Yes, if at all possible take them home.
There will probably be a vast difference between the dealers listening space and your home listening space.
Some floorstanders can be diminutive enough to confuse the differences.
As well as some stand mounts.
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It really is a matter that is best decided by several factors- the room itself and how a speaker will interact. How loud do you usually play your music. In some ways its like a car - there is a speed (volume for a speaker) that is most natural.I went from Harbeth m30.1 to dynaudio confidence 20ās. The Harbeth are wonderful with what they do, but much is missing too. For a long time , I did not notice and it is mostly by comparison.Fwiw, both speakers pretty much had the same footprint in the end, although they had entirely different size measurements.
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My Isobariks are also stand mountā¦
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Hi @haffle
Those Spendor and Proactive choices are great, but (like others) Iād really encourage you to try them at home - really not unreasonable when you are spending that sort of money.
Iād also encourage trying Neat Xplorers or Orkestras too, if you can stand one more round of auditions.
Iām not sure Iād run either the Spendors or the ProAcs off a Star but there you go. An NDX2 and SN3 with the existing speakers would, I suspect, yield a better result.
Hi HH,
In isolation, Iās have to agree with you, good though the SN3 is, but this doesnāt look to me like a permanent end of an upgrade path. Apologies to @haffle if thatās completely wrong.
Like the sound of those proactive speakers that can act in anticipation of future problems - will have to give them a demo.
Try the .26, either twenty or twentyfive. New or ex-dem or secondhand. And there are even better, older, like EB1i. Otherwise they start to get expensive, e.g. IB2, MB2
You have received some good responses. I would also add that your expectations will play a part as well. Do you often listen at low to moderate volumes, or you listen at higher volumes. Can you accept reduced slam or presence in the bass and midbass region at all volume levels. Everyoneās expectations are different.
5.0 x 7.0m is midsize to large. In my experience, the M30.2 and C7ES3 will sound inadequate in the bass in that room. You wonāt get much bass slam at all volumes in that room, but thatās the experience based on my own expectations. Yours might be different. To cut to the chase, I donāt think floorstanding speakers or standmount really matter as there are small standmounts and large standmounts. Good large standmounts will go lower in the bass than a pair of good floorstanding speakers. There are standmounts that go lower than your KEF R5 floorstanding speakers, 38Hz or lower.
Personally I favour standmounts for their versatility. They are relatively lighter than floorstanding speakers (easier to move around) and easier to place in the room. Pick the correct size (and spec to your preference) to fit the room. With a 5.0 x 7.0m room, I would pick one that goes down to at least 40 Hz unless bass isnāt that important to you. You can add subwoofer(s) as well if you wish to go that route.
Good luck.
Do you want quantity or quality? Affordability, good sound quality, deep bass. Pick 2.
I spent years looking for small floorstanders that sounded ārightā, and ended up settling on a pair of Dynaudio monitors. The compromises in the midrange, treble, and bass articulation to get deeper bass were too much for my ears, within the budget I had to work with.
If you can spend the money to get properly engineered and well built floorstanders, Iād say go for it. For me, the price delta was at least double to get equivalent sound quality AND big, deep bass, without losing the upper range detail and nuance I couldnāt live without.
The physics problems are exponentially more difficult to overcome when building large, complex speakers, whereas a small 2-way with a simple crossover is much simpler to engineer and produce.
I still chuckle at a long-ago description of this phenomenon:
These days I like to audition kit slowly at home, without a foot conductor trying to Scientologise the more lucrative result.
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Like you, I have proactive speakers. Itās really useful.
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Yes that is another very good option indeed. I have two lovely sealed boxed stand-mounts with their matching sealed boxed active subwoofer and in my set-up (iāve always been a floor-stander guy in the past), thereās no going back.
Until you hear a pair of SL2s
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Ah, yeah but:
Richard.Dane](/u/Richard.Dane)Leader
āIām a big fan of n-Sats. Get them just set up just right and they can make you forget about others speakers. I remember when we had to use a pair in place of some SL2s that had been damaged on the way to the Milan Top Audio show. Fed with a CD555, NAC552, NAP500 and a Klimo Turntable (carrying the longest tonearm Iāve ever seen) with Klimo phono stage, the sound we got from those n-Sats had everyone in the room entranced - with the diet of smaller scale classical works and vocal pieces that many demanded at the Top Audio show, they performed as well as anything you could think of.ā
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As long as youāre happy, and stay that way, thatās all that really matters here.
How well any speaker will perform is very much dependant on the room they are setup in.
You see some systems photos on here with 10ās of thousands worth of kit shoved in the corner of a room with a TV stuck on top of it and windows, doors and mirrors wrapped around it.
Getting the room to work with the system is usually challenging in a domestic setting unless you have the luxury of either designing the room around the system or using room treatment.
Most of the setup improvements are relatively cost effective and usually quick and easy to change to evaluate their impact on the interaction of the speakers with the listening space.
You can make a half decent standmount or floor standing speaker sound good with those considerations factored in, you can also make a very good speaker sound average if itās just shoved in a corner surrounded by the rest of your life.
Stand mounts will be easier to set up. Floor standers if you are very lucky will be the same-perhaps. Floor standers shift more air and you have the unwanted potential of driving the room with honky bass which is horrible.
In a chat with Mike Valentine at the first audio show at Ascot he mentioned the hardest part of any hi-fi system is getting the room interface right. The rest is secondary.
I have an ancient copy of a book by Gilbert Briggs, the founder af Wharfdale Loudspeakers in which he uses the phrase āa good big 'un will always beat a little 'unā.
Must have read the book!
Ugh, so many good replies - thank you! Part of the problem is too much choice! Iām already suffering some angst now that I find the SN3 wonāt play nicely (cf volume control) with Roon, even with a 3.5mm interconnect to a NDX2. The Roon UI is so much better than the Naim app IMNSHO, and it works brilliantly with the Uniti Star. But perhaps I just need to focus on sound rather than ergonomics 
My pain threshold for a set of speakers is ~Ā£5k - I can push to towards Ā£6k, but that would be absolute tops. Max volume tends to be 70-75dB at my listening position, with 60-70dB being ānormalā.
As for home demos, that hasnāt been offered (yet), and to a certain degree I would rather narrow down options before I ask for one - I donāt want to waste their time - or mine.