[strakele]

At the end of the summer I'm going to be putting together a budget stereo setup for a small apartment. We were originally thinking 5.1, but for now, my girlfriend and I have decided on getting good L/R speakers and maybe a center, with a decent sub that will be upgraded once we're in a better place with less worry about annoying the neighbors. For whatever we choose, it'd be nice if they made matching center and surround speaker to purchase later.


I've been doing a ton of research and have listened to what's available locally, but there's so many other options that I don't want to overlook. So please let me know which of these you'd choose, or suggest another in the same price range.


These will be going into a 12x15 foot room with carpet floors and will be powered by a Denon AVR-1712. Will be used 75% for music, 25% TV/movies. We like heavy metal, so would prefer something that isn't too bright or harsh, as this music tends to be so already. Good midbass punch is important. Everyone says Klipsch's with the horn tweeters are harsh, so they aren't on the list


- Pioneer FS-51 - available on newegg for like $130. Well reviewed, very cheap, easy to move, kinda iffy on the looks, very inefficient, can't really tell how they sound at BB.


- Pioneer FS-52 - will be available by the time we move in, and according to the sneak preview, they have improved on many areas of the old ones. Will probably be able to find the in the $200 range.


- Infinity Primus 363 - available for $199/pair. Highly reviewed, look good, sound good (the pair on display had a ringing tweeter so hard to say for sure). though I was expecting a bit more midbass, and were perhaps a tiny bit harsh


- Polk TSi series - was pretty impressed with the midbass and smoothness from the 300's, especially considering that the woofers on one side weren't even playing at 100%. I liked them better than the 400's.


- Polk Monitor series - pretty popular and liked. Issues with broken grills. From what I can tell, they're the bottom series of the Monitor/TSi/RTi tier.


- Polk RTi A5 / RTi8 - hard to tell the difference between some of the Polk lines, like these. The A7's look nice though, but are out of the budget.

(at this point if I were to get any Polk speakers, I'd probably get one of the refurb sets from Polk Direct on eBay, which brings even the TSi 500's within budget, so feel free to recommend other Polks)


- Arx A3 - Top of the budget, but these also seem well reviewed. Planar tweeter is interesting and XBL woofers suggests they should do pretty well on the low end for 5.5" s


- Athena AS-F2 - when I stumbled upon these I was all excited, but they're no longer made. I like the prospects of dual 8's, but to get them, it's a matter of convincing someone on Craigslist to ship.



So which of those would you choose? Or would you pick something else entirely? In the same budget of course... $500 or less range.


Also, could you suggest a sub to go with whichever towers you recommend? I was originally wanting to get an Epik or Hsu, but I think we'll hold off on that until we live somewhere that we'd actually be able to use a sub like that. I know the Energy s10.3 is popular around here. What about the Polk 12" ?


Thanks for the help. I've been into high end car audio for a while, but this is my first home system, and I want it to be good.

 

[cel4145]

As I understand it, the Polk Monitor and TSi series are very similar. Most people end up going with the Monitors because of the great deals that Newegg regularly runs on them.


The Energy S10.3 is popular because it has a fairly flat frequency response down to below 30hz, something uncommon to other subwoofers at that price point.


At the higher end of your budget, you are also getting into some very nice bookshelves with 6" drivers. Your room is not terribly large, and since you are in an apartment, I'm guessing you are not looking for reference volume. If you started with bookshelves in your budget, then later on you could move the bookshelves to surrounds, and add better front L/R speakers--ending up with a better system overall.


You might even consider something like the Ascend Acoustics CBM-170 SE which would allow you to upgrade the front later on to the CMT-340 SE .

 

[strakele]

My logic for wanting towers was that they basically take up the same amount of room as a bookshelf on a stand while generally being more efficient and able to play lower. And since for the foreseeable future, they system will be used mostly for music. That and the fact that we'd like to keep them for a while and add surrounds and a better sub later. Of course, your suggestion works as well... the PSB bookshelf 7.1 system in my parents house is certainly capable of going much louder than I'd probably need in an apartment when just playing left/right and sub, in a bigger room than my system will be in. But there's just something about the look of a pair of towers, you know?

