That shows you have years of experience and know quality when you see and hear it. White van specials used to be the easiest way to get you kids a cheap system so if they ruined it, you didn't care.
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State of the Art passive full-range speakers?
- Thread starter chouca
- Start date
Oh and...get off my lawn!
- Thread Starter
- #103
I'm going to audition the Perlisten S7t and the Blade Two Meta side by side this week, which should be fun.
If I go the Blade Meta route, any advice on choosing between the One and Two for my medium room size? I will be running 2 - 4 subs with Anthem's ARC room correction. It seems like some people feel that the Blade One might be harder to integrate bass-wise, but having the woofers arranged symmetrically around the coaxial mid/tweeter seems attractive to me. Maybe @Kal Rubinson has thoughts?
Also, while my default assumption would be to go with KEF Reference 4 Meta center channel and the Ci5160REFM-THX for the surrounds, should I consider an active center and surrounds, such as Genelec, instead? I used to think it was important to stay with the same speaker brand for voice matching, but with sufficiently neutral speakers it seems like that might become less important.
If I go the Blade Meta route, any advice on choosing between the One and Two for my medium room size? I will be running 2 - 4 subs with Anthem's ARC room correction. It seems like some people feel that the Blade One might be harder to integrate bass-wise, but having the woofers arranged symmetrically around the coaxial mid/tweeter seems attractive to me. Maybe @Kal Rubinson has thoughts?
Also, while my default assumption would be to go with KEF Reference 4 Meta center channel and the Ci5160REFM-THX for the surrounds, should I consider an active center and surrounds, such as Genelec, instead? I used to think it was important to stay with the same speaker brand for voice matching, but with sufficiently neutral speakers it seems like that might become less important.
- Thread Starter
- #104
Welp, our shootout today between the Perlisten S7t and the Blade Two Metas left me a little confused.
I was totally primed to prefer the B2Ms, both because of how much I loved the Blade One Metas at BB Magnolia last month and because I strongly prefer the look of the Blades. But in today's demo the Perlistens sounded smoother, and somehow more naturally coherent throughout the frequency range. The imaging ability of the two speakers was comparable, but neither speaker threw as holographic an image as the B1Ms did, which I assume must be related to the room and/or the setup.
One confounding factor was that the Perlistens were integrated much better with the subs. With the Blades, the subs seemed to be reinforcing some frequencies that the Blades were providing, leading to a boominess in the midbass, so I preferred the Blades with the subs turned off. With the subs off, the Blades were pretty lean in the bass relative to our demo of the B1Ms last month, which had very deep, palpable, and well-controlled bass. This was of course a different room, and somewhat larger than the room we demoed the B1Ms in.
I was really hoping that today the B2Ms would sound very similar to the B1Ms but with maybe less deep bass, but the sound was too different to draw any clear conclusions. So based on today's demo, I haven't really ruled anything out (or in, for that matter). Hoping to hear Magicos next.
I was totally primed to prefer the B2Ms, both because of how much I loved the Blade One Metas at BB Magnolia last month and because I strongly prefer the look of the Blades. But in today's demo the Perlistens sounded smoother, and somehow more naturally coherent throughout the frequency range. The imaging ability of the two speakers was comparable, but neither speaker threw as holographic an image as the B1Ms did, which I assume must be related to the room and/or the setup.
One confounding factor was that the Perlistens were integrated much better with the subs. With the Blades, the subs seemed to be reinforcing some frequencies that the Blades were providing, leading to a boominess in the midbass, so I preferred the Blades with the subs turned off. With the subs off, the Blades were pretty lean in the bass relative to our demo of the B1Ms last month, which had very deep, palpable, and well-controlled bass. This was of course a different room, and somewhat larger than the room we demoed the B1Ms in.
I was really hoping that today the B2Ms would sound very similar to the B1Ms but with maybe less deep bass, but the sound was too different to draw any clear conclusions. So based on today's demo, I haven't really ruled anything out (or in, for that matter). Hoping to hear Magicos next.
- Thread Starter
- #105
Aside from bass output, does anyone see anything in these spins that would make the Blade One Metas sound better in-room than the Blade Two Metas? On axis, the Ones look better to me, but in-room, the Twos look great.
One:
www.spinorama.org
Two:
www.spinorama.org
One:
Measurements for speaker KEF Blade 1 Meta
www.spinorama.org
Two:
Measurements for speaker KEF Blade 2 Meta
www.spinorama.org
nerdoldnerdith
Senior Member
Isn't "state of the art passive" an oxymoron?
nerdoldnerdith
Senior Member
If you are running subs then why do the speakers need to be full range?
- Thread Starter
- #108
Isn't "state of the art passive" an oxymoron?
No, but "passive state of the art" might be. Language, it's a hell of a thing.
I would be careful with mixing and matching passive and different active speakers. Active speakers use DSP which will always create some "delay". It is hard enough to get multi-channel speakers timed right without mixing passive and active.
- Thread Starter
- #110
I'm running subs for multichannel but might not want to run them for stereo. It depends on how well I can get them to integrate.
- Thread Starter
- #111
Ah, that makes sense (and certainly simplifies things), thank you.
Not really, what speaker is more SOTA JBL M2 or Salon 2? Active is easier and cheaper but for ultimate performance a good passive like a Salon 2 or similar can hold it's own against any active speaker.Isn't "state of the art passive" an oxymoron?
Not sure about that,
www.genelec.com
Keith
8381A SAM™ Adaptive Point Source Main Monitor - Genelec.com
Our 8381A empowers engineers and creators to perceive every sonic detail, offering true-to-life sound level and dynamics – with the full flexibility of free-standing monitor placement and advanced room adaption.
www.genelec.com
Keith
nerdoldnerdith
Senior Member
The Blade 2 Meta measures a little better than the Blade Meta, so that is the way I would go.
- Thread Starter
- #116
I'm teetering on the brink of pulling the trigger on used Blade Two Metas. At $15K it seems too easy not to give them a try.
D
Deleted member 4708
Guest
I prefer the narrower dispersion of the S7T for imaging and less room reverb. However, 15k$ is a very good deal on Meta 2 Blades. I say it's a win-win. Which ones do you like aesthetically? Nothing wrong in this case with some subjective choice. S7T is geeky looking - like a Lego block.
- Thread Starter
- #118
The S7Ts were a bit visually imposing in my room because of the baffle width and the large number of drivers, and the Blades have a sculptural quality that I enjoy, so I prefer the Blades aesthetically. I think they are both attractive-looking speakers, and I really like the Perlistens in natural ebony.
Anyway, I just bought the Blades! I was crazy lucky to stumble upon a mint used pair, available for local pickup, in my preferred color combo of Frosted Blue/Bronze. I'm still curious to hear Magicos at some point, but am more excited to get the Blades set up and dialed in for now.
Will post my listening impressions once I have some. Yay!
- Joined
- Jan 27, 2019
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Awesome. That’s exciting!
I’ve bought plenty of used speakers. It’s a fun way to try out speakers on my own room.
I pay careful attention to resale value of whatever I purchase so selling afterward has always been easy. I presume the Blades have good resale value if they don’t work out for you.
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