I don’t believe that I have ever been very adventurous with speakers having gone from Kans to Isobariks in the eighties and as life progressed things changed finances tighten and a succession of Mission, Focal, Intro’s and Q Acoustics and back presently to Intro’s.
A week ago a good friend of mine asked me if I wanted a pair of speakers which he inherited when his father had passed away, he was keeping all the kit including a Heybrook TT. He wasn’t sure what model they were but they were Spendor of a vintage of probably over 20 years.
Invited for lunch he brought the Spendors with him complete with a pair of Celestion stands, they turned out to be a pair of Preludes, never heard of them and never experienced Spendor, or the sound.
We connected them up,roughly set the pair up distance etc and sat back. Considering they had sat for a while we checked the tightness of the drive unit’s and put on music that we both knew.
The sound can be described as comfortable like having a warm blanket wrapped round you, so I left them in place for a few days.
The point of this little ramble is that although they were not for us it’s surprising how many times on the forum we see speaker advice and options sought from members. We were gobsmacked how different they were, not in a bad way but proves the point that you must audition whatever the advice is.
The Spendor Prelude was very highly rated back in the day for offering a very well balanced sound at a bargain price. It was certainly more in the BBC mold than say speakers from Linn, Heybrook et al.
Yes, and that is why I frequently point out that speakers are so critical in getting a system that you like, that really suits your own taste, more significant to that than any other component. It was brought home to me decades ago when I did an audition of 13 different speakers, all at the same price point (with inflation equivalent to £2.5-£3k today, though with the greater increase in cost relative to inflation that quality hifi has seen, the equivalent today would probably cost £4-5k), so hardly budget speakers. All had had very good reviews in hifi mags, and most were top of their respective manufacturers’ ranges. I was amazed at how different they all sounded - and 10 of them I rejected after just one track, completely unacceptable to me. Another lasted only a little longer, leaving just two for more extensive listening.
As @Richard.Dane pointed out, Spendors were more the BBC type sound. Very, very different to Linn or Naim speakers. Many love that kind of sound but having heard LS3/5a’s on several occasions and having very briefly owned Spendor Classic 4/5’s I know that sound is definitely not for me. Way back around 1979 I recall having a demo of the LS3/5a’s against some Heybrooks (HB2’s?). There was no contest. The LS3/5a’s had a beautifully uncoloured and open sound but killed dynamics and drive stone dead. The Heybrooks were loads of fun and really engaged me with the music. It’s fascsinating that LS3/5a’s and Kans outwardly appear virtually identical (I think early Kans actually used LS3/5a cabinets) but two more different sounding speakers would be hard to imagine.
People who like BBC speakers probably want comfort at home after long day of work. With strained beck, sore shoulders and probably some tinnitus, a ‘non-invasive’ sound is what preferred.
Naim or Linn are for those who prefer their music closer to the real deal. My another half and I back from a gig last Saturday, was happy the artist sounds so much better with our Naim+Kan than in the gig…without losing any spirit of his music.
Many years ago my wife and I attended a Sarah Brightman concert at the Royal Albert Hall. I had the CD that the concert was based around and I’d listened to it quite a bit before hand on our Naim system (IBL speakers). I was struck at the concert by how much better and more musically involving the CD had sounded on our system at home. By comparison the concert was bland and uninvolving which came as quite a shock to me.
Even more surprising when I look back is why we bothered going to a Sarah Brightman concert in the first place!
Glenn Gould was on TV the other night saying pretty well the same thing - explaining why he had pretty well stopped doing live performances in favour of studio recordings (with 30th St Studio at his disposal I don’t blame him). Broadcast was from 1966, first time re-broadcast by the BBC.
Glenn Gould had a number of reasons for his choice: he was a very strange man who disliked undifferentiated contact with humans intensely, was intolerant of audience noises, had a fixation with final results and was obviously indifferent, if not totally adverse, to the unicity and non-repeatability of the music event: what made, on the other hand, the bulk of Sergiu Celibidache’s approach to the concert form.
Members of this forum seem to privilege pop/rock concerts when discussing live vs recorded: I find it easy to accept that a good recording is a better experience than most live gigs. I have attended one concert that sounded almost as good as a record, Steely Dan.
But every Friday night I go to subscription concerts of the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano, and there, each Friday, the charme of Hifi and personal music ends. Live acoustic music, live classical so to speak, is, and has a precise duty to remain, true music. That’s how I see it. My opinion only of course.
