Which speakers gave you the *wow* factor?

[Roderik]

Bought Diapason Preludes II in 1998, driven by a TEAC AH500 amplifier. Treated them fairly well and today these monitors sound as stunning as they did 25 years ago, with the same amplifier, often fed by a Apple Music stream using a latest generation Airport Express. I listened this week for a few hours to a pair of KEF LS60’s, expecting them to sound better but I’m not too sure about that. The lows go a little bit deeper (32 vs 40Hz) and can be felt, which is impossible with the Diapasons, but as a mainly classical music lover I’m not a booming bass head. So all in all my gems remain stunning. They weren’t cheap though in those days. Something like more than 5000 guilders, which might be 5000 euros today.

 

[Roderik]

 

[emc71]

Went to an audio fair some months ago and while not so impressed by any systems having a cost of thousand dollars (euros)... got a WOW! for some "simple" Harbeth Super HL5!
Nothing special aesthetically imo but what an amazing special sound!!!

 

[mhardy6647]

Q: Is "wow" negatively correlated with "sustained zero fatigue sound" ?
A: ________________________

I think it is safe to say that wow is a vector quantity.

 

[Newman]

I went to an audio show in the early-mid 1980s. I think it was my first. It was held in the grandstand pavilion of a horse racing track. As I turned the corner from one of the smaller rooms into the main pavilion foyer, which was a large space, I heard this big, full, rich sound of music being played loudly over the crowd. I looked around and, up in the air at a considerable distance, I spotted a pair of Meridien M3. They looked tiny, in fact, they looked like shoebox speakers because of the scale of the room and distance from me. I could not believe that all that sound, all that richness, was coming from those 2 little boxes. Wow. That's the first time I was blown away.

 

[MattHooper]

Went to an audio fair some months ago and while not so impressed by any systems having a cost of thousand dollars (euros)... got a WOW! for some "simple" Harbeth Super HL5!
Nothing special aesthetically imo but what an amazing special sound!!!
View attachment 255307

I've mentioned this before, but: At audio shows, as we know, they often select a track with well recorded (or at least vivid) vocals, often female, with sparse accompaniment, to try and give the "wow, isn't this voice realistic?" sensation.

I routinely do a test: closing my eyes, listening to the vocal while comparing it to the real voices around me (usually someone is talking nearby). That immediately shows how artificial the sound is coming from the speaker. The voices through speakers sound mechanical, electronic, made of artificial stuff relative to the rich, organic sound of real human voices - sound emitting from "damped flesh" rather than electronics and mechanical bits and pieces in a box.

At one show system after system failed that "test," except one: Harbeth Monitor 30 speakers! The voice on the track actually sounded more organic/human, closer to the real voices in the room than any other system. I think it's no wonder they have a reputation for getting the human voice "right." I found a similar quality in the Harbeth SuperHL5+, which I owned for a while. (And in my classic Spendor S3/5s)

 

[MarkS]

That's just the BBC dip in action, works very well on voices because most voices are miked too closely, you don't get the natural fall-off with a few feet of distance in the "presence" region.

Harbeth Monitor 30 Speaker Review

This is a review and detailed measurements of the Harbeth Monitor 30 25th anniversary speaker. It is on kind loan from a local member. This specific speaker came out around 2002 I think and cost US $3,200 around that time. Being patterned after the famous BBC LS 5/9 speakers, I imagine the...

www.audiosciencereview.com

 

[Joe852]

My first “wow” experience was with the Thiel CS2 2 at a specialty audio shop in Richmond, VA (I forget the name). I was deeply moved by them as a young man and years later, I acquired a pair of Thiel CS6 speakers of which I am listening right now.

Jim Thiel's brother Tom hangs out on the Audiogon Thiel thread and his reference speakers are 2 2s. I bought a used pair ~15 years ago just to try something new and I found them spectacular. They turned me into a Thiel fan. The 2 series is the sweet spot in the lineup.

 

[MattHooper]

Jim Thiel's brother Tom hangs out on the Audiogon Thiel thread and his reference speakers are 2 2s. I bought a used pair ~15 years ago just to try something new and I found them spectacular. They turned me into a Thiel fan. The 2 series is the sweet spot in the lineup.

Yes Tom has been a wealth of knowledge and insight into the inner workings of Thiel in their heyday.

 

[MarkS]

I'm fond of the story of how the 2.2 lost its decimal point:

Thiel CS2 2 loudspeaker

"Well, Sam, are there any speakers you are really excited about?" It was my friend Vladimir, on the phone. "Yes, the Rasputin speakers from Petersburg. But in order to sound their best, they need this tube amp—the Balgalvis from Riga, Latvia. They also need Moldavian wire, from a wire factory in...

www.stereophile.com

Heard them once long ago, thought they were great in the listening seat, but the tonal changes on standing up were vertigo-inducing!

 

[Axo1989]

Heard them once long ago, thought they were great in the listening seat, but the tonal changes on standing up were vertigo-inducing!

Sounds like a self-correcting problem.

 

[trackrat888]

EPI 100Vs along with a 5-band Realistic Equilizer.

 

[Dennis Murphy]

That's just the BBC dip in action, works very well on voices because most voices are miked too closely, you don't get the natural fall-off with a few feet of distance in the "presence" region.

Harbeth Monitor 30 Speaker Review

This is a review and detailed measurements of the Harbeth Monitor 30 25th anniversary speaker. It is on kind loan from a local member. This specific speaker came out around 2002 I think and cost US $3,200 around that time. Being patterned after the famous BBC LS 5/9 speakers, I imagine the...

www.audiosciencereview.com

Exactly.

 

[mhardy6647]

EPI 100Vs along with a 5-band Realistic Equilizer.

I... umm... OK.

