Anyone still running Infinity Speakers like me? - Page 4

Not exactly worried, as I took preventive measures a couple of years ago and replaced all the midrange/midbass speakers with new oem replacements directly from Infinity. Considering they had already made it about 15 years+ on the originals, I'm sure these are good to go for at least that length of time, if not more, as I replaced them a bit before they probably really needed it.

As for Infinity's advice to you regarding correct room/speaker placement, before eq/etc., I completely agree. The P-FR's also had ruler flat response, and sounded their absolute best after I got their placement, etc. just right, and then reran the AudyseyXT that I was using. The end result was as close to headphone quality sound, from a set of speakers, that I have ever heard, and pretty much removed whatever slight flaws they might have had on their own.

I've never been a fan of speakers that impart their own tonality on music, so for me a sterile speaker is ideal. I'd rather hear the music exactly as it was mastered. That way you really find out just how good the system/mastering engineers were at their job. Therefore, I've heard everything from rather benign, to absolutely incredible lifelike sound from various well regarded recordings. The benign doesn't bother me as long as it is relatively accurate in overall tonality. It's usually the lack of what people would call 'air' that makes a recording really special or not. It's that little extra bit up top that really gives you a sense of the recording space, of being right there during the recording. A surprising number of better recordings seem to filter that out.

That was very very wise of you! My beloved Prelude PFR's with the Prelude Center was as good a dual purpose system as I have owned.
Andrew Jones and Laurie Fincham of KEF designed the Prelude PFR's.
Actually, it was 80 percent Andrew Jones!
I ran my PFR's with a Yamaha RX V 1, a match made in heaven.
The Yamaha RX V 1 is an awesome one box solution, I sold it only because of No HDMI, a BIG mistake!
The Prelude PFR's image all over the place, and the Prelude center is about as good as it gets.
My Prelude PFR's were RUINED by Speaker Exchange here in Tampa, and I mean Butchered! They used wide ass foam on the mid drivers, and just killed my speakers.
IS replacement foam still availiable from Infinity ?

To my knowledge exact Infinity speaker foam is sill available, at least from what I appear to have heard elsewhere. Even the oem speakers may still be available, though Infinity does not always list them through their online parts listing, so you have to call in and check. Even then their supply can come and go. I had to wait a bit before all of mine were available.

That being said, I tried having my original speakers refoamed beforehand (with Infinity foam), and I was anything but happy with their sound afterwards, even though the job looked very well done, and there were no apparent voicecoil alignment issues.

I originally ran my P-FR's off a Yamaha DSPA-3090, which sounded lovely, but the AudysseyXT on my Denon 4806 really took things to a completely different level, though it took a very long time getting the speakers, etc. placed just right. Additionally, I learned early on to use a customized microphone layout, instead of the one suggested by Denon, which supposedly gives all people a piece of the sweetspot, a theory that I believe is always going to suffer from more compromise than I am willing to accept, but may be quite fine for others.

Man, some of those old Yamaha DSP amps are awesome sounding.
I still have one in the closet, can't make out the numbers on it, but it is a very very sweet and warm sounding amp.
I sold my B&W 801's. They were B&W Matrix 801's series 2's.
The tweeters are not to be had anymore, and if one pops, you are screwed, unless you gho to the Series 3 tweeters, and that requires a new crossover as well!
My 30 year old kid moved back in, and listens to Rap and Metal when I am away, he drinks, and dont realize he is clipping the amps.
I got scared, and sold my beloved 801's.
The Prelude PFR's would be nice to have again, IF the foam was to be had, but still, with my Son here, he will blow them up, the woofers will quit from the Rap Music.
The Rabosed IL 60's can take the Rap, sort of.
I also own some monster Electro Voice Sentry 3's and big Polk SDA speakers, the big SRS 2 b's, and some Cerwin Vega VS 150's.
Believe it or not, the Cerwin Vega VS 150 is a musical speaker, and also images decent for a big box.
It can POUND all day with Rap and Rock.
No, it is not in the same audiophile class with Prelude PFR's or B&W Matrix 801's, but for Rock and Rap at loud levels, it has few equals.

The Infinity Overture 2 and 3's are quite interesting speakers. They have a high woofer crossover, that's a good and bad thing.

I like them because with the high woofer crossover, you can run them well out from the back walls so they image like crazy, and still get a warm sound by turning the woofers up to "fill in" the lower mids!

This gives them that 'British warmth" like the Matrix 801's have. Of course, it is not completely accurate, but it makes you say "God dam, that sounds good"

Properly Rabosing the IL 60's is THE secret to making them sound great. They need their woofers help to give them warmth in the lower mids. And if you dont properly RABOS them, then the bass will get very boomy when you crank up the woofers enough to give them the warmth they otherwise lack.