As for the main topic, choosing loudspeakers is a total PITA. I have them only because they are necessary, as it is with a car. But assembling a system that is good each time we use it, with each recording, each type of music, in each and every mood, is impossible. It is this type of perennial, unsolvable quest that keeps the business alive. Again, my opinion only.
From things I’ve read by people owning them I am not convinced of that at all. Perhaps they want to hear the recirdings as they are and enjoy that, not liking added colouration - and perhaps to them that is closer to the real sound they hear with live music. I’ve never heard BBC speakers so can’t talk from experience, but I have been drawn strongly to monitor type speakers that strive to present the music as uncoloured, uncompressed and undistorted as possible, and they much can give a pretty good semblance of live performance sound, though of course that would be limited by whatever room they are played in. LS3/5a speakers wouldn’t suit me if only because I dislike omitting the bottom end of music.
The HB2’s were cracking speakers. I couldn’t afford them at the time (late 80’s ?) and ended up with Mordaunt Short MS20, which for the money were pretty good, but outclassed by the Heybrooks. I think the MS20’s were about 120 quid and the HB2’s over 200.
Still got a pair of Heybrook HB2s in the loft somewhere. Ran them with a A&R A30 for some years. Very punchy at the bottom end as I recall. Speakers that could ‘boogie’. I really ought to dig them out and see if they still work.
The thing about LS3/5a’s is that yes, they have low colouration and tonal accuracy, in the midrange at least, but they are completely unrealistic to my ears since they are slow and dynamically dead. This just isn’t how real music sounds. Of course one could equally argue that dynamic speakers like the Kans don’t sound like real music either since they are tonally very coloured. It all depends on how you listen to reproduced music and what pushes your own particular buttons. If you think of all the totally different sounding speakers on the market then it stands to reason that all of them can’t be getting it right. Some must surely be more right than others. Yet there seems to be very little agreement between people, less so than with any other component I would say. I’ve always liked ‘marmite’ speakers, ie. the kind that people either love or hate. Hence my previous love of Kans, IBL’s and my current Klipsch Forte III’s. My worst speaker nightmare is probably the ‘all rounder’ that attempts to appeal to as wide an audience as possible.
I like speakers that play all music well- if I had speakers suited to particular styles I’d have to have 2 or 3 pairs all set up in the music room, each inevitably pretty large, which aside from cost would be impractical and possible detrimental to sound quality! Maybe that’s why from as far back as the mid 70s I found full range monitor type transmission line speakers to be ideal for me.
The IBL’s are/were great speakers. Albeit a little bass shy, of course.
(Cue a post from someone saying they used a 500 into IBL’s and the bass was stunning…
Before going HiFi speakers I had lot of good neutral-sounding speakers, for example a nice pair of Falcon 3/5A GB with heavy sanded stands etc. Their common DNA is, presenting the music in a flat, objective and inoffensive way, which great for either audio professional and relaxation at home because’ there is a distance’ from the music – that’s also why I found them hardly involving.
As I said there is definitely a certain kind of presentation to them. I would personally count that as colouration.
To me it is the music that makes it involving, not the speakers
I often read this sort of comment, and suggestions that ‘coloured’ speakers make music more “exciting”, and find it rather odd! To me involvement comes from the music, and whilst of course not all recordings are good, it seems a weird notion that distorting the music in some way makes it more engaging or involving, or exciting (not all music is intended to be exciting!). If particular music isn’t involving or engaging then there is plenty of other music that is. But then I also don’t get some of the other things some people are happy with in this hifi hobby, such as using small standpoints that forego the bottom couple of octaves (unless subs are used ) …or listening to jazz! But these are some of the things that makes this a fascinating hobby!
My first upgrade was to Rogers LS4a’s. My mother in law still has them. I tried some B&W 602S3 but have had Wilson Benesch speakers since. I totally agree that speaker choice is so personal!
Yes the involvement comes from the music. That depends on reproducing the things that make music involving, ie. timing, rhythm, pace, dynamics. This almost always means sacrifycing tonal accuracy until we get to very elevated prices where one can have one’s cake and eat it. So it’s not really that coloured speakers make music more exciting or involving but that those speakers that do possess these qualities tend to be coloured as well. Until, as I say, we get to silly money.
