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Need help from hifi anonymous to not buy Focal Aria 948

luft262

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I think since you have a subwoofer the 926's and 948's will sound very similar. I am currently running 926's with a pair of subwoofers. I don't think surrounds are so important that you would need to use 926's for surrounds. I have surrounds built into my ceiling and they are generic 6" speakers and they do just fine for providing sound effects behind me.

If I were you I would keep the 926's and save up money for better speakers down the road or use the money for something else. Generally speaking you want to pick speakers based on how far you sit from them and subs based on room size, so depending on how far away you like to sit from your speakers the 948's might have a small benefit, but since you have subs the bass extension advantage will probably be inaudible.

Upgrading from 926's to 948's now that you already have subs would have a very poor price to performance ratio for that purchase. Better off saving money for a better line of speakers or something else entirely IMHO.
 

Rja4000

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Because of black Friday deal, I can get a pair of aria 948 for $1800 in France.

No reason not to buy them, I presume?
None that I could think about.
I paid 1700€ in Belgium for my pair a few years ago during a discount period.
I've read this week from the dealer they expect 15% price increase next week.
 

Helicopter

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Because of black Friday deal, I can get a pair of aria 948 for $1800 in France.

No reason not to buy them, I presume?
I would be all over that. Great price.

I find the undistorted bass of the 948 to be exceptional. For a big room, they are a great way to go.
 

Zvu

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Unmount the transducers and take the cabinets to some good carpenter. You and your wife choose the veneer that looks good to you. Voilà.
 
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Helicopter

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Unmount the transducers and take the cabinets to some good carpenter. You and your wife choose the veneer that looks good to you. Voilà.
The baffles look nice. I think you might get away with masking the fronts to veneer the sides. I have thought of doing the same. I don't hate the vinyl, but some real walnut would step them up like 200%.
 

Narek

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Your first problem was purchasing the focal subwoofer, it's complete garbage. The 926 is flawless, warmer than you would ever need a speaker to sound, super musical. Each model up gets progressively warmer, I have the 948s and for about 2 years I was searching for this "warm" sound everybody is talking about, spending thousand on supposed "warm sounding" gear, only to have more of the same. Lol. Class D nc502mp is the way to go for Focal Arias. For the sub, sell that thing if you can and get dual Rythmik L12s to really put a smile on your face, or the Rel HT1205s.
 

Musicprof

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I have the same affliction. I was in the market for B and Ws, and wound up with Focal 926s and the CC900 center channel. I was a music professor for 37 years and know what good classical sound is (also listen to home theater). I am so enamored with the 926s that I can't get the idea of the 948s out of my head. Surely they must be better. But even a tech at Crutchfield corroborated what some in this thread have said: you will get a bit more bass but the improvement with overall sound (and soundstage) does not warrant the extra cost. Also true is that my medium size listening room probably wouldn't support such a speaker. I may consider the 936s, but I'll have to abandon this obsession.
 

Helicopter

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I have the same affliction. I was in the market for B and Ws, and wound up with Focal 926s and the CC900 center channel. I was a music professor for 37 years and know what good classical sound is (also listen to home theater). I am so enamored with the 926s that I can't get the idea of the 948s out of my head. Surely they must be better. But even a tech at Crutchfield corroborated what some in this thread have said: you will get a bit more bass but the improvement with overall sound (and soundstage) does not warrant the extra cost. Also true is that my medium size listening room probably wouldn't support such a speaker. I may consider the 936s, but I'll have to abandon this obsession.
Why not just add a subwoofer or two to the existing setup to boost the low end?

Even in my 500m^2 room, if I had 926 already, I would probably just get some subs and a good electric crossover of some sort.
 

mbl1116

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Old thread, but as someone who just went from Aria 926 to 948 i can say that the upgrade is definitely more than just deeper bass. At the current prices this is a fantastic speaker
 

MrTurner7

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Old thread, but as someone who just went from Aria 926 to 948 i can say that the upgrade is definitely more than just deeper bass. At the current prices this is a fantastic speaker
Interesting. I can currently get the gloss black (€200 more to other finishes) for €1980 + €290 postage (delivered from France to Ireland). I believe this price will get even lower if I wait but my worry Is that they might go out of stock everyhwere.

I've been considering them for a couple of months now but haven't managed to demo them as no stores have stock near me. I did audition the aria 926 and liked them but they obviously lacked in the lower end.

Now my budget is around €2000 and my room measures 24m². My taste in music varies with a slight lean towards different genres of rock. This will be my first proper setup as I bought a pair of q accoustic concept 40s but I sold them on before unboxing them.

With all of the above in mind, which other speakers should I be considering for the price range? I've created a shortlist of floorstanders below. I would really appreciate your input. Thank you so much






 

MarcT

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Interesting. I can currently get the gloss black (€200 more to other finishes) for €1980 + €290 postage (delivered from France to Ireland). I believe this price will get even lower if I wait but my worry Is that they might go out of stock everyhwere.

I've been considering them for a couple of months now but haven't managed to demo them as no stores have stock near me. I did audition the aria 926 and liked them but they obviously lacked in the lower end.

Now my budget is around €2000 and my room measures 24m². My taste in music varies with a slight lean towards different genres of rock. This will be my first proper setup as I bought a pair of q accoustic concept 40s but I sold them on before unboxing them.

