What speaker/ monitor gave you the most "I never heard that before" moments?

[BillG]

I've heard a number of very good stationary systems in my life, but I only ever get those "never heard that before" moments with IEMs. I suspect that's due to their superior sound isolation.

 

[Doodski]

My fav speakers for this are the JBL 250Ti. Stereophile gave them a crappy review but I love them anyway. They are dated now but when new they where a ass kicking, bass thumpin in your chest with imaging great set of big speakers.

 

[Willem]

I suspect that's due to their superior sound isolation.

Which is another way of saying that the reduction of background noise should be a priority for good sound, and may well deserve more attention than a few dB better SINAD.

 

[SuperDave]

Although I've lurked this place (via links from searches) for quite a while to read the reviews, this thread prompted me to actually register and post.

Forty years ago, I was a soldier stationed in Alaska, living in the barracks. Now, soldiers didn't have much money back then (E-1 was $397/mo), but darn near all of it was disposable and credit was easy for us. A large plurality of us leveraged that to acquire stereo systems, and I was no different. I had an indeterminate Sansui receiver hooked to a pair of Bose 501's (plus other stuff) and was pretty happy with it. Just like now, Bose speakers back then liked to have the boots put to them, and just like any other young soldier I liked my music loud, so it worked out pretty well. I had good loud sound and was happy with that. Visitors to my room seemed to agree.

So, one day, one of my barracks friends brought me back to his room for what we most commonly did for recreation in that post-Vietnam era Army - smoke weed - and to listen to his roommate's speakers. Didn't know the roommate then, although we ended up good friends.

They were weird speakers. Tall, thin, sharply diamond-shaped, with rounded wood top and bottom plates and apparently only speaker foam covering the rest of them. Weird-looking, seemingly flimsy, outside my experience. I asked the guy what they were. He told me they were called "Time Windows."

And then he played them, and I immediately realized that not only did I know nothing about good sound, I'd never even heard it before then. They were an epiphany. The term "disruptive" wasn't used for technology back then, but had it been in vogue I'd have employed it. My experience with music was one thing before hearing those Time Windows, and something completely different forever after. It wasn't an "I never heard that before" moment, it was more like an "I never heard anything before" moment. Yes, I concede that THC might have played a role, but....damn. The lesson stuck and I've been spoiled ever since.


The only remotely comparable moment in my life was when I replaced my PC speakers with JBL LSR-305's a couple years ago, and that was limited to something like "I didn't know speakers I could use with my computer could be this good."

Anyway, that's my story.

 

[John Galt]

What I have now.

 

[MattHooper]

I'd first echoe what anmpr1 was getting at: In terms of "hearing details" I find I essentially hear much of the same details through any decent speaker. That doesn't mean a speaker can't be higher resolution/lower distortion than another, to an audible degree. But to me that tends to be more about subtlety, or the presentation of the sound, and not necessarily "Hey, X is in the track that I never heard before!"

But if I had to gather some "aha" moments the ones that stick out the most:

1. First listening to the Kef 105.4 speakers my Dad brought home in 1981, with Carver cube amp and "Sonic Holography" C-4000 pre-amp.
I'll never forget listening to Phil Collins album, especially the track The Roof Is Leaking, and the uncanny sensation of peering right in to the room it was recorded in, with Phil being right "there," and the string instrument just "over there." Basically, my first encounter with incredible stereo imaging and depth, and what it brought to the listening experience.

2. In the 90s, a pal who got bitten by the audio bug telling me I had to come over and listen to these crazy speakers he bought: Quad ESL 63s, powered by a Dynaco ST-70 amp. Another shock and revelation. I'd never heard "speakers" that didn't at all sound like "speakers" before. Like the monoliths where "there" but "not really there," as if the music were just happening transparently in the air with no box sound. It seemed to bring a sense of the accute differences in every single track, shape shifting, and a sense of hearing right through the monoliths in to the recording studio.

3. MBL 103 speakers. Several times. First was at the house of a reviewer for The Absolute Sound. He had those relatively big speakers in a hilariously small room - we are talking "are you sure this isn't a closet?" small. But he'd treated it really carefully and you sat nearfield. He turned the lights way down and played some demos which included various realistic sounds, someone whistling, clapping, and then more complex pieces. At the time it was the most realistic sound production I'd ever heard. I didn't even know it was possible. And my following encounters with the next versions of those models blew my mind, as I'd never heard things sound so dimensionally and tonally "real." Made most other speakers sound like boxes and cones, like they were "trying" to do what the MBLs just did effortlessly.