I honestly should probably look into bookshelves more, and I guess I will, but for this thread let's stick with towers.

 

[commsysman]

I think the Jamo S426HCS3 is the best you are going to get for that low budget; better than the Polks in that price range IMO.


It has been selling for $350, but I just saw it for $199 on Amazon, which is a steal if it holds up.


It has two towers and a center speaker and two satellites.


A decent sub starts at $400 and goes up to well over $1000, so you might want to hold off on that.

 

[strakele]

Those do look like a pretty good deal, and I had been looking at them (or the Energy branded ones that look identical). But instead of getting a real budget 5.0/1 setup like that, we had decided to put more money into just the front left and right so we could get something better. In the $500 or less range per pair. Then worry about surround speakers later, since the majority of the time this system will be for music, and thus not using surrounds.


I do wish there was somewhere I could hear that Jamo/Energy set though.. especially if you say it's better than Polks in this price range.


And I figured we could get by with a lesser sub in a small apartment for a year or so until we live somewhere where we could really use a couple of nice Hsu/Epik/Rhythmik subs.

 

[Kach22]

You should take a look at the Sony SS line of speakers as well. The SS-F7000's have dual 8" woofers, which you seemed interested in. I own the SS-F6000's with dual 6.5" woofers and they put out a lot of bass, enough to get me to turn my crossover down to 50Hz. If you go with the 7000's I would highly recommend that you wait until after setting them up to decide if you really want to get a subwoofer for the apartment. Also the center channel for this series is really great, it has a suprising amount of punch.

 

[strakele]

Those do look interesting. I wish I could hear them though. The small version of those with just the single 8 (the 5000's) didn't seem too impressive at Frys when compared to the others.

 

[Kach22]

They do not have a flat frequency repsonse out of the box, that's for sure, but after a microhone auto calibration they sound fantastic, at least that was the case with the 6000's. I never actually listened to them with the EQ off until a few weeks ago when somone mentioned they sounded "muddy" in a store demo setup. I flipped my EQ to OFF and the clarity went out the window and the bass was exaggerated and a little mushy, it sounded like a completely different speaker.


I think it has to do with their crossover design; I saw a post on another forum (I googled "SS-F6000 crossover" and looked at about 20 links) and someone had taken them apart and said the two woofers had direct wires while the tweeter and mid driver had crossovers in-line on the wires, so the power would have less resistance going to the woofers. The guy that took them apart did not seem to know what he was doing though, so I don't know how reliable that info is. The two woofers definitely output different frequencies, so if there is not a third crossover maybe it is just due to the diffrence in cone material, or maybe there is a third crossover, Sony doesn't have any info on the crossovers, at least not posted on the web.


On the plus side, less crossovers means less wasted energy and therefore higher sensitivity, a decent 89dB. Maybe that's how Sony was able to achieve a high sensitivty with 4 drivers for so cheap, or maybe they didn't care, I don't know, but they ended up creating some very capable speakers for a good price.


If you were getting these for a stereo setup with just a DAC and cheap 2 channel amp, I would not recommend these, but with an AVR with Audyssey, these will be perfect.


I previously thought that those Pioneer speakers looked good until I learned more about center speakers and the driver layouts. Putting the tweeter centered vertically bewtween the mid drivers causes interference of the sound waves from left to right, so the sound changes pretty significantly when you move slightly left or right out of the sweet spot. By raising the tweeter a few inches you can reduce the interference and get a more uniform sound over a wider area, which is very important for a center channel when more than one person is listening (especially movie viewing because of dialouge). The fact that Pioneer claims to have had a speaker genius design their speakers and this was not taken into account seems a bit strange. Even my lowly Sony's raised the tweeter on the center channel, along with every high-end $1k+ center channel I have seen. This made me think Pioneer just got Andrew Jones to agree to slap his name on some speakers and he didn't actually have too much to do with their design; it also reassured me that Sony did put some thought into their speaker design and were not just pushing out cheap crap (although their thoughts may involve supplying the ignorant with "muddy" sound and rewarding those with modern receivers with amazing speakers on the cheap, I'm still ok with that).


I probably went to deep into all this, but I like my speakers and work is slow today.