Still, properly Rabosed, or not, I think the Prelude PFR is better then the IL 60, but for me it's small woofer and amp makes it not a good choice, especially with my Son here.
Then, the fear of not being able to repair them scares me.

Audiophile to Audiophile, The B&W Matrix 801 series 2 is a better speaker then ALL the speakers I have mentioned, seriously.
I really regret selling my pair.
Maybe one day, if my alcoholic Son ever quits drinking, and gets a life of his own, Dad might grab another pair.
Until then, depending on his drinking, I go back and forth between the Infinity IL 60's and the Cerwin Vega VS 150's.
The big Electro Voice Sentry 3's I keep unhooked, since they are very old, and parts are are really hard to find, in case he hurts something.
They can also be an awesome sounding, high efficiency speaker, but they are Horns, very fussy about what you feed them.

My current system
2 alpha 50's - Front
2 entra two - rear
1 klipsch kc 25 center

i love infinity i am a fan of about 90% of anything harman international has anything to do with and recommend infinity to anyone, i have been sad recently due to the diminishing of infinity product line s it dwindles to its tss series and its primus series

Yes it is sad that Infinity seems to be just hanging on. Time may spell their doom.

That is a real shame, it really is. I remember Infinity when they RULED the high end with the 2 piece IRS.
I have owned Infinity speakers with the Walsh Ice Cream Cone Tweeters, and Emits.
Infinity was once a true high end speaker line, sold only in the best audio stores.
So was JBL, it too was once only found in the best places.
Then, some idiot decided to take both lines mass market, ruining the names of both lines.
Harman International is soo stupid, they should have KEPT both JBL and Infinity as high end lines, and made a mass market line to bang heads with Polk and Boston Acoustics, etc, etc.
Instead, they ruined the names of their high end lines, and were forced to create Revel.

If I were Harman International, and wanted to revive Infinity, I would bring BACK Arnie Nudell and Cary Christie, the original founders.
They need some "excitement" that is missing, since Floyd Toole and Laurie Fincham left.

I acquired a pair of Infinity RS 4.5s when they first came out and ran them into the mid 90s, after which they just sat dormant. There were so many variations of the 4.5s that I did not bother to keep track of them. In its hey day, The Absolute Sound ruled the roost and it is somewhat amusing or ironic to realize that room correction via Audyssey or some other proprietary version has become ultra important. The room was something that was never adequately dealt with in the old Absolute Sound. As it turns out, there is no absolute sound, unless one happened to be present at the recording and has a phenomenal aural memory. So that the best that I can do is to choose my colorations, meaning pick, choose, and set up what sounds the best to my ears - also known as preference. Then there were high definition screens and blu-ray. I was late to that game and eventually pursued a home theater system, starting with an HTIB and a plasma screen. I never forgot my Infinity experience and wondered what the Inifinity Cascade 9 sounded like. Once hearing it, I didn't forget about it and now run 9 Infinity Cascade speakers, 2 Cascade subs, and 2 Hsu HB-1 as heights.

I have never heard the Cascade's. I have Infinity IL 60's and the matching 3 way center channel speaker. I have little faith in automatic room correction devices, though my Onkyo has Audyssey.
I like the height/width speakers.
But my Onkyo does not have IMHO THE most important control any receiver can have, a remote subwoofer level control w/o having to access the on screen display, and wade through all kinds of settings, so I am gonna buy a Denon 3312 instead.

Infinity speakers seem to have a decent following. It seems most people part out some of the older models (tweeters and mids can bring more than the speaker as a whole) and others buy up the parts and assemble them again! Kind of funny, really.

I currently have a house full of Infinty speakers (and some Revels).

Beta 40's (CH)
Beta 20's (CH)
Beta 250 (CH)
Beta 20's (BLK)
Beta 360 (BLK)
OSW-1"s X2 (WHT)
Entra Center (BLK)
Reference Five's (BLK)
Infintesimal IV's (BLK)
Primus 5.1 Theater Pack (BLK)
Various drivers, tweeters

I need to decide what to keep and just sell the rest. This is really getting out of hand .

If you have two subs, then the better solution is the Denon 4311 vs what you intend to purchase, because it will calibrate two subs separately which the Denon 3312 cannot and never do because it is simply a Y connector joining the two subs together. The Cascade speakers are not full range, meaning you should have a sub or two. With the two Cascade 15 subs (that can be appropriately positioned), I used RABOS that was dramatically inferior to zeroing out RABOS and letting Audyssey XT 32 do its thing. There are lots of posts about XT32, but the learning curve can be steep, meaning that you cannot just run a single calibration and expect everything to come out. But you will never know this unless you experiment and preferably ask someone who knows a lot more than you do and can make suggestions, as in, in person, not remotely via the Net. It is an ever going endeavor in which I think, perhaps mistakenly, that I have reached the end of the road when it comes to tweaking my home theater system. Cannot say anything about your speaker system because I have never looked into it and never heard it. A multi-speaker properly setup, more than 3 speakers with sub(s), can do things that no LCR can ever hope to accomplish and you don't have to spend a small fortune to do it. Some of this will depend upon your preconceived notion of running two speakers. I spent a lot of time running the 4.5s but when it came to a home theater system, it is a very different game.

