Building a home stereo -passive or active speakers?

cragginshred

cragginshred

Fractal Fanatic
I have pondered the idea of building a small vinyl collection and getting a turntable and some quality home speakers.
-I have a receiver with power but I understand a matched power amp with speakers is essential to crucial Hi fi experience. So what about just getting powered home speakers?

-Room is 12x 24 with vaulted ceiling.

-Music style of records I will buy is Metallica to Pink Floyd, Frampton and SRV

Price range for a pair of speakers is $1,500. So not super high end but good ones.

***This is for Home system Not Frfr (just to clarify)

Thanks for the input!

Don
 
Power amps for home stereo are not terribly expensive. Looking for powered speakers can be limiting. Companies like Klipsch and Polk offer very good speakers that will not break the budget. You might want to look at whether to get a sub-woofer as a stand alone, or speakers with built-in subs, preferably with a down-fired port. If you get powered subs, you can get a simple amp to drive the system.

With a budget of $1500, you should be able to get some decent sounding speakers. I suggest you go to a large electronics store, and give a listen to some of their speakers. A word of caution though, when previewing speakers, check the signal chain to be sure the speakers are just connected directly to the amp (no outboard gear). Otherwise, they might sound amazing in the store, but not so good at home. Audition them using the same recording so you get apple to apples. Also, inquire about the return policy, just in case you get them home and they sound horrid. You can also try a company like Crutchfield. They have a good selection, very good customer service, and competitive pricing.

Personally, I like Polk speakers. I have an old pair of Polk tower speakers that sound amazing. I have had them for many years. Visualize the Maxell guy in the chair. The amp in one of the speakers burned out 8 years past the warranty expiration. Much to my surprise, they honored the warranty even though it was long past expired, and replaced the amp in the speaker. Doesn't get much better than that.
 
It depends on the speakers. Some have full power, and others have only powered subs. My towers have powered subs so I use an Onkyo amp. If the speakers have full power, you can probably just go direct from turntable to speakers, but I think you would be better off using an amp. Most amps for home use these days have multiple inputs for stuff like turntables, CD players, etc. They also have multiple outputs for connecting various speakers, subs, side speakers, etc.

No need for a mixer. You could get a pair of Polk RTiA7's ($500 ea) and still have money left over to get a stereo power amp.
 
If you have a recever you may be okay. I would use it if it were decent. As for the turntable...unless the new ones have riaa equalization and a line out...you can't go direct. Just make sure that the passives you buy are matched for the receiver. In effect some speakers are very efficient...like horns...while other systems can be power hungry...like magnetostatics. A mid-fi setup like you are considering probably will not be power hungry...consider passives
 
The guy at Crutchfield is recommending the Polk signature series S60's
powered receiver so likely just use that for now.
 
I recently got the Klipsch R-15PM powered speakers and like them. I got the 10 inch subwoofer to go with them. I'm not sure they by themselves would produce enough bass. Vinyl sounds great and it does bluetooth, as well.
 
cragginshred said:
The guy at Crutchfield is recommending the Polk signature series S60's
powered receiver so likely just use that for now.
Click to expand...

Find a Paradigm and a Def Tech dealer near you - 1500 will get you some really good speakers from them - great companies - great build quality - some of the best bang for the buck - IMHO. Before you go ordering online - you might want to go actually listen to what you're buying - I would consider 1500 a big investment - big enough that I want to hear what I'm getting - theres a LOT of mid to high end speakers out there that are better than most of the stuff in the crutchfield catalog.
 
There is some pretty high end stuff at Crutchfield. You could drop $10,000 just on the speakers. I agree that it would be best to actually listen to the speakers if possible. I bought my Polk towers from Crutchfield after listening to them in a high-end audio store.
 
I've just done a whole bunch of speaker research in regards to car audio. I ended up going with Morel. I guess they are a very respected name in home audio also. They make some extremely high end stuff but their entry level stuff seems to sound really well compared to other brands. By entry level we are still talking about $400 for a couple small speakers so definitely not cheap by any means. Anyway might be worth looking into.
 
Where I live there are no 'local' dealers. 1.5 hours away is the dreaded central valley of Ca. No thanks I would rather go climbing or skiing on my days off.
Threads like this are helpful but also I knew from the out set I would get dozens of suggestions many of which I can never try out. Polk came up form the beginning and so does Klipsch so I am looking into those. I know sales men sell things but it is consistent with what a been told from many others.

I appreciate all the feed back!
 
If you're looking for powered speakers, have you considered studio monitors?
 
my living room with vaulted ceiling is a terrible listening room. just dont be surprised if you're not liking what you hear. it may not be the equipment.
 
Why not far field studio monitors and a graphic eq? You could hype the bass as much as you want and then bypass the eq for FRFR.
This is what I do and I love the clarity studio milonitors have.
 
I have some Sierra 1's I love.. bought some b-stock for a killer deal a few years back. I run a sub as well.. set very low, just to supplement the sierra's. Using an older Yamaha 5 channel receiver. I also use a 70's Marantz receiver with them at times. They sounds great for two channel audio.. I'm not into utlra high end audio gear though.. you quickly get to the point where the listening room has more to do with things than the gear. Much like in recording scenarios.

http://www.ascendacoustics.com/pages/products/speakers/SRM1/srm1.html
 
cragginshred said:
I have pondered the idea of building a small vinyl collection and getting a turntable and some quality home speakers.
-I have a receiver with power but I understand a matched power amp with speakers is essential to crucial Hi fi experience. So what about just getting powered home speakers?

-Room is 12x 24 with vaulted ceiling.

-Music style of records I will buy is Metallica to Pink Floyd, Frampton and SRV

Price range for a pair of speakers is $1,500. So not super high end but good ones.

***This is for Home system Not Frfr (just to clarify)

Thanks for the input!

Don
Click to expand...

Yes! buy more records...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom