Any "good" speaker brands that just don't sound good in your room?

[V-Fi]

I was thinking about some experiences I've had over the years, and figured it might be a fun discussion. Anyone else have some brands of well-regarded speakers that they just haven't been able to enjoy in their system? Despite a good reputation and maybe even hearing them sound great in other situations?

For me it has always been MartinLogan. Tried several models over the years from entry level to near the top of the line from that era, and none sounded good in my space. I've heard them sound much better in demo rooms as well as friend's homes, but for me they just never seem to work out.

I've also tried two different models from Tekton and they sounded poor in my room. Which is too bad because I really like what I've heard from them in other systems.

Anyone else have some? Note this is absolutely not intended to badmouth certain brands, like the common internet trope "everyone loves (insert brand here) but they are actually terrible!" I'm talking about stuff that is generally known to be great, and maybe you've even heard it sound great, which makes it that much more frustrating when it doesn't work out for your home.

 

[Cincy2]

Several years ago, I purchased a well respected Raidho model speaker. Despite a slew of room treatments and endless speaker placement exercises I just couldn't get rid of a huge bass resonance at about 40 Hz. The speaker was ported in the rear and just wouldn't work in my room. I sold them promptly and have never used a ported bass since.

 

[Kofi Baffour]

well room treatment is an exact science and rear ported or front ported has little to do with how build up occurs in room in bass frequencies.

 

[microstrip]

The more frequent causes of inadequate room matching are speaker frequency response and speaker dispersion, sometimes also the speaker impedance variation versus frequency. As brands usually have some consistency in these aspect in several of their models, it is easy to accept that a room can show allergy to particular brands.

Fighting with a room can be a consuming and dangerous sport .

 

[Hear Here]

Two purchases spring to mind:

I bought a pair of ATC 50 Active speakers in the late 90s after hankering for them for years. They sounded far too in-yer-face, as if they needed to be pushed 20 ft further away from where I was sitting. Conclusion - Speakers designed for the Pro market don't belong in the home

4 years ago I bought a pair of Martin Logan Expression 13A speakers after deciding to change from my 17-year old Avantgarde Uno speakers. I'd earlier bought a pair of used Quad 2905 speakers that sounded very good, though they were always going to be resold as "barn doors" are not acceptable in my room with floor-to-ceiling glass and spectacular views. The semi-transparent and much narrower MLs seemed ideal. Reviews were good and a showroom demo was encouraging too, so I ordered them. They were most disappointing and everyone considered the old Unos sounded far better - they had to go at a huge loss! Conclusion - MLs need a wall behind them to harvest some of the 50% of their energy that is projected backwards. My windows were 12 and 15 ft behind the speakers and at an angle, so useless in improving the MLs' poor performance. The included Anthem DSP couldn't achieve anything either.

Main Conclusion - NEVER buy speakers without a week-long home demo first, unless buying used and confident a re-sale won't leave you out of pocket.

 

[christoph]

4 years ago I bought a pair of Martin Logan Expression 13A speakers after deciding to change from my 17-year old Avantgarde Uno speakers. I'd earlier bought a pair of used Quad 2905 speakers that sounded very good, though they were always going to be resold as "barn doors" are not acceptable in my room with floor-to-ceiling glass and spectacular views. The semi-transparent and much narrower MLs seemed ideal. Reviews were good and a showroom demo was encouraging too, so I ordered them. They were most disappointing and everyone considered the old Unos sounded far better - they had to go at a huge loss! Conclusion - MLs need a wall behind them to harvest some of the 50% of their energy that is projected backwards. My windows were 12 and 15 ft behind the speakers and at an angle, so useless in improving the MLs' poor performance. The included Anthem DSP couldn't achieve anything either.

Main Conclusion - NEVER buy speakers without a week-long home demo first, unless buying used and confident a re-sale won't leave you out of pocket.

When I read the thread title, I was counting the seconds until you would chime in

 

[Hear Here]

When I read the thread title, I was counting the seconds until you would chime in

Ptrompted by the OP, who seems to have similar issues with Martin Logan, though doubtless caused by different circumstances.

 

[microstrip]

Two purchases spring to mind:

I bought a pair of ATC 50 Active speakers in the late 90s after hankering for them for years. They sounded far too in-yer-face, as if they needed to be pushed 20 ft further away from where I was sitting. Conclusion - Speakers designed for the Pro market don't belong in the home

An acquaintance had a pair of Active ATC50 and I listened to them several times as you say - too detailed and even aggressive, almost shouty. I could not stand them. One day he got a Krell KRC preamplfier in the system and they become nice sounding speakers, extremely musical. Unfortunately it is not just the speaker we must bring in the room to listen before committing.

 

[Hear Here]

An acquaintance had a pair of Active ATC50 and I listened to them several times as you say - too detailed and even aggressive, almost shouty. I could not stand them. One day he got a Krell KRC preamplfier in the system and they become nice sounding speakers, extremely musical. Unfortunately it is not just the speaker we must bring in the room to listen before committing.