This thread is way old, but I will interject anyway. ;-) I am very. very fond of a set of orphaned Overture (OVTR) 2 mains that I got about ten years ago. I loved their sound as soon as I plugged them in. I had a primitive 5.1 HT setup at that time so I bought a NOS CC-3 center to get the front soundstage going. Rear surrounds were whatever I had on hand, Celestion F-1s, I think.

Anyhow, long story short, I recently moved and set up a much more serious media room. Got myself a 60-inch LED display, a Velodyne MiniVee, and then went to town building a 9.1 setup. Found a nice mid-fi Pioneer VSX-1021 and was on the hunt for surrounds to timbre match to the fronts. The challenge, of course, is these Infinity speakers are long out of production now. But, hell, I still liked the sound of the OVTR2s so I went looking. Found three Craigslist ads within a week for RS3s and RS 2000.3s. They were stupid cheap. The woofers and tweeters matched the fronts. So I added four RS3s and two 2000.3s to the mix. Trying out Dolby PLIIz with the 2000.3s as front heights. These ragtag speakers make for an impressive setup, IMHO. I don't know what state of the art is in cost-conscious HT these days, but I am really pretty dang impressed with my less-than-trendy setup. That is all. I have been digging Infinity speakers since I was young and see no reason to stop now.
Edited by treyrhodes - 8/9/12 at 2:34am

No reason not to enjoy the speakers you have. All of them are more than decent enough to produce very good sound if used properly. I've owned the Overture 3's myself, as well as the RS3's (still have a couple of pairs), and they were all quite good. The Overtures tend to have a very spacious sound, which can really add to any surround system. I used the RS3's not only as side surrounds, but also as dual center channels, connected to an original Denon 4806, and once I got everything spaced properly I was more than pleased with them. I also used to sell all of the Infinity speakers form that period, and know that the CC3 was a very good speaker. Enjoy them!

Yep, I am very pleased and enjoy them very much. By chance I went to a Magnolia showroom yesterday at my local Best Buy and auditioned a lot of reasonably nice stuff: Martin Logan, B&W, Def Tech, Energy, etc. Gotta say that my humble and outdated Infinity-laden system is in the same neighborhood, sonically. (In fact, I thought that most of the speakers there were stiff-sounding to me, and often with a rather harsh high end, but that is another story for another post.) And my cheapo system has the advantage of being orders of magnitude cheaper. I mean I spent $100 last week on six excellent-condition RS3s, which IMHO make respectable surrounds. I am not sure what $100 would have bought me at the big box HT showroom. A third-party multifunction remote? Some speaker wire?
Edited by treyrhodes - 8/10/12 at 8:12pm

Just saw this thread.

I still own a pair of Infinity Reference 4 speakers with the Emit-R tweeter, purchased back in 1992. I believe that one tweeter got fried early on but was replaced by Infinity. I also had to replace a couple woofers a decade ago or so. They still work fine and are downstairs in a 2.0 setup. They don't get much use these days though, I mostly watch TV/movies upstairs in our HT setup. I am planning on re-doing my basement setup and will be bringing in some speakers to audition in a couple months. It will be interesting to see how the old guys stack up vs. some modern competition. I may end up selling them. If I do, I can post on here in case anyone is interested.

Funny that there is a thread like this. I still own and using them since 2001/2002(?).

I have IL 50 up front, 36C and IL10 for surround. But I am looking for a new set now.

Still using RS5s (circa 1999-2000) as mains with pc 350 center. The rs5s are getting kinda worn out so I'm looking for an upgrade.

The Big IL 36 Center Channel is a good one, but I have also heard some very good things about the newer big Primus center channel. What are you considering ?

Always looking for Infinity content, and it took me two+ years to find this thread. My first Infinity speakers were Compositions Overture 3s, bought new at Ubid.com for less than half srp. They're now the sound source in our main stereo only system. One amp failed and Infinity had a spare. Later a tweeter went out, and they sent one from a lower line. It just wasn't shiny and didn't have the tight weave of the Overture tweeter. Got the right one on an auction site. When they were our HT speakers a CC-3 took up center channel duties. Still love 'em. The bipolar woofers (2 front, 2 rear) probably have a lot to do with the enveloping sound others have written about. Now an old Denon 80wpc integrated makes them sing.