 

[strakele]

Cool, thanks for the info regarding center channels.


One of the main reasons I went with the 1712 receiver was because of the more advanced MultEQ XT sound processing. I know people definitely like it for surround sound processing and more control over the subwoofer and whatnot, but do you use it for music as well? From what I've read, people generally recommend putting the receiver in direct mode when playing music, which I assumed disabled any processing. Is there an Audyssey 2.1 music mode?

 

[Kach22]

I have a Pioneer receiver with MCACC so I'm not sure what all the options for Audyssey are. I never use direct mode, I prefer to have the center channel involved, typically using Dolby Music with c.width set to 6 (it's 0 to 7, 7 is all L/R, 0 is all center). I just tested and I have direct mode and pure direct mode, direct mode will still utilize the EQ for speakers and standing wave adjustments, pure direct does away with those, both are just 2.0 (might be 2.1 if the fronts are set to SMALL, mine are set to LARGE though). Unless you are playing a well mastered vinyl, I don't see why anyone would choose direct mode. I do whatever sounds best, I don't concern myself with how "pure" the signal is.

 

[shadyJ]

I would go with either the Infinity Primus or Polk RTi speakers. Maybe also the Arx speaker, but ribbon tweeters are more susceptible to abuse than conventional domes, so if you really like to blaze your music, you may want to ask about that. You might also check out EMPtek E5ti towers. For bookshelf speakers I might suggest Hsu HB-1s, they are mellow for horn-loaded speakers but are capable of clean output at high volumes.

 

[TuenMuner]

You should consider Yamaha's NS-555 too(I have a pair), very underrated towers.


My co-worker currently have a pair of Polk Monitor 70s with Yamaha RX-V2065. Sounds pretty good to me as well.


Can't go wrong with these two brands, IMO.

 

[strakele]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Kach22  /t/1419388/which-of-these-budget-towers#post_22203897


I have a Pioneer receiver with MCACC so I'm not sure what all the options for Audyssey are. I never use direct mode, I prefer to have the center channel involved, typically using Dolby Music with c.width set to 6 (it's 0 to 7, 7 is all L/R, 0 is all center). I just tested and I have direct mode and pure direct mode, direct mode will still utilize the EQ for speakers and standing wave adjustments, pure direct does away with those, both are just 2.0 (might be 2.1 if the fronts are set to SMALL, mine are set to LARGE though). Unless you are playing a well mastered vinyl, I don't see why anyone would choose direct mode. I do whatever sounds best, I don't concern myself with how "pure" the signal is.

I'm not concerned with how pure the signal is, but how pure the reproduction is compared to how it's supposed to sound. In car audio, we use EQ out the wazoo to get as close to 'reference' quality reproduction as possible. Inside a room is a much better environment than a car, so even with a pretty low budget, we'd like the ability to use the new stereo as a reference for tuning our competition cars. Whichever audio mode does that best is what we'll use.

Quote:
Originally Posted by shadyJ  /t/1419388/which-of-these-budget-towers#post_22203942


I would go with either the Infinity Primus or Polk RTi speakers. Maybe also the Arx speaker, but ribbon tweeters are more susceptible to abuse than conventional domes, so if you really like to blaze your music, you may want to ask about that. You might also check out EMPtek E5ti towers. For bookshelf speakers I might suggest Hsu HB-1s, they are mellow for horn-loaded speakers but are capable of clean output at high volumes.

Thanks, didn't know that about ribbon/planar tweeters. I had actually expected more votes for the Arx speaker over some of the bigger name brands. For the next year or so we won't be rockin' out super hard, but I definitely want whatever speakers we get to be able to get loud and sound good doing it for when we're in a better environment.

Quote:
Originally Posted by TuenMuner  /t/1419388/which-of-these-budget-towers#post_22204049


You should consider Yamaha's NS-555 too(I have a pair), very underrated towers.

My co-worker currently have a pair of Polk Monitor 70s with Yamaha RX-V2065. Sounds pretty good to me as well.

Can't go wrong with these two brands, IMO.

Thanks, I'll check out the Yamaha's.

 

[strakele]

I went back to Frys today for some more listening. I had to fix their whole display to get all the speakers working right (no wonder I wasn't impressed with some of them last time..).


