Best bookshelf mains & center for $1000-$1250? (1 Viewer)

[Richard Harvey]

I'm trying to help a friend pick new speakers. He gets a discount from our local Tweeter store, so he wants to focus on the products they carry if possible. I'm not up on most of these brands, so I was looking for some feedback.

The brands are Boston Acoustics (which I do own a BA center), Klipsch, Mirage, and Mission. Bose is carried, but for the obvious cost/benefit reasons I've steered him away. He will be running these through a Denon 2802 receiver. He is specifically looking at mains and center for now. He's expecting to fill his sub slot with an SVS in the future (I'm hoping to have mine soon to demo for him). Because of his price range, I've been steering him towards getting a quality set of bookshelf mains with solid stands, paired with a matching center. I told him that even though towers look more "impressive", paired with a solid sub he can get excellent performance out of higher end bookshelves (not the $100 specials at Sams Club).

Klipsch really doesn't offer much in the area of bookshelf speakers (or, I'm unaware of them). Does anyone have experience with Boston, Mirage, or Mission bookshelf and center that would fit his price range ($1000-$1500)? If I can narrow down a list of models, it would make it easier when we go in to demo them.

Thanks in advance,
Rich

 

[Gil D]

Polk Lsi-9 and Lsi-C can be found for a little over 1K. Can also get away w/out the center speaker with the 9's as I have been. If he wants towers then the Lsi-15 should do nicely for the same price.

Sonus and Vienna are the best Tweeter has to offer (some stores now also have Martin Logan)but your friend needs a heck of a discount to to beat the price/performance of the new Polks IMO. I am also a big Sonus fan and have Concert and Classic series but like how the Polk's do movies and don't give up much musically.

 

[David K. C]

Hi! First time poster too.
I am currently also running a Denon 2802 with Mirage FRX-3 and FRX-C in my HT. The FRX series is to be discontinued, I believe, so if they still have them, they will be discounted. I also auditioned bookself speakers from JM Lab, Mission, Paradigm, Klipsch, KEF and Monitor Audio. The Mirage FRX bookselves are clean, crisp and quite fast, high end isn't harsh, low end is well control and not boomy. Only complaint is the mid-bass is a little bit shy. Value for the money and over all balance, I bought them 5 months ago.
Hope this will give you some insight.

 

[Rob Rodier]

I listened to the Monitor Audio Gold Ref 10 yesterday and was very impressed. Huge sundstage with pinpoint imaging. Nice balance and extremely neutral and transparent. They retail for around $1500 but the guy told me he could get the pair down under a grand. Worth looking into.

-rob