaller, more reasonably sized B2030P (which are 12.5" tall x 8.2" wide x 8.3" deep and 15.3 lbs)

The B2031P and B2030P are professional monitor speakers, and as such, they are designed to work well all on their own without the aid of a subwoofer (although a subwoofer helps ANY set of speakers ;) ) The B2031P, being considerably larger and having a nearly 9" driver can belt out some pretty impressive deep bass. The B2030P are more in line with what you would expect from a bookshelf speaker in terms of bass, but they still tend to sound fuller and deeper than a lot of other bookshelf speakers.

Personally, I find the overall sound of Behringer's B2031P and B2030P speakers very neutral and accurate. In terms of low cost speakers, they're easily among my favorite, since I prefer an accurate, linear sound, myself. I realize it might seem odd to not be pushing your budget. These are very affordable speakers. But I'm recommending them for their sound quality, not just for their low price :)

I'm sure other folks will chime in. But if you can, give the Behringer speakers an audition. They're widely available at a lot of music shops that cater to DJs and recording artists, so you will hopefully be able to track down a pair that you can listen to before you buy them. I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

[bry72]

Hi Jonathan,

I didn't even think about studio monitors. I have an Onkyo TX-DS696 receiver and looking at the back, it has inputs for fronts, rears and center for power amplifiers. I am assuming these inputs would work with powered studio monitors.

The Yamaha HS80M's have an excellent reputation, fit my budget and can be auditioned at the local Guitar Center. They also have a low end of 42 Hz. If they have the Behringers at the local Guitar Center, I'll take a listen to them as well.

I don't know much about speakers but I do know that studio monitors are suppose to be "flat" or "neutral" and that is one thing that is always mentioned in reviews for regular speakers. High's being "bright", lows being "muddy", etc.

Since studio monitors are made and primarily used for recording music, what drawbacks do you see to using them versus regular speakers when used in a home theater or as stereo speakers?