Harbeth P3’s sound good at low volume. I bought them mainly to match my very difficult room, and listen to them louder but their clarity and bass at low volume really make you say “wow”. I’m driving them with a SuperUniti.
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This seems like a reasonable set of examples:
Where 70 to 79 includes washing machine and a coffee grinder! 
i.e. not at all quiet.
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I do love the look of those Klipsch speakers. Never heard them so can’t comment but have always wanted a pair!
Yeah, the Klipsch Heritage Series has a few great models.
The problem being, I’ve never heard of anyone using Naim amps successfully with them.
Also unusual for an American speaker that the Heritage series are designed to go close to a boundary or even in a corner. But they stem from an old school pre-soundstage era and are floor huggers.
But there is definitely a sort of comfortable vibe from just looking at them. Ditto classic JBLs.
I am sure there are a couple Naim/Klipsch users. I suggest searching “Klipsch” in the 2021/2/3 system pics threads.
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In 2021, no one using Klipsch with Naim.
Just this:
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I’m sitting in a cafe right now with a pair of Klipsch Heresy playing jazz and it sounds very good.
In my experience with several PMC speakers (which I love)… they are not that great at low volumes…they love being whipped by a nice big amp… I have heard a Kilpsch Heresy…which was amazing at low levels…
Having many pairs of PMCs in the past and now, I totally agree with that. They like a bit of well to wake up. My high sensitivity large driver speakers on the other hand excel in this area. I’m sure big PMC monitors are a different story though.
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Yes the Harbeths sound good at low volume, interesting that other speakers on this thread like the Spendor and Falcon have much the same heritage
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Just sit a little further away maybe? Problem solved at no expense.
Without wanting to sound too flippant, I’ve always thought that the measure of a good hifi is if going out of the room, but leaving the door open, it still sounds good.
And if it sounds good with the door closed, you know you’ve got a ******** awesome system.
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Hi there I am in the same boat, what I found was adding a subwoofer to the mix seems to really round out the sound, it just seems fuller at low volumes. To put this into perspective we moved from a condo with concrete floors under hardwood to a Dricore floor on top of concrete in my new listening room. Room treatment aside the floor material really impacted the sound and not in a good way. I went with two rel T Zero subs instead of 1 larger unit. I find the sound comes across as balanced and you have more flexibility on room placement.
I have two Rel TZeros and two Focal Aria 926s. I hope this is helpful.
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The only constant in my system as it evolved over many years have been my speakers. Allae’s, they sound very good at low volume , say 9:00 or so on the big round knob.
Is 09:00 quiet?! That would be very loud for me.
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I’ve had a pair of Fink Team Kim speakers at home for the past week. I’ve been very impressed at how good they are at low volume
Very clever, disguising the T-zero as a Christmas present!
I run dual stereo subwoofers (2 x BK Gemini 2) which do exactly as you describe, as well as filling out the sound stage and adding to harmonics etc. Purchase 2 x Rel or BK, connect them high level (at the speaker end in my case), position/set them carefully and you then have bass extension that you can adjust to taste/room and which goes a long way to dealing with room modes.
I am contemplating adding two more BKs in a ‘4-pack’ as this will enable me to:
- Raise the bass response further from the floor - much less of an issue now that they are connected high level and integrate better - I don’t know why either!
- Have different filter/gain settings for each subwoofer, for example the lower woofers could have lower xover settings but higher gain, which would help increase the lowest frequency output (even subwoofers produce less output the lower the frequency) while the higher subwoofers could have a higher xover frequency and possibly lower gain, effectively transitioning between the ‘floor’ pair and the main speakers natural roll off.
- Increase headroom - 4 x 10 inch woofers driven by 4 separate 150 WPC/8ohm amplifiers has more headroom than two of each. Is this necessary? No, desirable? In my case yes. YMMV.
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Very enlightening chart - I assume 110db for a baby crying is an innate survival tool.
Interestingly, as a primary school teacher, I often wonder what DB level the children make in a classroom. I’ve not measured it yet but I have a strong suspicion that being in a classroom from 8:30 to the end of the school, 5 days a week, will have a much larger impact on my hearing long-term than my listening to HIFI between 70 - 85db and occasionally at 90db.
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I just checked using a dB meter on my iphone and 09:00 is 100 dB. Definitely too loud for comfortable listening, not to mention my neighbours!
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My bad, more like 8:30 ish on the volume knob. But the Allae’s perform very well from very low all the way up to trouser flapping volume. They’re 8’ apart and I’m sitting 10’ from them. My HiFi dealer in Seattle said I could do better than the Allae’s, but I would have to spend a lot of money.
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Speakers need a certain volume and then they come alive. My wife will happily listen to music on an iphone in her pocket! Not me!
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We don’t spend much time listening to music together!!
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