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Speaker Asylum General speaker questions for audio and home theater. |
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Speaker Asylum General speaker questions for audio and home theater. |
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In Reply to: How do Spendors compare to ProAcs? posted by SalD on December 14, 2006 at 10:49:43:
I've owned Spendors (S5e) and Harbeths (Compact 7 ES-2) and auditioned a number of the ProAc standmounts in my house as well as the Spendor SP 1/2e.A few impressions:
In general, the Spendors have the most subdued treble of the bunch and the ProAcs are probably the hottest up on top.
I owned the S5e, then switched to the Harbeths only to swap them out after almost a year to return to the Spendors before deciding to look at offerings other than the British speakers.
The only Response series speaker that I spent any time with was the 1SC (which you mentioned that you did not care for). I liked the 1SC okay in my system, but actually preferred the top end of the less expensive Studio 110 (yet the 110 had loose, bloated bass in my room). The 1SC also wanted more free space around it than I was able to give. The Studio 100 was a bit too fatiguing for my ears, although the bass integrated well in my room. I also found the Harbeths to be fatiguing when I was using an Arcam (CD23T) CD player, before switching to a Naim front end. Overall I preferred the soft dome tweeters over the metal domes of the Harbeth (the Harbeth Monitor 30 would be an interesting option, but that's really getting quite a bit beyond what I'm willing to pay for a speaker). My experiences with the ProAcs alone should indicate the value in home auditioning.
Overall I liked the ProAcs, but could not find any one model that really got along well with my room. The Spendors had a really romantic quality to them, particlarly in the midrange but in the end left me wanting a bit more zing. The Harbeths provided more detail and performed exceptionally well at low volumes, but in the case of the Harbeths I felt that the music was lacking soul when played back through them (and they really couldn't rock in my setup) and they had a bit of a "hollow" quality to the sound (it sounds as if the new ES-3 version might have addressed this issue. In the end of course all of this is somewhat system dependent as well - I'm running Naim gear myself.
Each brand has its strengths - if I could have found a ProAc model that worked with my room I think that I would have been the happiest with one of their offerings.
All the best,
Guth
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Follow Ups
- Re: How do Spendors compare to ProAcs? - Guth 11:39:07 12/16/06 (0)
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