4. Shout out to the demo of the big Waveform Mach 17 speakers demoed in the manufacturer's home. Made to work tri-amplified. They had a similar "holy cow, these are doing what all the other speakers are trying and failing to do: electrostatic-like boxless presentation, crazy 3D imaging, while hugely dynamic and tonally convincing.

 

[kevin52]

Braun LV 1020's and Sound Lab A1's

 

[Wombat]

1970s.

JBL paragons and Klipschorns.

Not perfect but nearly everything else I had heard sounded anaemic after that.

KEF concertos were the HiFi darlings at the time. To me they sounded dull and I thought I had a hearing problem. But, no, they were dull.

 

[Vertical]

Dahlquist DQ-10s

 

[jeffbook]

1. I heard the Dah1quist DQ-10s in 1976 and was amazed at the sound.

2. Owned them until 2002 when I visited Siegfried Linkwitz. His Orions had the same effect on me, as have the LX521 and the LXmini systems.

3. MathAudio Room EQ to fine tune the room acoustics.

 

[Willem]

I notice many people mention dipoles (I was one of them).

 

[phoenixdogfan]

Quad ESL-57

DECADES AGO...

I remember listening to them in a store in Cincinnati playing an audiophile recording of Misty and it was exactly like the pianist was in the room. But I heard them try to reproduce larger ensembles and they just could not keep up dynamically.

Within their very limited dynamic envelope, the only thing I've ever heard that could match them was my SDR modded and Eq'd HD 800's.

 

[phoenixdogfan]

Zu, I have sounds from Zu loudspeakers that I have never heard from another loudspeaker, although a Kazoo comes pretty close.
Keith

It's that port modeled on a motorcycle tailpipe!

 

[steve59]

It's that port modeled on a motorcycle tailpipe!

Was it the SDR or HD you were wondering about?

 

[muslhead]

My first pair of big boy speakers
VMPS SuperTower IIR

 

[AdamG]

My first OMG audio moment was a Bose 901 setup. Don’t shoot me, I was young dumb and never heard anything like it in regards to clarity and brightness...This was my Audiophile transformation moment. I was hooked on building my own audio system. Years went by as life events tend to take over. I had mostly entry level stuff, Klipsch, SVS, Polk, Mostly what ever Circuit City had on the show room. Then I retired and had lots of time on my hands. I went out and demoed as many different types of speakers I could find in showrooms.

Then I heard the Martin Logan Electrostatic speakers. They were and remain my Holy Grail of sound. I know electrostatic speakers are somewhat controversial but I like them and they make me smile when I listen to them sing. All of this was obviously constrained by my humble and limited budget. Matched with a couple of JTR subs they are amazing to me.

 

[SuperDave]

My first OMG audio moment was a Bose 901 setup. Don’t shoot me, I was young dumb and never heard anything like it in regards to clarity and brightness...This was my Audiophile transformation moment. I was hooked on building my own audio system. Years went by as life events tend to take over. I had mostly entry level stuff, Klipsch, SVS, Polk, Mostly what ever Circuit City had on the show room. Then I retired and had lots of time on my hands. I went out and demoed as many different types of speakers I could find in showrooms.

Then I heard the Martin Logan Electrostatic speakers. They were and remain my Holy Grail of sound. I know electrostatic speakers are somewhat controversial but I like them and they make me smile when I listen to them sing. All of this was obviously constrained by my humble and limited budget. Matched with a couple of JTR subs they are amazing to me.

I bought a pair of 901's in the late 1980's, and used them more often in larger enclosed areas (playing DJ gigs) than in smaller rooms. They weren't terrible in a smaller room; they were unequaled in a large space. It would have taken a truck to haul enough speaker to fill a big room as well as they could, and I could carry the pair alone into the gig. Their power handling seemed unlimited. I used a pair of Adcom GFA-555's - bridged to mono - with which I had melted the preceding Cerwin-Vega D-15's. The 901's laughed it off. I felt like I could wire the raw ends of an extension cord to them and plug them directly into the wall. Back them up a few feet away from a solid wall and somewhat into the corners, and it simply didn't matter how large the room was. Listening standards in such a place are different than in an audiophile's den; you want, say, 80% of perfection at any point in the room and nothing ever did that for me better than the Bose. There's a reason they slapped a black cover onto them and sold them otherwise-unchanged as PA systems.

