PSB Speakers Owners thread - Page 54

My Synchrony Twos have a small fabric pull tab in one lower corner for pulling the grill off

Not a good deal at all. It is a great combo, but you should be able to get better pricing. Don't know if you are looking for local, but there are a couple of good dealers that you will see mentioned constantly here that have good pricing on PSB, one of them being Saturday Audio in Chicago.

+1 for saturday audio exchange. Andy is the man. Im going to pick up a pio receiver 1018 today and test it out with my psb setup and see if the distortion goes away. If not then im getting an emotiva xpa-5. if that doesnt work i jump off the roof!

Saturday Audio is great. Got my T45s, C40 and B15s from them. I ordered the speakers on Dec 20th, they arrived Dec 24th. The price was way better than what the local PSB dealers were offering, so it was a no-brainer for me. The money that I saved went towards my new Denon receiver.

So, Saturday Audio will ship? I can't find any PSB dealer close to me...I tried calling DMC Electronics, and I would not recommend them at all...They basically hungup on me, and were very rude

I just bought Ascend 340SE's last week, then I found out about the PSB T65's...Not sure what to do now, the T65's look awesome...Any thoughts?

The c60 is the closer match to the t55s. Id go c60 is only for the greater power handling. However, the very best match would be a t55 center.

Don't underestimate the importance of a good sub. Its not always about output. Once you give up extension, there is NO getting it back.

The Denon 2309 is a fine unit, but I've found the Images really don't mind having a beefy amp behind them. Denon is a fine name brand, and that model has a healthy set of features. HOWEVER, if you don't need any certain features, you can most likely do a cheaper receiver with preouts + outboard amp, for a very comparable price. Just FWIW. my 2 cents.


Wow. I think David is a great guy. I've bought from BOTH dmc and saturday, and I can recommend both, but its with dmc that I found better service and prices.


These are two totally different animals, man. The T65s are quite large, particularly in their depth, I find. The 340s are, well, bookshelves. Oversized perhaps, but bookshelves nonetheless.

x2. My experience with DMC has also been very good. Maybe you can give them another try... ask for David.

What's your take between the T45's and the 340's? I'm looking for HT mains with a center. I was thinking 3 340's up front or a pair of T45's with a C60.

We have had stratus silver front speakers with a stratus c6 center for many years, with in-ceiling/wall speakers. We have moved several times and of course the flush speakers went with the house. We are not dissatisfied with the sound of our speakers but they are large for our current house. We are going to wall mount/recess a 42 inch flat panel LCD above the fireplace and likely use the towers on either side for now (far enough from the heat). Any advice on a smaller center channel and rear speakers that would be compatible with the silvers? Also can the center be recessed in the wall under the TV without compromising the sound? We have a Yamaha RX-V995 receiver which is also very old (maybe 1996?). Will need to upgrade it as well. We have always shopped high-end stores but can't invest gobs of money at this point. Any suggestions? I am not as knowledgable as many of you appear to be so keep it simple please. Thanks!

Hm. I can't really say. However, why not the T55s? They are only barely more than the 340s. Well...

Having the towers can be nice for loud HT, or a larger room. OTOH, the Ascends should be easier to drive.

If its a small room setup, without greater power handling needed, I might go with the Ascends. If you have a large room like I do, and have a good amp to drive them with, the PSBs might be nice. So, for me, I would definitely take the T55s for my own HT. In fact, that's what I did!

I do have a large room with an Onkyo 705, so it's not super powerful.

Well, at least you were smart enough to choose a receiver with pre-outs. This allows you to choose a bit more freely, because if you ever need more power, you just add an outboard amp. It doesn't have to be a 5ch amp, even an affordable 2ch amp could help if you actually needed it. For most of the energy is always in the front stage, and your receiver's power supply is less taxed when powering center+surrounds for instance. The surrounds rarely have loud volumes coming from them, and when they do, its usually brief.

So try some speakers in your setup, and go from there. If you can afford just enough for speakers, and not amplification, you will either have to be careful not to clip the amp (keep volumes lower, easy to do, just turn it down if it ever does not sound good)... but this is only going to happen if you crank it, perhaps seated far from the speakers as well. If you do happen to add an amp, pick one with a higher input impedance perhaps, and just make sure to level match.

I just picked up the new Marantz SR5003 to replace the Onkyo TXSR805. All I can say is wow. The difference is very apparent. MY T45's sing like never before and my SVS sounds like a new more powerfull sub. To think that this is one of the lower models from Marantz and I had a high end Onkyo. The Marantz is also half the size and weight yet plays louder with the smaller specs. I'm so happy I made the switch. The sound is warmer and fuller with a great bottom end. Marantz makes great receivers.

I have been thinking of upgrading my 5T fronts with Stratus Golds or Silvers.

How do the Stratus match up timber wise with the Image line? Would it be that noticeable that I would need to upgrade all of speakers to Stratus? or would it sound great?

I currently have:
5T fronts
9C center
S50 surrounds
2B rear surrounds
with 2 SubSonic 5's

I am pretty sure they are all original Image series except for the S50 because they have the roundish PSB logos unlike the rest of them.

I've posted on this previously in this thread.....