I do like the EPIs, though -- in all seriousness.
Indeed, of the many pairs of EPIs that have passed through here, the one pair I've kept is a pedestrian looking pair of the 100Vs ($15 from a neighborhood barn sale when we lived in MA) that I refoamed with the proper foams for the EPI woofers from Rick Cobb. Quite nice little loudspeakers.



I wouldn't call them wow, though.
I know a fellow who had a pair of EPI's early statement loudspeakers, the EPI 1000. Those are pretty wow-inducing. They did sound pretty good, and they're physically very imposing.

 

[ThatSoundsGood]

Big speakers: Clair Bros R4’s via Crown 3600. 350lb and older than me. Talk about horn done right. Mid has some waveguide, can’t remember the physics idea. Now this was at 40’ in a field, with extra double-18” cabs for no boundaries.

Small speakers: Focal Shape 4” a coworker brought in the other week. Niiice Hi’s

I Used the R4's as Side-Fills for years. I mostly used them with the Lab Gruppens then one time I got a package out of the LA shop and they sent me the old Macro Tech's as amps. Oh man, they sounded way better with those old amps. I still had to turn the compression drivers down 3db, but that's standard.

 

[Scrappy]

I Used the R4's as Side-Fills for years. I mostly used them with the Lab Gruppens then one time I got a package out of the LA shop and they sent me the old Macro Tech's as amps. Oh man, they sounded way better with those old amps. I still had to turn the compression drivers down 3db, but that's standard.

Crowns with Lab LM26 was driving the cabs I heard, pretty sweet. Can’t beat Lab PLM power density.. I’m in the process of decommissioning a bunch of Crown racks and it makes me sad. Hell, still got a hundred of em tho!

 

[OldHvyMec]

This is the second pair of Elixirs I owned. They are rather rare. 16 pairs made less than 7 known pairs and one set of 3, left.
Mine are a little over 525lbs when I pull the sub/bass/passive and fill with100lb of cutters sand and a 60lb butcher block base.
They are heavy stock at 375lbs. I've added a rear chamber that is timed pretty well in regards to the rear wall at 36" and moved
the a FST tweeter to the rear along with a neo 8 driver. I replaced the # 4 mid driver with a fixed AC G1 ribbon in the front baffle.
It went from a strange speaker with the sweet spot the size of tennis ball to a wonderful 24" x 36". Two people can enjoy but
one person in that spot is in heaven.

Because I'm a bigger tinkerer than scientist, some one told me I couldn't get that speaker to sound good. It not only sounds good
there is not another pair like them on earth. Just like ME... I like weird.

Regards

 

[Gringoaudio1]

Anything big or small in the Usher room at CES one year I went to Vegas in the early 2000s were best-in-show. So much awful at T.H.E. show off-site running at the same time in Vegas. Snake oil central. Worst I heard was anything from Totem and Martens and anything with a single full range driver. Flakey people in those rooms. OMFG!
In the next year or two several other colleagues from work went to the show and agreed that Ushers were best in show then too. As a result several pals from work ended up with Ushers. I never did. Came close but no cigar.

 

[middlemarch]

The first were a set of Altec VOT with the 800Hz horn, second were Dahlquist DQ10s (or 20s, been a while), back when I had 20 y/o ears and could hear all the 'air'. Third was the first time I played my NHT 3.3s at volume about 25 years ago. Most recently my M106s. I guess we're not discussing headphones...

 

[jim1274]

I mentioned earlier in the thread 2 speakers that wow'd me:

Waveform Mach 17
MBL 101D

Those were two instances were it wasn't just "Boy do I ever like this sound!" but really a sort of breathtaking experience, a level of shock value.

The first was hearing the MBL omnis in a reviewer's home (a TAS reviewer) where he had them in a very small room, with lots of room treatment.
He played a selection of tracks and, until that point, I never knew that such sound was even possible - some of it more real than I'd ever encountered, some of it just sheer neato pyrotechnics.

I heard the Waveform Mach 17 at John Otvos' home (he ran the company - it eventually folded). It was at a time where I had literally travelled far and wide hearing most of the hyped up speakers of the time (including big Wilsons, Genesis, you name it). Otvos was an early devotee of "prove it with measurements" and developed his speakers using the Canadian NRC facilities. He sought neutral on-axis sound with smooth even wide dispersion. The Waveform speakers were immediatly identifiable at those times by their egg-shaped midrange/tweeter module, made of super dense material. He demonstrated his tri-amplified speakers to a friend and me, using cheap solid state amps and off the shelf cables (he thought the cable market was a scam, same with expensive amplifiers, as well as tube amps). It was shocking. The Mach 17 in that demo seemed to combine practically all the impressive qualities of other speakers in one speaker: an electrostatic like "disappearing" act, yet dynamic and propulsive like no electrostatic I've heard, capable of enormous dynamics for church organ, orchestral spectaculars or dynamic pop music, while also being tonally even and neutral sounding. It's like they did what most other speakers were trying to achieve without sweating.

I don't mean to say they were actually perfect speakers. Only that, at the time (1999 IIRC) they blew me away.

This was the only mention of Omnis here, so figured I’d add mine here:

Energy 22 Reference Monitor in 1984 in the best tuned and acoustically treated listening room I’ve ever seen. That was a jaw-dropper, and after hearing many other far more expensive speakers in a half dozen botique audio joints that day, my friend also said the 22s hands down.

A tie or very close second is 2 pairs of Duevel Omnis bought this summer in rapid succession. I’ve had more conventional “box” speakers in the last 50 years than I can even count and nothing has “wowed” me like that since that 1984 Energy 22 demo. The Omnis have a soundstage like no forward-firing design I’ve owned or heard.

I still have have 2 pairs of Energy 22s and will likely be trying a third Omni before too long.