The smaller the room, the less you liked them without very_careful placement taking into account the room's reflection characteristics and in many rooms they couldn't play well at all. But when placed correctly in a compatible room, they were as good at playing soft music to sleep by as they were filling a fire hall at levels which made people uncomfortable. I had such a room at one point, and in my (limited) personal experience they were only equalled by Paradigm Atoms (in the same room) at helping you sleep. It was kinda like discovering King Kong had the dexterity to stack rows of nickels on their ends.

In one (or maybe two) relatively narrow niches, I genuinely think the 901's to this day the equal of anything else in that niche. Few "audiophile" reviewers have had the luck of testing in such a room, but some did, and that's why 901 evaluations over the years have been so varying and polarizing. I suspect if DJ speakers had as dedicated a review following as audiophile speakers do, there would only be one GOAT for them.

To this day, as incompatible as they are with my current lifestyle and listening conditions, I regret getting rid of them, which I did not do until 2015. I've never owned and used another set of speakers for that long.

 

[steve59]

My 901VI once I got them placed , I actually read the manual. I screwed the stands into the speakers flipped them over and hung them from the ceiling, bass and midrange were great, they could play really loud with average power and while I could tell I wasn’t getting much of the top octave I didn’t care. They were fun speakers and if a neighbor hadn’t got me started with audiophilia those 901’s would have been enough.

 

[ahofer]

My fav speakers for this are the JBL 250Ti. Stereophile gave them a crappy review but I love them anyway. They are dated now but when new they where a ass kicking, bass thumpin in your chest with imaging great set of big speakers.

View from the deck there is stunning. I like speakers, but I wouldn’t block it.

 

[ahofer]

I bought a pair of 901's in the late 1980's, and used them more often in larger enclosed areas (playing DJ gigs) than in smaller rooms. They weren't terrible in a smaller room; they were unequaled in a large space. It would have taken a truck to haul enough speaker to fill a big room as well as they could, and I could carry the pair alone into the gig. Their power handling seemed unlimited. I used a pair of Adcom GFA-555's - bridged to mono - with which I had melted the preceding Cerwin-Vega D-15's. The 901's laughed it off. I felt like I could wire the raw ends of an extension cord to them and plug them directly into the wall. Back them up a few feet away from a solid wall and somewhat into the corners, and it simply didn't matter how large the room was. Listening standards in such a place are different than in an audiophile's den; you want, say, 80% of perfection at any point in the room and nothing ever did that for me better than the Bose. There's a reason they slapped a black cover onto them and sold them otherwise-unchanged as PA systems.

The smaller the room, the less you liked them without very_careful placement taking into account the room's reflection characteristics and in many rooms they couldn't play well at all. But when placed correctly in a compatible room, they were as good at playing soft music to sleep by as they were filling a fire hall at levels which made people uncomfortable. I had such a room at one point, and in my (limited) personal experience they were only equalled by Paradigm Atoms (in the same room) at helping you sleep. It was kinda like discovering King Kong had the dexterity to stack rows of nickels on their ends.

In one (or maybe two) relatively narrow niches, I genuinely think the 901's to this day the equal of anything else in that niche. Few "audiophile" reviewers have had the luck of testing in such a room, but some did, and that's why 901 evaluations over the years have been so varying and polarizing. I suspect if DJ speakers had as dedicated a review following as audiophile speakers do, there would only be one GOAT for them.

To this day, as incompatible as they are with my current lifestyle and listening conditions, I regret getting rid of them, which I did not do until 2015. I've never owned and used another set of speakers for that long.

I went to boarding school around 1980. A friend had a pair of 901s. We used them in the common room of our modern dorm for a dance. This was a roughly 40X60’ space with huge, thick windows on one wall, floor to 18’ ceiling with a railing about waist height. We put the 901s opposite the window side and started blasting “Don’t Stop” by Michael Jackson, no doubt running the 901 equalizer in a big smile shape. An early arrival came in and leaned against the window - it immediately broke and a large shard fell down right next to him. Basically, those 901s Ella Fitzgeralded a huge plate glass window.