I'll be using the Outlaw receiver RR2150 for rock and roll. I want to listen to springsteen, u2 , dylan, Dave Matthews, Led Zeppelin and pearl jam. I also have a ton of springsteen bootlegs I listen to. I am going to get into vinyl with pro-ject debut III, and I have a 300 cd player from Sony. I have a large living room (17x15) opening to a large dining room. Both rooms have wood floors and cathedral ceilings.
Of these speakers, which will work the best for my room and music style
Oh, and attractive room treatment panels behind your listening position.
Oh, and a glass of Scotch for the Ballad of Tom Joad.
Springsteen just played Toronto, my buddy went. The Boss tore it up pretty good. 2 songs in he did Darlington County, buddy says the sound guy must have wet himself on the volume knob.
I don't have experince with Totem, but I know they are well liked. I have Quad 22Ls and the 21's are of similar design, and as good as they are, be prepared to leave plenty of room from rear walls and corners. When positioned correctley they are really magic, if not you'll want to trash them.
However, I think the Quads will regurgitate Springsteen and maybe Pearl Jam. [Kidding!]
If you're looking for large room filling sound, you may want to drop the Arros from your list. They're not designed to do this. They're a great speaker - one of my personal favorites - so long as you keep in mind what their limitations are, just like anything else.
You really need to hear these speakers. They're not all that similar to each other. Most people will appreciate them all for what they do, but their will be a hands down favorite. Its all about what flavor you like.
Also, if you already have a decent pair of speakers, you may want to upgrade from the Sony CD changer first. The rest of the system will only be as good as that link, which isn't very good. No offense intended. A new source may improve the system so much that you don't need new speakers.
My sony is CDP-CX455; I thought cd players just read 1's and 0's. What is a cd player I can get on audiogon that is much better than what I got? It can be a single cd player, I won't care. My speakers are JBL northride series; I'm trying to go to the next level, my speaker choices are the next level correct?
Welcome to the forum, Rob. Have a seat, open a beer and listen to your music. It starts at the source. In most cases, the dedicated cdp, one tray, no dvd.
Oh we are gonna turn you into even more of a music lover.
You're not the first or last on to think it's all 1's and 0's. In a very condensed manner, I'll explain - No machine reads all the 1's and 0's correctly. The best ones read more of them accurately.
No player times the flow of them completely accurately. Better players time them better.
All DACs (digital to analog converters) aren't the same. Better DACs sound better.
This is part of the reason why a $50 Apex CD player at Best Buy doesn't sound as good as a $30,000 Esoteric player.
Then there's everything in between.
The players Art linked to are great CD players. With a proper pair of speakers, you will hear a huge difference. Your JBLs should show you a good difference between players, but any of the speakers mentioned above will show you a night and day difference.
I'd also add Rotel CD players to your research list.
The source is all-important. I would never feed Arros or Sttafs with a Debut smply because the speaker will reveal the limitations of the source ruthlessly. The Debut is appropriately named. It's a good starter deck, but that's all. The Arros/Sttafs/RS6s/21Ls are a couple of levels up from that. You're probably better off sticking with your speakers and improving the source instead, probably both CD player and record deck.
If you want to be in the Arro league, then the absolute minimum record deck should be something like a Rega P3-24 with a one-up-from-base cartridge such as an Ortofon 2m Blue or Grado Prestige Gold. As for CD players, the benchmark is the Rega Apollo which retails for something like $1500 AFAIK.
On the subject of your speaker selection, I disagree with Stu on the Arros provided you drive them properly. I regularly fill a 22' x 17' room with Arros when I have a quality source and amp behind them. If I try to use something like a NAD C325BEE to drive them, the room is not going to be filled loudly or properly. It just sounds smaller scale, a bit thick and a bit stressed, since the Arros aren't the easiest to drive and they find it more difficult to couple to the room since they use such small drivers.
Of your list, I would actually have chosen Arros first. The small drivers mean that the Arro is very fast and has great immediacy. An appropriate amplifer does not need to be hugely powerful, but it needs to have good current delivery. A typical combination would be the Rega Apollo into a Naim Nait5i into the Arros. The nait5i is just a 50wpc amp but it sounds a lot more powerful than that. It shows the kind of combination I would expect to see in use at this level. In your smaller room you could get away with a Rega Mira, but nothing less in my view.
The Sttaf is actually easier to drive than the Arro, but since it is actually further up the tree, the quality requirements from the electronics are heavier since the speaker can only reproduce what it's sent.
