#Audirvana plus shootout driver#
In order to get that driver to not dive like a shot duck under 100hz the driver has to have increased mass and xmax. They are all essentially a tweeter coupled to a 5-6 woofer that's doing double duty as a midrange. I have no idea if Sonos products perform well to their specifications.Īny input as to whether it makes sense to go with the NAD or if the Sonos is likely going to be at least as good a pairing for driving the KEFS?Įvery bookshelf speaker made in this over rated category makes serious compromises. I see it's specified at 55w/channel Class D. It turns out, at the moment, my friend's LS50s were hooked up to his Sonos Zone Player amplifier:
Not much power, but more of a known quantity, and the LS50s/NAD have been at least reviewed together as sounding good. After a bit of research I suggested a NAD C316BEE V2 Stereo Integrated Amplifier:Īs the NAD was available locally at a good price and from what I know, NAD seems to be a pretty responsible company in terms of equipment that actually performs to stated specs. My friend first had given me the impression he "didn't really" have an amp for the speakers.
On my systems at home I get a more texturally present/realistic sound to my ears, less recorded sounding, more like hearing right through the air to the real thing. Instruments could certainly sound super clear, but there was an overall slightly "canned" quality to everything, timbrally speaking, to my ears. In fact, though I really enjoyed the sound, my nit picks would center around a slight metallic glaze to the sound. Piano was vivid, though with a slight metallic edge to the transients. Right off the bat the LS50s, in the way they produced a wide array of instrumental timbres, from shining triangle bells popping out of a track to the reedy quality of a sax, made his previous cheap speakers sound muffled and tonally "black and white." The sound of a trumpet piece through the LS50s had that beautiful, open, warm golden harmonic timbre that I identify with real trumpets. They sounded just like I remembered: beautiful, open, clear, spacious, a tad forward up high, a bit of richness in the upper bass (they were only about 2 to 2 1/2 from the back wall). This was the first time I've heard the LS50s in a few years. I brought over some speaker stands to help set them up better, today. He keeps telling me about all the nuances he's hearing in music now. He's not an audiophile, but does appreciate good sound so when he asked about upgrading his speakers one of my suggestions was picking up a pair of used KEF LS50s I spotted on Canuck Audio Mart. I just came back from listening to my friend's KEF LS50 speakers. I appreciate that your own listening assessment of h120 will be different to mine, but that may be from our respective experience and preferences. The Hegel choice caught me off guard as the h90 and h120 were there to let me see how good the Rega's were in comparison, but my ears did prefer the h120 by more than a slight margin. I'd prefered to avoid amps where my money bought extras like a DAC or a streamer.
However, I wasn't in that position and so had to go with how the music sounded. I do think that if I had the skills and knowledge to set up a miniDSP, I could improve my options. No noticeable sound change to my ears there. I finally then tried the built in streamer (which only plays via the built in DAC). There were pros and cons to the built in DAC. I then listened to my flac files via my RPi via its inbuilt DAC. I tried about 8 different amps and in going backward and forth with the amps, to my ears, the preference was for the the Hegel. However, I really don't like to part with my money and I have no brand allegiances. I do appreciate that this wasn't blind testing. My thinking was that by keeping everything the same except for amplification, any differences that I heard would strictly be from the amplifier. After that, we swapped through some amps but still using my RPi to play the same flac files via my own DAC. I listened to my favored test tracks for about 45 mins using only my own kit in their listening room to acclimate my ears to how my gear and music would sound there. I took to the HiFi shop my NAD amp, my RPi for playback of my flac files to play via my Topping E30 DAC as well as my speakers. I was aware that I'd favoured Rega from speaking to people who own their kit, and I was thinking of the Rega Elicit R, or the Aethos. I'd tried to keep amp choice as scientific as practicable to reduce bias. Click to it helps, and really grateful for thoughts.