With all of the above in mind, which other speakers should I be considering for the price range? I've created a shortlist of floorstanders below. I would really appreciate your input. Thank you so much






That's an excellent list you've compiled there, and in my recent speaker search I considered several of those. Last November, I got a really good deal from a dealer on a set of Sonus Faber Lumina V, so I jumped on it. Since you mentioned bass, one thing SF seems to do well is bass. I feel like Focal assumes Aria speakers will be used in a home theater setting and it seems like the bass rolls off too much and too fast for my liking. Not so, with the Lumina V. I don't see how they get the bass out of them that they do. That said, I have to say, I was unimpressed, overall, after I got them. It just seemed like they were lacking a bit in bass and mid-bass "slam" and attack, as well as imaging and sound stage. They sounded decent, but it just seemed like something was missing.

So, I started looking around at other options. Recently, I have auditioned the new Martin Logan Motion F100 and F200 towers at four different audio stores. Now, those will crank out some serious power on acoustic instruments. I compared them side by side with the KEF R11's. The KEF are very accurate, but just didn't reproduce instruments like the Martin Logans. I've been seriously considering picking up a set of them.

But then something happened which now has me holding on to my Lumina V's. I ran across a YouTube video of a guy recommending getting rid of the stock terminal jumpers and replacing them with copper wire jumpers. I thought to myself, yeah, yeah, what a click bait video. But I did have a set of such copper wire jumpers on an old set of speakers I have around the house. I removed the stock jumpers from the Lumina's and found that they are extremely light and chintzy. So, I inserted the copper wire jumpers on the Lumina V's.

My goodness, I am shocked at the difference! I now have gobs of bass, well articulated, and slam galore. The palpability of kick drum attack is fantastic. Not only the bass is better, but the mids and highs are, as well. So, I'm sticking with the Lumina V's for at least a while, although I'd still like to try out the Martin Logan F200's.
 

onion

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Haven't heard either but I'd suggest the key differentiating factor may be frequencies between 120 - 500Hz which isn't really dealt with by subs.
 

Timsonchin

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Old thread, but as someone who just went from Aria 926 to 948 i can say that the upgrade is definitely more than just deeper bass. At the current prices this is a fantastic speaker
So what were the differences you noticed? Were you able to AB them or are you going off memory?

I suppose differences in midrange and treble could be explained due to slightly different crossovers (926 @290/2400Hz, 948 @280/2600Hz)

And importantly: did you have 926 with SUB or without? Nevertheless, frequency response is not as important to me as distortion as I would just EQ them with miniDSP anyway.

Edit: reason for asking is that there is a good deal going in Belgium for the 5.0 set (with CC900 and 906) for 926/936/948 ranging from 2400 - 2800 EUR.
 
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Timsonchin

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The seller is asking ~$2700, I am not too excited because I know I can haggle the price at the dealer for new pair (matching color to mine) down to $3200.

Not bad considering my local market is among the most expensive in the world. For example our Costco offers the lowest gas price in the country at $6 per gallon. Very unusual something is cheaper here than in the U.S.

However I think this seller is going to discover selling high end speakers is very difficult in our tiny marketplace, and his price will probably come down considerably in coming weeks. Few people know the Focal brand and those better off finacially are likely buying the latest Sonos or Apple gadget.
Hey OP, did you end up buying 948 or not? About to pull the trigger on 5.1 set (2x948/936/926 + CC900 + 2x906) + SUB1000F... Hard to choose between the different sizes of mains. To make it harder, my spouse is weighing in on the looks. 926 is most elegant, 948 quite bombastic looking.
 

bodhi

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You already decided, you know thath:)
This.

If you go with the smaller mains you'll never be rid of the nagging feeling of "maybe I should have got the bigger ones".

Also, without controlled blind test with both speakers in same position, volume matched, I don't think there are that many people that wouldn't think the bigger ones sound better. Do they really, probably not. It doesn't matter though, as imagined improvement is improvement nonetheless.
 

anarchist

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Your first problem was purchasing the focal subwoofer, it's complete garbage. The 926 is flawless, warmer than you would ever need a speaker to sound, super musical. Each model up gets progressively warmer, I have the 948s and for about 2 years I was searching for this "warm" sound everybody is talking about, spending thousand on supposed "warm sounding" gear, only to have more of the same.
My Aria 936 is anything but "warm" sounding, even with DAC filter set to slow roll off, which supposedly limits highs to some degree many rock/pop sources sound edgy to put it softly. May be I got used to my Jamo speakers which use soft dome tweeter, but many songs which I thought sound just clear on Jamos, now have piercing highs and even mids on Arias. I also notice that edginess becomes more of a problem on higher volume levels.
My plan is to try a different amplifier, if this is not working then I will be sending them back and looking for speakers with non-metal tweters.
 

MarcT

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My Aria 936 is anything but "warm" sounding, even with DAC filter set to slow roll off, which supposedly limits highs to some degree many rock/pop sources sound edgy to put it softly. May be I got used to my Jamo speakers which use soft dome tweeter, but many songs which I thought sound just clear on Jamos, now have piercing highs and even mids on Arias.
My plan is to try a different amplifier, if this is not working then I will be sending them back and looking for speakers with non-metal tweters.
Maybe try out a speaker or two with AMT tweeter. See if you like it.
 
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