Good news! "Online Speaker Company Face-Off" coming up soon. (1 Viewer)

[Brian Bunge]

Chris,

All they have to do is ask!

 

[ChrisArmour]

You hear that Luis!! You got Brian onboard!!

 

[Luis Gabriel Gerena]

Cool, then I need those also.

 

[Brian Bunge]

Luis,

Just have the appropriate people contact me about the speakers and I'll make sure they get there.

 

[Stephen Hopkins]

Glad to hear the Swans 2.1s were added. Before they raised the price on the Black Cherry models the 4.1 towers could have been included (were $499, $550 now). Even if slightly above $500 I think they deserve to be in there. I'm extremely happy with my 2.1s and 4.1s and hope to be getting 6.1s sometime soon. The 6.1s in black cherry come in at $930 and should definitely be in the $1000 shootout. I'm interested to read the results!

 

[TosH]

This should turn out to be quite the interesting article. But let me add one suggestion. I think you should include a model from a major non-internet vendor (such as Paradigm) in each comparison bracket as a reference. Since you're supposed to get more bang from your buck buying online, this should provide a comparison as to how much more (if any) you get by buying online.

 

[Ryan T]

I hope they get some of the GR-research stuff in on the higher price range comparison. I've always wondered how tehy stacked up against the other internet direct stuff.


Ryan

 

[Dave-Z]

I also feel it would be good to have some baseline B&M comparisons. It would probably do justice to highlighting the savings one can get via on-line purchasing, but also give people a point of reference if they would like an idea of what a speaker might look, sound, and taste like.

Perhaps choose speakers that are marketed both on-line and B&M, PSB for instance.

Always look forward to more product reviews, if they are done well. I'd love to see that type of database grow. As it stands, pretty much every speaker can point to one or two articles, but rarely more.

And I'll add this to make it even more difficult: How about receiver reviews?

I certainly like the pricepoints you are looking to go after. Nice to gawk at Stereophile's $40k speakers, but really, what good is that doing for the 99.99% of us that are in the market for decent HT, but will probably not be spending over 1-2k max for any single component.

 

[Mike^C]

How about leave an overall winner, a tower winner category, and a bookshelf winner category? That would solve the speaker type debate

A reference mass-market brand is a great idea and Paradigm would be a great choice being how popular they are (and since I own a pair ). I'd say throw in two: 1 bookshelf and 1 tower. For Paradigm, it would be Mini-Monitors and, since its all about price points, the Phantoms from the lower line.

 

[Lew Crippen]

I’m not really trying to single you our Mike, it is just that your post reminded me of some emotive ;posts.

I’ll make a suggestion that describing the characteristics of each speaker would be of some considerable benefit, but that ranking them and especially declaring ‘winners’ may bring out a lot of unnecessary passion. After all, much of what any individual likes in a speaker is that person’s preference, not an absolute statement of bad, fair, good, better, best.

To be sure there are occasional products that are not worthy of being considered the equal of others, but for the most part the models you are considering evaluating (at least the ones with which I’m familiar), are very fine products and offer good value for money.

For example, I have heard both the Rocket RS 150 and Ascend CBM 170. Both are fine speakers and both will appeal more to some listeners than others. Is one truly better than the other? Perhaps but it is a very close call and one that I would be reluctant to make. Although I happen to have a preference, I don’t think that my preference is at all reflective of one being better than the other.

And even in places where I consider it easy to evaluate on absolute terms, other people have very different views. For example, I think that the cabinetwork on these two speakers is superb on one and average on the other—in absolute terms. But I have read many postings from those who don’t like dark wood and far prefer black. Now I may disagree, but I cannot say that their view is wrong.

While this post is a bit long, I am making it because I have read many, many threads that provided valuable information and degenerated into name-calling mostly because one speaker was ‘better’ than another. One site in particular has had to close such threads and some of the ill-feelings generated by the posts continue today onto other sites.

I would hope that we can avoid this as much as possible.

But do not take any of this to mean that those doing the evaluation should not state exactly what they hear. Just be mindful that what I consider ‘harsh’ may be considered ‘forward sounding, with great detail in the upper end’ by someone else.

 

[zangler]

i do think some popular brands' buget lines need to be included though...otherwise, what is the point? That is to say if i can go to a store and get a better speaker, then why would i ever order online and wait for them? but i would have to know that first.

 

[Luis Gabriel Gerena]

WE contemplated the idea of a reference speaker, the problem is, how we get to a consensus of which is a reference speaker?
We are also thinking about the best tower, best bookshelf, best overall idea.
Regards

 

[Mike^C]

Lew,

As for ranking, I was reading the top part of the thread and thought that people were looking for "best bang for the buck." After reading what you had said, I can see what you mean. We're all used to having rankings of things from cars to washing machines but speakers are a very different animal indeed.

How about this idea. Rank each attribute of each speaker on a scale of 1-10 like "Brightness" and "Soundstage" from each member and publish them along with comments from the person. Then you can average them and show a score below without any sort of ranking of which is best or worst.

As for the reference B&M speaker idea, why not just make it informal? Whats readily available in your test theater and pretty well known and mass market? Could be anything from Polk, Paradigm, PSB, Klipsch, JBL... whatever.

 

[Luis Gabriel Gerena]

These are all good ideas that I will pass along to the reivewers. I like the idea of evaluating and scoring each speaker in different characteristics like imaging, tonality, bass, midrange, etc...
Regards

 

[MannyE]

Here's my take on this:

the original idea is fantastic. Compare by price regardless of type. Whatever aspects you decide to judge the speakers on is cool.

The only thing that would make it cooler is to get the winner of each category and then do one more shootout comparing those speakers to each other!

Imagine how cool if the sub-500 winner beats out the sub-2000 speaker? That would be neat-o man. Or...conversely, I would feel much better about having spent 2 grand on my DefTechs:b

 

[Luis Gabriel Gerena]

Split the two categories and then and overall "winner" is probably what we will do specially since almost all companies will have each type of product a tower and a bookshelf.
Regards

 

[Mike^C]

This is pretty exciting stuff. Except for the one shootout on another forum (avs?), there hasn't been enough of these. I'll be really interested in how the Rocket RS150's turn out. I have 2 pairs of these, 1 for rears for my main HT and another for listening in another room

I'm sure each reviewer will have their own opinion too and an informal blurb by everyone testing about how they feel would be nice too. And pictures.. lots of pictures... !

 

[David Siroky]

I'm looking to buy speakers in this price range... I hope your review is out soon.

I agree going by price is the way to go. I have X$ to spend. tell me what is best bang for the buck.

 

[JoeyTadeja]

I also prefer comparing speakers by type. That's fair game. Comparing oranges with oranges. Some speakers are more expensive because of their finish and construction like for example the Aperions who makes their speakers in HDF Cherry wood. Now compare that with Axiom's who make their speakers covered with cheap vinyl while Ascends make theirs in gaggy matte black. Cost is a concern only if you are not much into aesthetics but some people are willing to pay for speakers that looks good in their living room, like me. However, if they look good but sounds bad then that's another thing. One has to compromise a bit of this in order to get a bit of that.

BTW, perhaps you can add nOrh 4.0 in the face off. Also I also suggest they do an online Cable company face off as well i.e. Bettercables, Cobalt Cable, DH Labs, Signal Cable, AVcable.com Analysis Plus, Axiom Audio, Sound King etc...

 

[Robert_Gaither]

Don't forget about the hidden costs of bookshelves, stands or wall mounts. If price is the overall factors, shouldn't the price of what holds the speakers be included (especially if any of the items have customized stands/brackets sent with the items that would have to be purchased separately and thus adding to the cost)?