Anyway, I'm still impressed with how punchy the TSi 300's are. They don't seem to give anything up to the 400's or 500's... certainly nothing that warrants the huge price increase.


I can't bring myself to like the Infinities. I know anything I get will be paired with a sub, but they have no real midbass to speak of.


The Sony SSF5000's sounded a lot better once I fixed the wiring (swapped polarity on one of them..). I'd like to hear the 7000's. Also, for whatever reason it looks like the Sony center channel is no longer in production.


Interestingly, the Sony's, with their 8 inch woofer sound like they play the lowest and have the most impact when playing music. However, I played a few sine wave test tones through them all just to see, and they actually seem to have the least amount of low bass (

 

[cel4145]

Bi-wiring is useless, a gimmick. Don't let that be a factor.

 

[LanceX]

Pioneer FS-51 are amazing for 130 a pair. I have 4 of these and loving everything


The FS 52's are 200 EACH, not for a pair last I heard


I boight the Energy S10.3 for 190$ and havent looked back since. You cant beat it anywhere near that price

 

[strakele]



Quote:
Originally Posted by cel4145  /t/1419388/which-of-these-budget-towers#post_22208098


Bi-wiring is useless, a gimmick. Don't let that be a factor.

How so? Isn't having more control over levels useful? Or should I just rely on Audyssey for that? It's probably just because there's no sub to balance everything out, but I feel like most of the towers in this range are pretty bright, and wouldn't mind having the ability to tone down the highs just a tad. Again, I'm just used to the car audio world where nobody who's serious about it uses passive crossovers - every single speaker has its own amp channel and processing. And if not, bi amping the crossovers is preferred.

Quote:
Originally Posted by LanceX  /t/1419388/which-of-these-budget-towers#post_22208145


Pioneer FS-51 are amazing for 130 a pair. I have 4 of these and loving everything

The FS 52's are 200 EACH, not for a pair last I heard

I boight the Energy S10.3 for 190$ and havent looked back since. You cant beat it anywhere near that price

In the Pioneer thread, it says the FS52's will be 129 each. But I'm assuming that as with the previous series, you'll be able to find them on sale shortly after release.




Also, I listened briefly to the RTi A9's to see what $1500 gets you. Still not much bass to speak of, but the midrange was definitely better than in the room with the lower budget stuff. The refurb RTi A5's are in the budget, so I'll go back and see if I can get the equipment working to listen to them too.

 

[cel4145]



Quote:
Originally Posted by strakele  /t/1419388/which-of-these-budget-towers#post_22208164


How so? Isn't having more control over levels useful? Or should I just rely on Audyssey for that? It's probably just because there's no sub to balance everything out, but I feel like most of the towers in this range are pretty bright, and wouldn't mind having the ability to tone down the highs just a tad. Again, I'm just used to the car audio world where nobody who's serious about it uses passive crossovers - every single speaker has its own amp channel and processing. And if not, bi amping the crossovers is preferred.

You said biwiring, so I was thinking you just meant running separate wires to the same speaker outputs. LOL


Sure. Biamping separates with active crossovers is awesome. Even though you can't do that with the Polks, how would you biamp these speakers?The bi-amp Zone 2 features available on some AVRs doesn't offer any benefits-. So you'd have to get into buying separate amps just to biamp? You'd be better off getting better speakers.

 

[strakele]

My AVR-1712 is capable of bi-amping, so I figured that'd be a benefit. I wish I could do a full active setup, but I'm assuming bi-amping a set of Polks is still using the passive crossovers. Basically it'd just get me separate level settings for the woofers and tweeters for added tweakability without just relying on the auto-tune, correct?

 

[cel4145]

I bi-amped my older Denon AVR 888 using that Zone 2 biamp feature because my brother gave me some solid core biwires that he wasn't using. No difference, as others here will also tell you. It's snake oil. And I don't think you get any separate level adjustments (there doesn't seem to be an option for that on my receiver; check your manual). But Audyssey MultiEQ will attempt to flatten the frequency response. You could always use the tone control to tweak a little from what Audyssey sets. And of course placement variations and using room treatments will make a difference in tweeter output at the listening position.