Wow, just heard the 20's this past weekend at a friend's house. Unbelievable detail and incredible voice reproduction. Question: as I was leaving my buddy said that when I came back, he would have the 40's for me to hear also. What can the 40's possibly do better than the 20's? Do they go deeper in the bass? Different drivers? Fancier cabinet? Also, what are the prices on these two models? Thanks (back to football).
I made a really stupid mistake and let the salesman talk me into the 40's. I love the price point and the image of the 20's and, if you have a fast sub, I'd get the 20's and spend the extra money elsewhere in your system. Either way, you can't go wrong.
I have both the 40's and 20's and like them both very much. If I were building a 2 channel system and was looking for a good monitor at low cost I would buy the 20 and put the extra money into a high quality sub or amp. The Studio 20 retails for $800 and the Studio 40 for $1200. BTW the 40 is thicker in the mid and upper bass regions.
I'm a newb, so this is all theory to the best of my understanding. Please take it for what it's worth.
Studio 20 vs Studio 40: By having more bass extension, you may be able to cross over the sub at a lower frequency, possibly resulting in better integration. But if you are on a fixed budget and have to buy a worse quality sub to go with the 40's, it could easily sound worse. A lot of people speak highly of 20's combined with a good sub.
Studio 40 vs Studio 60: By the time you buy good quality stands for the 40's, you are roughly equal in cost to the 60's which are towers and don't need stands. Many prefer to listen to music without a sub (hotly debated topic) and some feel that the 60's have enough bass that a sub is not needed (as you might expect, many disagree with this also). I also think towers look better than the 20's/40's on stands (WAF is important!) A potential disadvantage of the 60's (v2 anyway, which are shorter than the v3 I think) is their height: some say they are not tall enough to put the tweeter at the ideal location, and that with stands you can put the 40's where you want.
Studio 80's: Doesn't seem to exist any more in the v3 version. For v2, some people loved them, others complain they're the worst speaker in the studio line, saying the midrange is muddy. They're the only v2 Studio to use an 8" midrange driver (100's used 6" midrange, 8" woofers)
Studio 100: Generally liked, but pretty huge, expensive, and require lots of power.
I bought the v2 60's with the logic that I'm in a townhouse so I didn't need/want massive bass. But when I move (soon I hope) I want to get a sub for movies, which makes me wonder if I made the right call with the 60's. If I'm getting a sub anyway, I'll need to decide if I want to use it for music as well, and if so, why did I need the 60's, etc.. In theory it's still good to have the 60's so I can cross the sub nice and low, but still...
Sorry for the rambling, but that's my brain dump on the paradigm line.