Interesting that the preamp made a big difference. At the time I was using a Mark Levinson preamp - built into their 390S CDP. I had no issures with this ML gear that worked very well with previous speakers (KEF Reference 107s) and subsequent ones (the Avantgarde Unos) with SET amplification.

 

[Brucemck2]

Krell LAT-1000 Loudspeaker

the Krel LAT-1000 is Dan D’Agostino’s effort to bring the same kind of no-holds barred approach to speaker design that he has brought to his Evolution

www.theabsolutesound.com

Krill Lat-1000’s. They were highly resolving, but too bright with too much bass energy for the room. And it was just too big a change from the Genesis ribbons + active built-in subs units (fed by VTL’s in triode mode) they replaced

 

[heihei]

Two experiences....
As my signature shows, I run a pair of Wilson Benesch Resolutions and been very happy with them. I thought a natural progression would be to the Omniums but after a home demo, discovered they just didn't work - they were too forward and not at all relaxing to listen to. I heard the exact same speakers in Munich not long afterwards, and they were a lot better (I think largely due to them sitting much further into the room than I was able to get them) but not completely absent of the issues I heard at home; I realised I preferred the old tweeter design in my Resolutions, which to me is slightly sweeter, perhaps at the expense of some detail.
The second was Gobel Devin Marquis which again I had on home demo but didn't manage to find any magic - they lacked some energy and weren't coherent across the frequency range. It was suggested they weren't a good match for the Audionet amps rather than a room issue.

 

[Lowlands]

My experience is that any speaker (or speaker architecture) will couple / work with a specific room differently. It does seem likely that the idiosyncrasies of (different) speaker & room pairings will get smaller when the acoustic qualities (consistencies) of the room increase. I do not have a dedicated room (my stuff is in my living room), hence lots of quirks….

This year I attended an audition of a nice (used) pair of Zellaton Plural Evo’s at a friend’s house. They sounded absolutely stunning in his (L-shaped) room and with his gear (Aries Cerat & MSB). His other half, however, did not approve (WAF veto) and subsequently I had a shot at the EVO's in my (similarly sized and shaped) room. There was a lot of midrange magic but we simply could NOT get the bass to work in my room. It sounded totally different than in my friend’s room.

I have just bought and received a very nice used pair of Raidho D3.1 and am ‘working on them’: fiddling with positioning, listening, REW measurements, lots of tape on the floor.... the usual suspects... The Raidho’s (rear ported) couple with the acoustic of my room totally differently than the Zellatons (bottom, inside ported) did, but also very differently than my Gryphon Mojo S (rear ported). To be honest: it feels like a bit of a crapshoot. So I second the try before you buy or buy used (or both if possible) prerogative. It also shows me that the speaker-room (acoustics) interface is by far the most important factor of 'the chain' we listen to.

I am also a believer of ‘small speakers small problems , big speakers big problems’ and as a consequence have lots of good experience with 2.2 setups. A pair of (good) stand mounts (or ‘smallish’ speakers) combined with a pair of (good, audio) subs have a higher chance of success in a random room than a set of ‘big ‘ speakers in that same random room… So if you rent / move places every once-in-a-while, I would always go down that route. An illustration / example of this 2.2 concept (to me) was the Rhapsody room at the recent Dutch Audio Event using a 2.2 setup with Wilson Benesch Endeavor and a pair of IQx subs. This room – to my ears - sounded MUCH better than the large Wilson Benesch room in Munich this year.

 

[DasguteOhr]

I was thinking about some experiences I've had over the years, and figured it might be a fun discussion. Anyone else have some brands of well-regarded speakers that they just haven't been able to enjoy in their system? Despite a good reputation and maybe even hearing them sound great in other situations?

For me it has always been MartinLogan. Tried several models over the years from entry level to near the top of the line from that era, and none sounded good in my space. I've heard them sound much better in demo rooms as well as friend's homes, but for me they just never seem to work out.

I've also tried two different models from Tekton and they sounded poor in my room. Which is too bad because I really like what I've heard from them in other systems.

Anyone else have some? Note this is absolutely not intended to badmouth certain brands, like the common internet trope "everyone loves (insert brand here) but they are actually terrible!" I'm talking about stuff that is generally known to be great, and maybe you've even heard it sound great, which makes it that much more frustrating when it doesn't work out for your home.

You need a house in Italy like this one. Joke i couldn't hold me back.

 

[Hear Here]

I would expect those Martin Logans to sound poor in that room. Why? Because there is no wall behind them and MLs need this wall.

I bought 13A MLs without a home demo first and they sounded poor, despite the efforts of the distributor and Anthem DSP. In fact they were bought to replace 17 year old Avantgarde Unos, but sounded appreciably worse than the Unos. The MLs were sold after a few months and the Unos changed for used Duos.

Nothinf wrong with ML speakers if installed in a suitable room. The speakers in the video are not ideal for the room.

PS - The column bases may help, but I suspect MLs are not ideal in this room. With so many potential listening positions, I would have gone for good omni speakers - probably!