[Review] On the hunt for new speakers

On the hunt for new speakers

My speakers (Roksan Ojan 3x) have been in my system longer then any other bit of kit, ever, full stop. In fact they have seen off 3 CD players, 2 DACS, 4 Power Amps and 1 Pre over the last few years alone. This has led me to believe that I ought to look around at what's out there in the market now and demo some “new†speakers with an eye to replacing the trusty Roksans.

So Saturday past saw me visit the office and demo centre of Mårten Design in my adopted home town of Göteborg, (www.martendesign.com) to try out some of their toys. They have two rooms with permanent demo gear in both, I had the pleasure of using a Bledlius CD/Pre (www.bladelius.com) straight into a couple of Ear 861 Mono Blocks (www.ear-yoshino.com), the speakers tested were both the new stand mount Dukes, (tested in HiFi plush last month) and their older floor standing brother the Mingus 2. The room is decked out in acoustic enhancing and trapping things to make up for the lack of curtains and other such goodies normally found in a domestic living room.

Tracks used were a selection of standard tunes used to set my system up at home:
Eric Clapton – tears in heaven, MTV live and acoustic - separation of instruments
Alison Krauss – new favourite - vocal control, dynamics, detail
Paul Weller – broken stones – bass and treble control
Ben Folds – silver street live – pure enjoyment
Various jazz – again for pure enjoyment

Listening to the smaller Dukes first brought home a sense of detail and pin point image missing from my home set up, but also left my wondering if these new found elements would become too aggressive over a longer period of listening. Even when listening to tracks and trying to get into the music and not analyse it I found myself unable to just to. The smaller boxes also produced way less soundstage than I have got used to at home. The Dukes do have an upgrade option of an active bass module that sits under the main speakers and has its own class D amp inside. Unfortunately its ugly and I wouldn't want it in my living room, no matter how nice it sounds, (and it does sound good as I've heard it previously).

Trying the Mingus second was somewhat of a let down. They use older drivers and tweeters and produced a noticeably slower more muddled sound, and were soon discarded as being quite a bit of a down grade from what I have already.

Both systems produced a high quality sound and would offer any user a great tool to explore the joys of music with, unfortunately they didn't offer enough for me to get rid of Roksans, so they're going to have to stay a while yet.

Both these speakers retail for around two and a half grand new, whilst the Roksan's were I believe a little over a grand when they came out.

So this leaves me open to suggestions as to what to demo next, of course I could keep what I have as the budget for new speakers is about the amount of money needed to tweak the rest of the system, (hmm mono block Bel Cantos and some well placed ByBees anyone?).

To be continued…….

 

If you're in Gothenberg, why not visit the Linn dealer there and see what they have. www.tonlaget.se IIRC

 

yup good shop that, like all good swedes he's on summer semester so i'll have to wait a bit before i try some of his goodies. never actaully heard a linn speaker before so that should be interesting, thanks