I put this together over the last six months - all used from Audiogon. I'd like to get some new speakers within the next six. I listen to all types of music, from jazz to rock to classical. My budget for speakers will probably be around $2000 and I'd like to audition some if possible.
I just browsed the threads on this manufacturer on this site and am reading almost entirely high praise. So maybe I was having a bad listening day or something. As you point out, everybody's ears are different. The main point is still this recommendation: Listen before you buy, and get what YOU like, not what some stranger tells you that you should like. Enjoy.
I also agree with Robm321 and Jlind325is that it is extremely wise to go to a dealer to audition. I've been pestering Duane (a dealer) intermittently for years, but have also spent lot of money (for me anyway)in his stores. One caveat is to have one (or more) star sales people to depend on (like Duane, for example). Another caveat is that it is imperative to find a salesperson with an ear and sonic tastes similar to your own. (In my case it was also important to find someone with lots and lots of patience!) Our metropolitan area is really fortunate to have several outstanding and honest people in each of two different high end stores.
I once looked into some "factory direct" speakers with beautiful wooden cabinets and well written, extremely impressive, very plausible-sounding product literature, complete with things that looked like scientific audio measurements (like graphs and diagrams as I recall), and beautiful photographs. Their flagship speaker was somewhere around 12,000 dollars at the time, so I figured that meant that I'd get about 20,000 plus of speaker value. I went straight to their headquarters and listened in their own showroom with the electronics they had selected driving their speakers, using my CD's. What a horrendous disappointment THAT was! They really stunk. Duane had said they weren't that good, but he had kindly understated things--they were just RANK! Quite an eye- (and ear-) opener. So I think it really does help to have someone who's smart and relatively unbiased to help avoid potentially expensive and time-consuming audiophile neophyte pitfalls. As mentioned above, dealers get to choose what they carry, for the most part, because there are (apparently) relatively more manufacturers than dealers.
{{{{{And NO, I am NOT going to mention the name of the brand that I hated, because there's no need to cast stones. I think it's (probably) an honest company, and many people who have reviewed them (on Audioreview, for example) really like them, so why stir up trouble? If some people like them, then that's great for them and fine with me. I simply did NOT like them--I thought they were quite vile, in fact, AND expensive to boot: the very worst of all possible worlds! Yuck.}}}}}
