Speaker Obsolescence? (1 Viewer)

[Rich Sk]

I have a question that maybe some experienced people can help me with. I recently purchased my first HT system with DefTech BP2X surrounds. The system is temporarily upstairs while the family room downstairs gets finished. I love the experience of the 5.1 system, but I am toying with the idea of adding two rear surrounds in the final installation downstairs. At the same time, I am considering not buying speakers 6 and 7 (the rear surrounds) and using the $500 to buy more TV now and buy the rear surrounds later. My question:
If I wait, perhaps 6 months, a year, whatever, will I run into a problem when I buy the rear surrounds and the DefTech loudspeaker lineup has changed? I'm not so concerned about the asthetics of a different speaker since I assume DefTech will still make bipolar speakers in a piano black finish, but do speakers change drastically from one year to the next so my new rear surrounds would not be timbre matched to the 2002 model BP2x surrounds and other DefTechs in the system? Is there a possibility that they would sound out of place?

 

[John Garcia]

It is uncommon for a manufacturer to dramatically change the timbre of a particular line of speakers for exactly the reason you state. The companies know that not everyone buys all of their speakers at one time, and/or formats change.

Worst case, you could always look for used ones.

 

[Ted Lee]

i'm not familiar with how often manufactuers drastically change their drivers. if john says it's infrequent, i trust him.

but to me, it does seem to happen.

it's good that you're taking timbre-matching into consideration. i guess if i were in your shoes, i wouldn't "chance it" ... i'd get all the speakers at once.

imo, speakers (i'm talking in general) really haven't changed that much since they came out. they're still designed basically the same, etc. what i'm getting at is if you buy all your speakers now, you'll probably have them forever. so, you might as well make sure they're all synched up now.

your tv is much more likely to become obsolete sooner. would you rather spend the extra money on that?

 

[John Garcia]

Drivers may change slightly, appearance may change, but I would say as long as you stick with the same line of speakers, you usually will not have an issue. Not to mention that it is less of a necessity to perfectly match your rears to you main stage.

If we use Paradigm as an example, the Studio and Monitor series have both gone through 2 revisions over roughly 4-5 years. The drivers have changed somewhat, but the new version will still blend well with the previous well enough that there is not much to worry about. Now, if an entire line becomes discontinued, you may have a different issue, but again, used can take care of that problem. I think this will also vary depening on the manufacturer, in that I have typically seen manufacturers give a new name to a speaker line when it is less similar to their previous products.