Advice on home speakers

Studio monitors are designed to respond flatly and show up all the faults.
Good hi-fi speakers are designed to make music sound awesome.

One is listening for work, the other is listening for pleasure.

I would no more use studio monitors as my hi-fi speakers than use hi-fi speakers as my studio monitors.

For Hi Fi speakers, buy British (while you still can), so you're not paying half your money on having a big box of air flown halfway across the world. I love Celestions. They just sound great. They design and make their own drivers which an awful lot of other companies then buy.

Go to a hi fi shop, with your music, and test some speakers out. buy the ones your ears like best.

quad do a real nice small speaker they sound awesome in the 300 GN's range
or just buy What HiFi check the reviews out in the back most of it is pretty accurate
if you are paying big money go to a proper hi fi shop and listen to a few speakers there really is a difference between them some bassier some better on the high end.

what hi-fi is a comic that now mostly reviews i-pod docks and plasma tv's.
if you only have 150 to spend on each component just go to richer sounds and buy whatever they suggest, i doubt you will be disappointed.
but IMHO it's not real hi-fi you are buying but a good stereo.
want a hi-fi? then go to a good dealer and listen with no preconceptions as to what you read somewhere was good, buy with your ears not your eyes.
decent hi-fi equipment will last a lot longer that what you buy from a shop that also sells playstations and fridges.
i currently have Naim pre-power amps that are 10 years old, will send them back to the factory soon and have new capacitors fitted so they are good for another 10 years.
speakers are PMC tb2's which are exactly the same as tb2S's (the black studio monitor version)
so some 'studio' monitors have a place in the home, ATC is another u.k. company that see's no difference between it's studio and home ranges apart from a different colour veneeer.

The best speakers I ever heard were a pair of old gold Tannoy speakers at my friends flat, they looked like these :

Fascinating...

Most studio monitors are designed for near-field listening. They are designed to be about 6 feet in front of you, at ear height, with you bang in the middle of the sweet spot.

Hi Fi speakers shouldn't be designed like that. They should fill a 30ft room, with you on the sofa reading a book, in the 'wrong' place, etc.

i'm a music production student, so i know all about that stuff.

woo-hoo! ha ha! oooh hah ah ha...

Bang & Olufsen Beolab 5 arguably the best speaker available on the market today and only $16,000 a pair ;)

Most studio monitors are designed for near-field listening. They are designed to be about 6 feet in front of you, at ear height, with you bang in the middle of the sweet spot.

Hi Fi speakers shouldn't be designed like that. They should fill a 30ft room, with you on the sofa reading a book, in the 'wrong' place, etc.

near-field monitors are designed for near-field listening.

mid-fields are for mid-field.

etc. etc.

Bang & Olufsen Beolab 5 arguably the best speaker available on the market today and only $16,000 a pair ;)

utter shite.

B&W Nautilus is the only 'super-speaker' that can make that sort of claim

rubbish.
these from wilson audio are contenders for that title. the stuff B&O makes isn't to listen to, it's for architects and interior designers to look at.

$135,000 a pair.

woo-hoo! ha ha! oooh hah ah ha...

lol!

They look like arcade games.. could you install Asteroids into the back of 'em? That'd be worth another 20k..

Most studio monitors are designed for near-field listening. They are designed to be about 6 feet in front of you, at ear height, with you bang in the middle of the sweet spot.

Hi Fi speakers shouldn't be designed like that. They should fill a 30ft room, with you on the sofa reading a book, in the 'wrong' place, etc.

well having a tiny london victorian terrace front room that makes my pmc 'monitors' a good choice then. shame some acoustic treatment behind the listening position (sofa) and some bass-traps in the alcoves don't really fit in domestically.

anybody with a 30ft lounge is a lucky person.

These are the best, no arguments. $250,000 for the set.

picture fail. tannoy golds are really nice and b&w's are great speakers but theres alot of choice out there the new pmc's arent that good.ive got acoustic research which are nice for 30 year old speakers. @mrsmith do your naims using din connections ive heard really good things about naim.

they do use dins which makes sense (for them) as the power amp supplies the pre with regulated power through the interconnect, it's a closed system but you are unlikely to want to use another manufacturers component.
i like naim stuff, not everybodys cup of tea though.

i have a Lavry DA10, so i win.

I have Naim too. Is it easy to get serviced MrSmith? My CD player has started backing certain CD's. Maybe it found taste.

I use three speakers.
L
R
and L+/R+

I have Naim too. Is it easy to get serviced MrSmith? My CD player has started backing certain CD's. Maybe it found taste.

i don't know if you have to do it through a dealer or if you can send it straight back to the factory in sailsbury?