Best speakers 2,500 can buy.


I am currently looking at Totem Hawks, Gallo ref3,and merlin TSM speakers. I have narrowed it to these three. But I cannot decide from here. I have an average room at 14x24, and I listen to music 75% versus video 25%. I am looking for a very detailed hi resolution type speaker. I want it to be very musical also. I have climbed up the ladder from polks to B&Ws, but want my next purchase to last a long while. Need opinions.
dritchey

Showing 4 responses by 213cobra

Zu Druids, if you can spend just $300 more. Nothing in the price range - and I mean nothing - offers coherence, resolution, musicality, immediacy and expression while delivering high tonal accuracy. It is friendly to a huge range of amps and your space can be easily driven by very low power options. The Druid is a revelation in this price range and humbles speakers costing many times more.

Phil
The Druid has not crossover. The FRD is naturally rolled off on the both ends and the supertweeter is rolled in via a filter network at 12kHz. The FRD gets a direct connection from the amp so the 40Hz - 12kHz range is produced without the signal traversing a network.

The Druid supertweeter waveguide is aluminum but the driver itself is not. There is nothing bright about it.

I haven't heard the Callisto on a comparative basis. I have heard them in someone else's system. It's a good speaker certainly but not in the same class or type as a Druid. 10 - 11 db less efficiency; markedly less bass and the bass it has lack's the Druid's definition; nothing close to the Druid's coherence. And one more big thing that you can only understand once you've heard a Druid -- there is the inescapable signature of music being squeezed through a crossover, which the Druid doesn't have.

Also, the Callisto woofer/mid driver is not fast enough to give the speaker the top-to-bottom transient uniformity that is elemental to the Druid experience.

The Callisto is much smaller of course, has the placement flexibility of a standmount. Really a different speaker from Druid. But at the end of the day, it's conventional and the Druid is a departure designed to overcome the constraints that still saddle the Callisto design approach.

As for warranty -- this is a practical irrelevancy. In any case, in the Callisto, no matter what you do you can't get away from the fact that the signal is jammed through that crossover before you hear the meat of the music.

Phil
Snipes: Music taste is omnivorous in my case. I couldn't possibly choose a speaker for a specific musical preference. I have everything from Gregorian Chants to Junior Brown in my collection. As for equipment, I have SET tube amps available for use from 7/7w to 30/30 watts, but also have occasions to use solid state amps in the 500/500w class. In fact, one can choose a speaker that excels across that kind of functional range. Or one can choose a speaker that specifically cannot. It makes more sense to me to choose the former, especially since I've learned so much over decades making do with the latter.

Phil
Preamp gain choice will depend on the input sensitivity of your power amp, or put another way, on the gain allocation between preamp and amp. I have two systems and use a TVC (transformer volume control) with +6db passive gain on one system, and use an active tube preamp with the system that has Druids. It just happens that I prefer my amps on that system with an active preamp rather than the TVC. I don't use resistor-based passive preamps as that option has never sounded worthwhile to me, though I haven't yet heard the Placette which is commonly cited as an exception to the common maladies of resistance passives.

What you won't want with Druids is a high-gain preamp driving a high-gain (or high input sensitivity) power amp. You'd end up with very little useful rotation in your volume control and your noise floor might not be acceptable. But a high-gain preamp is necessary with a low-(voltage)gain power amp. For instance, the Audiopax 88 monoblocks have only 18db of voltage gain compared to a normal range of 26 - 32 db gain. In such a case, a high-gain preamp is warranted, even on Druids, to be able to drive the amp to full power.

Phil