Interested in Arke Speakers

I've sent you a pm Jason.

Welcome to the forum.
I have a very difficult basement room of 4x5m but a ceiling of 1.8m, also into a bay one side.
Have got Ektas to work very well and you are welcome to hear them if south Cheshire isn’t too out of the way?
Cheers
Steve[/quote]



Hi Steve.
Thanks for your comment and kind offer ,which is very tempting indeed.
Would you mind to share your location?

Or you could send me a pm (I am very interested in your thoughts.

Have finally managed to send you a pm 😉

Pair of Nextel 2F in Wolverhampton if you want a listen to them.

12ft square room. It's been a challenge.

Thread created away from Jasons business page.

Thanks

Hi Jason

I posted what I did because Winlar said 'It would need to well beat available speakers selling around £10k New.'

There's a limit to what one can realistically home demo but narrowing the field by price is absolutely the worst way to do it, not just for loudspeakers. I mean you can pay ten grand for a turntable motor unit that does not even revolve at the correct speed when a £2K Technics unit will be state of the art.

Or ten grand for an amplifier that is no better in any respect than a Sanyo/Fisher you could pick up off of eBay for fifty quid.

Unfortunately there's far too much reliance on 'price points' - I am always reading advice like 'You need to move up to the £3K to £5K bracket to get any real improvement'. I call this 'What Hi-Fi Thinking' since it's the sort of rubbish you read in that mag all the time.

For speakers the field needs to be narrowed by use case and measure performance, not price.

Of course that cuts both ways, no point spending £5K when you really needed to spend £10K to get something that's really better than what you have. There's a point in the price (especially for speakers) where below which the compromises will start to show. But that's a secondary consideration.

Hello and thanks for your feedback.
Appreciate your honesty, and you have some good points there.
It might be not as simple as I thought though....

Great input.
But following my ear 👂 (shop floor demo) experience, there was a (significant) lift in sound quality going from spendor d7.2 £5k speakers to focal sopra no1 £8k speakers (with my own amplifier) what tels me there is indeed clear relation form the price point-sound quality perspective.

Found the same relation (to my ears) in another shop floor demo between atc scm40 £4k speakers to kudos titan 505 £9k speakers ,though the atcs here were sounding above its price tag me thinks 🤔

Just my take on the above:

No upgrade should be considered such, purely on the basis of expenditure alone. However, that doesn't mean to suggest that one should not spend the necessary outlay in the right areas for their budget/requirements and circumstances.

It's certainly true that a lot of more expensive items do not live up to their price point, at least in terms of real world performance, but as a caveat there is major value to be had following a blueprint such as the Troels "DIY/bespoke" philosophy. Using that as an example, but it's not the only one.

Real world listening is the way forward, especially when considering 'major' (also subjective!) outlay.

I think folks experiences on here do hold a lot more weight than say, a paid online review or recommendation on specs/hear say alone.


Just a quick point on "price-points" also, I don't think they are a bad thing otherwise we have no real financial gauge of value but we must be careful not to assume that because two products exist within say the "5k category", that they are likely to be anywhere near equal in terms of performance. (Although of course they could be).

That should be for the punter to decide using their own methods.

Agreed, looking for speakers with a decent measured Frequency response is extremely instructive.

A few caveats:

- a reasonable level of skill and experience is required to correctly interpret measurements.

- Frequency response measurements tell you a tiny bit of the story. My CNO4s go deeper than 861s or Ektas (for example). However, I could (and have) tuned my speakers so that the Ektas, 861s and CNO4s have pretty much identical frequency response. They certainly don't sound the same. They are all 'very good' speakers but perform at different levels. A great deal of understanding is then required to understand amp matching, horizontal/vertical dispersion, distortion, cabinet noise etc. Most people can not translate complex and in-depth measurements in to what sounds best to them or anyone else.

Edit: Then to top it off measurements are just the tip of the iceberg. You then need to understand how that frequency response, dispersion, distortion etc. will interact in your room/system. Even the most highly trained and experienced acousticians can only glean so much from extensive measurements and in room measurements. It still doesn't mean the 'subject' listening will think it is the best option.

Start with measurements, but ONLY if you *really* understand what they are saying and then Listen in your room/system.

But therein lies the real truth...

For years i have totally understood why the measurements are important, but not why they didn't seem to correlate with what I heard here. Like many, i was listening to a system in a room that was far less than ideal for HiFi. Unintentionally you end up buying by what your ear says is best, and that's because every room and system is completely different, so what works in one system just doesn't always work in another.

For instance the Purifi is probably the best measuring amplifier out there, but here with the Ekta it was not great to listen to.

The measurement's were irrelevant at that point, it wasn't enjoyable. I think that's why there is a widespread rebuke of trusting measurements blindly. It just doesn't tally with what people experience in their homes. Also, as Troels says, measurements won't tell you if you like the sound a speaker makes, they just tell you how they behave in the room.

Buying Jason's speakers with tuneable frequency has changed how i think about HiFi. They have allowed me to sit here listening to a Purifi amplifier, which now sounds incredible. Just like it did at Jason's. Then there's the DAC. A dac i wouldn't have even looked at before... "Topping? Nah...too lean mate!"

The massive difference between the overpowering LF and the suck out in my rooms response when (measuring with the Etka) gave rise to audible issues with a lot of kit, but swapping to the Nextel 2F and removing that suck out and flattening off the lower registers has meant that i now listen to technically perfect HiFi equipment and i'm completely enjoying it.

If you are lucky enough to have a sympathetic room where speakers are completely uninhibited, i can see why you would come to the conclusion that measurements matter.

I do have a sympathetic room but that isn't down to luck.

You do, and i know you sought it out, but many don't.

I didn't. I wasn't even into hifi when we bought our house. I just think it's probably sensible to keep that in mind (my mind) as some folk really are hearing stuff that may not make sense to anyone else.

And Jason is right, there are WAY more audiophiles that do not understand meaurements than there are that do. How else does all the tat out there keep getting sold!

I'm not a scientist or engineer, my degree's in Philosophy. It really isn't so hard to understand the basics, none of it is rocket science. Okay, once you get into acoustics and psycho acoustics it does get a bit more rocket-sciencey but just to make a shortlist of speakers worth a listen you don't need to go anything like that far.