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Musical full-range in the $3-4K range used?

I have been going back and forth on speakers for awhile now. Looking to get a new pair (used, most likely) and I live in a really remote area with nobody except a B&W dealer nearby. I can't reasonably drive 400 miles round trip to bring speakers back home for audition, and demos at the dealer are sketchy at best. I have a decent sized room (21x14x9) and would like a musical speaker, mostly for jazz, jazz vocals, classical. Full range would be best. My last speaker was a Soliloquy 6.3, which was great in a bigger room, but a little too warm, and not tight enough in the bass for my taste.

I can use it with solid state or tubes, either is fine. I have around $2500 to budget for an integrated amp, but figured it best to find speakers I like, then an amp down the road.

Budget is max $4,000.

Some speakers I have heard at dealers, or have heard good things about:

Coincident (haven't heard these, but lots of good reviews)

Sonus Faber (seemed very musical, easy to listen to)

Tyler Acoustics (again, musical, a touch warm, nice and detailed)

Opera (haven't heard them, reputation is that they are similar to SF)

Aerial Acoustics (heard the 7b, a little flat, but could have been the $1000 integrated powering it: 9 was superb and sounded huge)

Dynaudio (heard the 5.4 at a dealer, but room was poor and speaker sounded thin and lifeless)

Acoustic Zen (haven't heard these)

Thiel (heard the 2.4, sounded really thin)

Devore (dealer is 3 hours away, but might be worth checking out the Super 8)
komaki

Showing 1 response by kurt_tank

kurt_tank
1,189 posts
 
I would recommend a used pair of Revel Studios. Your $4K budget is just enough to get a pair. They are nearly full range, as they go down to 30hz, and with room reinforcement, they will sound full range. These are very accurate speakers, and the bass is very quick and tight, and not boomy at all.

Check out the glowing reviews both online and in stereophile (see link below):

Stereophile Review of Revel Studio

(FYI: Kal Rubinson, the Stereophile reviewer, bought and used these as his reference for a few years.) I lived very happily with them for five years before moving onto the Eggleston Andra IIs.

I will state that they do need a fair bit of power though. I recommend 200 wpc, but 100 wpc will do, if it's a very powerful 100 wpc (i.e. a beefy solid state amp, and better yet, monoblocks). I started out with the Levinson No. 27 (100 wpc), and while it worked acceptably, (the bass was a bit loose), upgrading to the Mark Levinson No. 23 (200 wpc) was a definite improvement, as the bass tightened up, and the speaker seemed to open up very nicely.

My two cents worth.
Good Luck in your search!
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