Thought I was happy, done. Wrong. Found IL-60s available for a similar song a few years later. I knew what the Intermezzo was, and I knew that Infinity had just built the poor man's Intermezzo. Almost all the sound at less than half the price. So they along with an IL-36c became my HT mainstays. They remain so today. And when I'm in the mood for Mahler, they give a more intense accounting than the older Overture3s. Just a better all around speaker. But... I think I would get the IL-40s and a separate sub if I had to do it again. The powered part still makes me nervous. Its easy to replace an amp on a stand alone powered subwoofer, but on one of these... Oh, and if these have "ruler flat response" then they were built for my room. Outside of some Dunlavys and Revels I've heard they're still my favorite speaker. Takin' em to my grave.


Edited by GLBright - 1/1/13 at 6:40pm

So glad you found this thread GLBRIGHT. Congratulations on your Infinity speakers!

For those who may not remember the Overture series from Infinity these came out about the same time as the Prelude but used polypropylene drivers from the earlier RS series. All Harman. Real cherry veneer, not tape. I believe that the Overture 3 and Intermezzo were the best looking Infinity speakers from the Harman era.

I am still running a set of Interludes that I have had since they came out. I have never had any troble with them and was happy to see I could still order replacement Grills for them in the various different colors.

2 IL40's Front
1IL36c Center
2 IL10's Rear
1 IL100s Subwoofer

If I had it to do over Id grab 2 more IL40's and a 120s!

I recently seen a pair of Qb's in my local CL ,i would love to hear how they sound...

I still run two IL40s upfront....Center IL36....IL30 Rears ....however my IL120 died last week! Looking for a replacement if I cannot fix it. I still love these speakers, bought them in 2002 and will keep using them as I move into 9.2 or 7.1. However I recently moved into a larger HT room and I'm trying to decide if I shouldn't consider replacing them or maybe just adding some IL10's, monoprice rears.

Actually I discovered that I had discovered this thread over two years ago and posted then. No pics at that time though.

I recently sold my reference surround setup to help fund a forthcoming upgrade. I happened to have an Infinity Primus 360BK tower 5.1 system w/ PS-12 subwoofer from my grad school days, so I brought them down into the main theater from the media room.......let me tell you guys, after running Audyssey in a treated room, I had forgotten how great these speakers are. I'm quite comfortable listening to them with any material. There's no better test than time for a speaker setup, and these infinitys most certainly excel!!

My 2.1 system for music in my living room consists of 2 Infinity RS125 bookshelf speakers and a Energy RC8 sub. Sounds great!

I bought back in 2008 a bunch of brand new Beta's

2 Beta 40's
1 C360
2 ES250
2 Beta 20's

This was for my new home theater that hasn't even been started yet. They have just been sitting brand new in the boxes. I am searching for some black ES250's for my rear surrounds as my plan has 3 rows with the back row against the wall (the cheep seats). Maybe some OWM-1 if I can find them. Maybe the ERS HV250 as they have CMMD drivers and are available new.

Not sure what I will do with the 20's. Maybe music in our bedroom.

They will replace my 5.1 Paradigm/HSU sub system. That will go to a smaller gaming area that will be adjacent to the theater room.

Or I might sell all the Beta's, but I don't think I could find anything as good for what I would get.
Edited by Shock96 - 2/5/13 at 7:04pm

It's 2013 and I still have my Composition Overture 3's cranking and they sound as good as new. They are tight, crisp, clean, and distortion free. Have my orginal center and 12" sub Infinity also. They are the base for my 11.1 system going up. Still can't decide on PSB or Klipsch for the other 8 to 10 speakers but the RS62II surround sound sweet with these in a 5.1 Those might be a bit large for all the rest though. Not sure about your fronts but I have seen O3's for sale and you will be hard pressed to find anything better under $2500 and I have seen guys selling their O3's for $600. I wouldn't even consider selling mine. Speakers can last muc longer than the rest of the equipment which is why I put most of it into speakers. New isn't always better. ;-)

I have 2 Infinity 4000 speakers that I have owned since around 1970. They have 12" woofers and adjustable mid-range and tweeters. Anybody out there familiar with these dinosaurs? My son blew out a speaker woofer and replaced it with an inferior one that has now gone bad. Any suggestions for finding a decent replacement for it. I am not quite the audiophile that I see here and would appreciate any help. What is a reasonable price to pay for a replacement of similar quality, or is that possible these days?

Infinity is owned by Harman. Suggest that you call Harman and ask about a woofer replacement: 877-871-6755. Or you can go here: http://www.harmanaudio.com/search_browse/partlist.asp?Parts=4000&BrandId=INF&MarketId=HOM.