Monitor Audio's RS6 is actually a fairly easy speaker to drive so in terms of sheer power you don't quite need the juice required by the Arro or Sttaf. That said, once again the requirements to provide a decent signal are just as high. The Monitor Audio has a very detailed sound and it's easy to reduce it to an analysis machine which is anything but the point of the exercise. So in my experience, although it's easier to drive it still needs a quality signal, otherwise it'll just tear the signal apart, revealing ruthlessly the inadequacies further up the chain.
It's been ages since I heard 21Ls. My recollection is that they are a more forgiving speaker, a little warm, easy to drive. I suggest they have similar requirements though.
If you insist on going down this route, here are a couple more models for you to look at:
Focal Chorus 714V or 716V. All Focal 700V speakers are easy to drive (90db, 8ohm load) which means that weaker amps will prefer the load they present. The Focal presentation is lean in the bass but very accurate, engaging and clean (their treble units are quite spectacular).
If you prefer a bigger presentation with more warmth, there is the new B&W 68x series. These are similarly easy to drive to the Focals (around 90db and 8 ohm loads). The 684 or 683 are the larger floorstander models. The 683 has a particularly sweet midrange thanks to its unique FST driver and prodigious bass, although I find it a bit too much for my taste - a bit too warm and a bit too heavy, but I can see why many people like this presentation.
If you decide to forge ahead with your speaker choice first, I suggest you at least find a local dealer who can show you what he would pair those speakers with. Treat it as a system demo so you can see and hear what we're talking about. Also be very careful when you're listening and try to do A/B demos of the speakers with the same electronics so you can build a true picture of what the speakers do. If you treat it as a system demo, it'll give you an idea of where you'll want to be later down the line.
I hope I haven't really annoyed you with my discussion on the importance of the source and amplification, and that I at least met your question on speakers. FYI, my colleagues and I in the shop enjoy music like Hendrix, Led Zep, Dylan, Ryan Adams, as well as jazz, classical and almost anything else you care to mention. These forms of music, particularly the Rock stuff really depend a great deal on the timing ability of a system. They don't actually have extremely deep bass - that's the purview of things like Dub and modern RnB. Rock is all about high energy, wickedly fast transients and delicate almost ethereal touch, so bass is not the main factor here. Snap, attack, grip and drive are what count - at least in my view anyway.
Excellent post Frank. You obviously have much more experience with the Arros than I do, so I'll defer to you. I've heard them in several smaller rooms and they've never ceased to amaze me. I heard them once in a very large and open area of a shop, and they lost some of that magic. Then again if my memory serves me correctly, they were being powered by an Arcam A65+ in that room, which doesn't have enough power to really open up most any speaker in that large of a room.
The Arro's are much trickier to setup and more demanding of electronics than the Staff,and much more revealing,the Staffs are more user friendly,more plug and play like a cheaper version of the Hawks.The Arro's when setup correctlly in the right sized room,are magic,and among the most musical speakers i've heard regardless of price,and another thing Vince Bruzze the designer and ceo of Totem builds his speakers very different than most manufactures,which includes cost of each model,each speaker has its own talents and are built individualy not part of a line,they all do certain things better and different than the other,some models that cost less do some things better than the more expensive models.The Arro was actually built for 1 of his great friends who says he admires greatly,the Arro was never supposed to hit production,but it did he said it was much better than he though it would be,he now says the hawk and the Arro are his favorites of his creations,the Arro does 1 thing better than every other Totem soundstaging and imaging,only the Model 1 can approach it in this aspect when its set correctly,as a matter of fact the Arro is 1 of the best on the market in this aspect regardless of price,the tone is another thing that it is amazing at this just 2 name a few the Arro's many talents, the Quad ESL 57's come to mind in midrange tone.Get the right electronics,and the Arro will amaze you every time you hit the play button,they are very very special.
On the list given, I agree that the Totem Arros might be the pick of that bunch, assuming all of these other things mentioned are in place.
At CES two years ago, I was in the Totem room with Vince and listened to the Arros as they were set up and amplified by Totem with their music selections as well.
Al though I do think the decriptions of the Arro in a positive sense are correct as detailed above, the speakers in that setting didn't get lost in the room. They were easily localizable, and thats soemthing I don't care for.
The rooms at the old location at CES were clearly not the best and I have some doubts about the quality of electricity as well frankly, but other speakers did a better job in similar rooms that year would be my only comment.
Yeah Mark Tubes is the magic formula for the Arro's,the room must have been horrible,Vince says he can set them up anywhere in a room and they will disapear.I had them in a not so good room and they vanished,but the ceo show is notorious for making a good speaker sound bad,i would deffinetly say that was the culprit,electronics probably had just as big of and impact to,the Arro can reveal anything thats wrong in a room or a system in a heartbeat.
Fair enough you are probably right on all counts there. I feel that moving the high end audio to the Venetian was a better move although unfortunately I think it priced a number of manufacturers and dealers out of the market.
