250DR, but which Evoke - 30, or maybe 50? UPDATE

Hi Innocent_Bystander, thanks for your suggestion; it may end up i take my amp in, although the rooms are bigger and wider than mine, and their ceilings are lower. I might need to take my speakers in, too, as you say, for reference.

Agree, HungryHalibut, but for the money/opportunity I had, the Rose/Naim combination sounded the best to me. Others may really dislike it, of course, but that’s life. So the bigger speakers may end up not working as harmoniously as the 30’s, which is what I’m trying to ascertain.
Aesthetically and dimensionally, SWMBO informs me it’s 30’2 all the way … :thinking:

The other consideration, of course, is future plans - if you have expectation of upgrading in the not too far distant future you maybe can live with a less than ideally balanced system for now, provided it sounds good to you, looking at components as stepping stones to some future goal. Certainly that’s what I did on my hifi journey, making fewer but bigger changes than many people and so being more economic. The choice then is which of the bigger changes gives the best improvement first, and to me in most cases that is getting the best sounding speakers (to my taste) that I can afford, provided the amp is sufficient to make them sound good - then knowing that a future improvement in the amp department will make the speakers shine all the more. However, if you don’t see your current changes as part of a journey to a future goal, or if the next step won’t be for very many years, then you consideration of whether each of the components is optimal for balance within your budget.

A lot depends on how much you are willing to allow the system to dominate the room. The 50s are 26cm taller than the 30s, which is a lot. As I wrote above, our room is the same size as yours. We used to have some quite large floorstanders, and when we swapped to smaller stand mounts it all looked so much more in proportion. The Special 40 and Heritage Specials have been mentioned above and I wonder if it’s worth tying them. The Heritage Specials are particularly nice looking, but do come at a price.

Evoke 50 are big speakers and need medium to large rooms to breath. Confining them in a crammed space and you’ll get all sorts of booming annoyance. Although 300DR would drive them better while a 500DR better still, the 250DR has plenty of power.

I’ve recently convinced a friend to give the 250DR a try, replacing his Emotivas (600W @ 4ohms). The room came alive, I think he took a day off just to listen to more albums :innocent:. By the way, we’ve paired the 250DR with a Denafrips Athena pre and a Denafrips Venus2 II dac, fronting Evokes 50.

In a small room, I would suggest Evoke 30 or even Dynaudio Special 40 (better sq). Smaller scale sure, but you can’t have it all.

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Hi Dan.S, thank you for your advice. I couldn’t afford the 300, let alone the 500, and tbh I’m happy with the 250. I’m not changing the 250 and the Rose 150b as I’ve only just bought them, so will be keeping them for some years to come. This post is more about now opting for speakers which best complement my components, in terms of sound and budget mainly, but also aesthetically; my room is reasonably densely-furnished and so the speakers can only really go on one side of the room. The overall footprint and dimensions of the 50 may be a step too far, even before we start getting into boomy lows and tricky speaker placement.
Unless a windfall was to come my way…in which case I’d but another place with bigger rooms and start completely from scratch :grinning:

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Understood, Innocent_Bystander, I won’t be looking to upgrade for a few years from now. But when I do, I tend to want to do it all at once cos I get impatient, lol. Economics may change that as going up the hifi chain gets damned expensive. So for now I’m going for optimal balance within my budget for the system I have today.

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