I have a pair of Stratus Golds matched up with a 6C and a pair of S50's. They do very well together. However, this is not a dedicated room and the volume rarely get's cranked.

FWIW, I contacted PSB support about what was best to match up with the Stratus line and they recommended the Synchrony line. Couldn't afford that at the moment, but the Image line is doing well. I suspect if I do make a change in the future it will be to the new Imagine line.

No doubt scientest aboot the S50's, they are sweet. I am entirely convinced my S50's are the nicest speakers I have so far. They totally blow away the Ambient II's I was using.

I realize there are no Stratus equivs for *-pole Surrounds. However up until a few weeks ago I was using mismatched PSB series sets. (5T, 4T, 500, 300, Ambients I & II, C100, C200, S50). I didnt really notice any timber matching problems so I kinda have the impression that almost any PSB will be a fairly close match to any PSB.

I like my S50's so much I would buy another set. Until then I am thinking of hooking the Ambient II's back up as front presence speakers but unfortunately my equipment placement is less than optimal and my mean landlord wont exactly let me move the large Radiator thats in the middle of my living room wall.

I have seen several C5's for sale and was actually considering buying one when I picked up my 9C. Now I am not sure if the smaller Stratus C5 would be an upgrade. If I do get Stratus fronts and want to upgrade the Center should I only consider the C6? Would the C5 be a step backwards?

Need some help with setting the crossover on my SubSeries 1. My Setup is:

Denon 1909
4 * T45
1 * C40
1 * SubSeries 1

Thanks for the help.

I'm a also a big fan of the S50's. For the right room I think they really are an excellent speaker for the price.

Don't know about the 9C/C5/C6 question. You can always ask PSB support. Their's a link on their web site, usually takes a week or so for them to get back to you. In the past advice has come straight from Paul or his right hand man (who's name I' sorry to say I forget at the moment), not marketing...

Does the 1909 do Audyssey? If so, set the sub as high as it will go and let Audyssey do the rest. If not, set the sub as high as it will go and then play with the cross over points from the 1909. Start at 80Hz and then try 100 and 60 and see what you think. That should give you a clue as what direction to move in if 80 doesn't turn out to be the best...

When Setting up a Subseries 1 for Audyssey what should it be set at? Crossover/volume wise.

I'm also curious if anyone has noticed any audible popping from their b15s when playing anything with noticeable bass.

Set the crossover to the max so that Audyssey has as much room as possible to work with. I usually set the volume at about 60% so I can tweak it up or down according to the source and my preferences.

SB -- check your PM.
thanks,
alan

R1 -
check your PM.
thanks, alan

Anyone noticed some fairly distict distortion when playing some bass filled music? Its very noticable coming from the rear (B15s) and less so but still evident in the front (T55s). No distortion from the centre (C40).

I know thats a vague question but i'm still curious if anyone has noticed it as clearly as I had.

So I've decided to go the way of PSBs.... I've auditioned them as well as the Paradigms and I just prefer the PSB line.

I also think I found a good deal but have a few questions for you guys.

Towers - T45
Centre - C40
Rears - B1

I have my own sub that will do for the time being,

I was quoted $1,175 (Canadian Currency) taxes in. But if you guys were to make a single upgrade, would you spend the money on upgrading to T55's or upgrade to the B15 rears?

Should mention that my room is probably an average size but that may change in the futures as I'll be house hunting in the summer

I have an onkyo 606 and can get a killer deal (I think at least) for a pair of PSB 5t's for 200 dollars on craigslist. Should I pull the trigger? I was planning on going with either the Polk t90e's or Infinity 252's which are 129 each new. What should I do? I am planning to just start with a 2.0 system and then making it either a 2.1 system or adding a center channel next. The wife isn't excited about satellite xpeakers at this point...I AM a novice and HIGHLY motivated by price and quality...need help quick though because I'm going to look at them later today

As a dealer, was a bit slow to the party in bringing in the Imagines because I wasn't really thrilled with the G-Design speakers, but now I'm sorry I waited so long. I am really impressed with these. I really love Synchrony for high-octane home theater as they are powerful, extremely low distortion, smooth and well matched with a helluva center. But sometimes I wish for just a tad more upper midrange presence, soundstaging and sweetspot for stereo music listening from them. The ImagineT delivers that in spades. My personal reference is still NHT's discontinued Xd for about a dozen reasons and this speaker is the closest I've gotten to that experience lately of a speaker that is extremely neutral, resolving, has a big soundstage, great focus, precise bass, 'disappears', has a big sweetspot that retains something of a stereo soundstage way off axis and doesn't suffer from the acoustic muddiness of multiple drivers overlapping. Well, bingo, this sounds like NHT came out with a less expensive DSP speaker but it's passive, affordable, attractive and comes from PSB. Go figure. I opened them up on Wednesday and I sold a complete HT system and my demos (he didn't want to wait) in about 15 minutes each. It's nice to have some excitement from customers lately with our buffoons in Congress tossing us into a world wide recession. I don't have the space to demo every speaker we can offer so only the best of each brand stay on demo, but these are definitely one of them. This is what a 4th order crossover, properly implemented gets you, even in a relatively affordable speaker.