Tír Na HiFi

Adrian wrote:Well if it is scale / soundstage you are after.... perhaps you should be looking at speakers with physically BIGGER drivers.

Bigger drivers can displace a greater volume of air, i.e. a 8" cone will displace more air than a 6" cone.

I'm using B&W speakers... and believe me a 15" driver displaces a lot more air than a 8".

As the Americans say.... "You can't beat cubes"!!

Have you heard the Eist Dubh speakers. Maybe they are the exception to the rule but the soundstage they produce is huge from a 4'' driver.

I remember a delightful evening in Fran's and yes the Eist Dubhs most certainly did impress. Quiet funny actually... I think I remember bailng out of there at around 4 am!!! ahahahahahahah and I still had an hours drive ahead of me just to get home!!!

Surprisingly good for a single driver, however I remember hearing that considerable time and effort was undertaken to obtain that driver as it was quiet unique!!

Definitely worth an audition!

I would assume that the uber-expensive Kharma subs would be the best match. The PV1 is a superb sub and could work very well and leave money left over for a turntable :-)

Let's try to address the question of what I'm looking for, then.

Actually before we get to that, maybe you'll indulge me in a brief aside. This next bit might sound like a rant, but if we're going to have an honest discussion there's no point pussy-footing around! Simply put, despite issues that some forum members have had with one particular pair of Kharma 3.2FEs, for me they are nearly perfect, and for a long time were easily the best real-world speaker my ears had ever heard. Because of DaveF's well-documented troubles (!) they possibly don't get the credit that I think they deserve on here, and I think there might be an inaccurate sense of what they are and what they sound like. So let me say this straight off the bat: I have heard very few speakers I prefer, very few indeed, and I've heard a lot of stuff. Up until very recently if you'd asked me the best systems I'd heard in real-world (i.e. Dublin housing) environments, Kharmas featured in every single one. If you've read the forums for a while you might be tempted to conclude that "anything would be better than those feckin' Kharmas!" but let's just say that's not a view I share. All the usual caveats apply: my ears, my tastes, etc. etc., but I just want to get that out there.

Okay Simon, shut up now. Ranting aside, they're not perfect, and like all speakers they have their limitations. The Kharmas sound fast, lively, very open and really very accurate at times, but in the wrong situations they can sound lean through the midrange and make recordings sound overly spotlit. The bass is there, but only if it's there IYKWIM, and the result is that things can sound lacking in warmth. In Ciaran's room this never seems to be a problem, the Kharmas sound wonderful in open space. In another friend's normal living room, this was never an issue either in a completely different environment either side of a sofa and close to the back wall. In my horribly reflective concrete shell of a room, all of 9' wide, natural warmth and bloom is virtually non-existent. The huge amount of sound treatments needed to make the room remotely listenable also conspire to exacerbate this problem, sucking out warmth. Trying to take the treatments out generally just makes things worse, bass modes become a huge problem, reflections become a huge problem, so short of a house upgrade I'm more or less stuck with things the way the are.

On some material none of this matters and the system can create beautiful sound that's just a joy to listen to. The problem is that now that's ALL I listen to. The stuff that doesn't work so well remains unplayed, and I find my listening habits are far too affected by the sonics. My music serves the system rather than the other way around, and I'm no longer happy to make excuses. Of course there'll always be dodgy recordings, I don't expect or want every old piece of crap to sound gorgeous, but I need something that's less ruthless and that gives me more options. Except I'm not willing to give up on overall quality to get an "even-handed but dull" solution. I'm still an audiophile, and I still want the good recordings to sound spectacular!

So I'm looking for a big, enjoyable and beautiful sort of sound, very open (this is a must for me) with accurate instrumental timbres, excellent speed and timing, holographic imaging, that can play all kinds of music, but that keeps a good dollop of audiophile cred. All for a budget of roughly zero, LOL!

I'm not asking for much...

I've pretty much decided that the CD player is staying, I'm reluctant to jump back into the amp world because I spent AGES trying to find the right amps as it is and I really do think the GRAAFs are superb, so I think it's speakers that need to change.

On a recent trip to London I listened to a variety of speakers including Wilson Sophias, Avalon Eidolons (in an admittedly very difficult room), even a fleeting listen to Magico S5, and I was slightly underwhelmed with all of them. As you can see I'm a finicky b****rd. However, I also heard Sonus Faber Amati Futuras and I was smitten, so at least I know that the sound I want exists at a cost. Can I get 95% of the way there for significantly cheaper? Well, let's see.

Ninja Edit: NO TURNTABLES!!!!!!! :)

I too, could not understand the Kharma bashing. 3.2`s + Wadia + Air Tight PC-1 = a sound I will never forget, and that was in a hotel room at one of the Cloney shows years ago - never mind fully dialled in at someone`s home. Buy a feckin` turntable Simon or I`ll make you buy a tapedeck!!!

bod wrote:Buy a feckin` turntable Simon or I`ll make you buy a tapedeck!!!

I'll make a deal with you: You provide the vinyl, I'll buy a TT!

I must stress that Kharma's are still the best speaker I've heard to date. I'll exclude ESL's for now as I've never had the chance to sit down with them properly with my own music.
There was certainly an 'issue' with my Kharma's and remember they had the newer midrange driver fitted to them and I'm now convinced that it upset the balance of the speaker somehow. The person I sold them to has already moved them on, so that says it all. Couple that together with an amp, the Airtight ATM2, which simply was not the right amp for those speakers. Indeed no amp was right for them in the end.

Simon, you really need to move your setup to another room in the house to see how they sound or organise to bring them to someone elses place for an afternoon. A big effort I know but it would really tell you if your mancave is the main source of your problems.

I seem to have missed all this Kharma bashing! I would regard them as pretty much "destination speakers"!
Dave's issues were quite specific to a particular pair and indeed (and I'm sure he'll agree!) Dave.

DaveF wrote: Simon, you really need to move your setup to another room in the house to see how they sound or organise to bring them to someone elses place for an afternoon. A big effort I know but it would really tell you if your mancave is the main source of your problems.

Ah Dave, I knew we'd smoke you out. ;-)

A good call there, and I've been putting off doing that for a while. I also have been putting off trying to run the Kharmas across the mancave rather than down the length. For the most part I don't like near-field listening, but I should definitely give it a go before lashing out huge money on an upgrade. I need to take about 2 weeks off work and do this properly!!

Ivor wrote:I seem to have missed all this Kharma bashing! I would regard them as pretty much "destination speakers"!
Dave's issues were quite specific to a particular pair and indeed (and I'm sure he'll agree!) Dave.

In fairness, some of it came from discussions off the forum, but said discussions were with the person who bought Dave's pair, so..................