Been researching over the past month or so into building a decent hifi setup and kinda have a bit of a soft spot for stylish and "out there" looking speakers (in my current budget of around £1000 - £1500) such as the dueval planets range and etc, is there any others in my budget worth looking into?
Most stylish looking speakers £1000 - £1500
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Frank Harvey
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'Stylish' usually means that it costs more, so more often than not, you'll get better quality for your money going for something more conventional. Are the looks more important? Or do you want to the best sounding speaker you can get for your money?
True, the B&W Nautilus!....
Unsure really at the minute, doing more window shopping and ect, I appreciate good looks, at the minute i've been looking at a setup sinilar to one of the Yaqin tube amplifiers coupled with a project genie 3 turntable, and maybe later on one of the Yaqin tube cd players. Ultimately I would like to get into Vinyl a bit more. Speaker wise I have been looking at some Ushers, either the X7 bookshelf or the CP6311 floorstanders. I think that could make a good system overall.
Then sometimes I look at more of a solid state setup, such as building a ncie little and minimal looking hifi with the Project Box series, so that would be something like a project pre amp, power amp, cd box and again maybe a good pair of the Ushers as mentioned above, decisions decisions!
Unsure really at the minute, doing more window shopping and ect, I appreciate good looks, at the minute i've been looking at a setup sinilar to one of the Yaqin tube amplifiers coupled with a project genie 3 turntable, and maybe later on one of the Yaqin tube cd players. Ultimately I would like to get into Vinyl a bit more. Speaker wise I have been looking at some Ushers, either the X7 bookshelf or the CP6311 floorstanders. I think that could make a good system overall.
Then sometimes I look at more of a solid state setup, such as building a ncie little and minimal looking hifi with the Project Box series, so that would be something like a project pre amp, power amp, cd box and again maybe a good pair of the Ushers as mentioned above, decisions decisions!
plastic penguin
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Beauty is in the of the beholder, but like the Amphion range of speakers with the 'Helium' linked below:
http://www.amphion.fi/en/products/helium-520/
http://www.amphion.fi/en/products/helium-520/
Trefor Patten
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chebby
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FrankHarveyHiFi said:
Pointless asking about style or design flair here. (By 'here' I mean most of the UK hi-fi industry and most of it's customers.)
The UK consumer does not demand good design (or any design really) and any products that can boast it are usually aimed at export markets, just as our best designers and architects get most of their work overseas.
Britain is the birthplace of the term 'arty farty' and this suspicion of art and design, I think, dates all the way back to the reformation (and Cromwell's Commonwealth) where lavish imagery and music was expunged wherever possible in place of plain functionality and the emphasis on the written word. (Now we're great at that, as a nation, and punch well above our weight in literature.)
The UK is great at engineering and science but it's engineers and scientists don't 'do' design. Our hi-fi industry punches above it's (very puny) weight in terms of performance but you don't want to look at most of it for too long.
There are exceptions (of course) from Linn, Meridian (and even Quad at one time) but, on the whole, it's a collection of bent tin boxes with aluminium fascias in silver or black with veneered, or gloss black, box speakers.
If you want to know - as a designer maybe - what the average Brit likes, then go to an average housing development a few years after it's been built and look at how many people have installed mock 'leaded light' windows, mock beams, mock four-posters and 'farmhouse' themed kitchens in their TudorBethan homes.
They will not be at all offended by having their housing estate totally surrounded by a ring of gargantuan metal retail sheds (B&Q, Tesco, ASDA, DFS, PCWorld etc etc) with all the architectural flair of a car battery. They will all work in similar buildings where 'spite' seemed to be the architects brief (but in reality it was 'vengeance', because the architect was trained to enhance people's lives for a living and has been forced instead to design structures that will suck any life-force from the occupants.)
What hope has any hi-fi company got if they attempt to introduce some good design and visual flair into their products? They might as well put a little polyester thatched-roof on each speaker and paint them to look like cottages!
chebby
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Bit of a classic now...
http://www.podspeakers.dk/product/minipod-mk2/
About £600.
I like the 'retina burning' yellow with 1950s style tapered legs...
http://www.podspeakers.dk/product/minipod-mk2/
About £600.
I like the 'retina burning' yellow with 1950s style tapered legs...
chebby
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Origin Live Astute ...
http://www.originlive.com/loudspeakers.htm <--- Scroll down for a range of different support/stand options
(Don't know how much these cost though.)
http://www.originlive.com/loudspeakers.htm <--- Scroll down for a range of different support/stand options
(Don't know how much these cost though.)
chebby said:
Very nice. Hopefully it won't lose too much aestetically with a length of speaker cable hanging out of the back.
Big Chris said:chebby said:
Very nice. Hopefully it won't lose too much aestetically with a length of speaker cable hanging out of the back.
You're assuming they will be less than £1,500 a pair ?
DandyCobalt said:Big Chris said:chebby said:
Very nice. Hopefully it won't lose too much aestetically with a length of speaker cable hanging out of the back.
You're assuming they will be less than £1,500 a pair ?
Speaker in a length of waste pipe and a bit of bent perspex. How expensive can they be?
Frank Harvey
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alchemist 1
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6th.replicant
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Those origin live's are stunning! Also like the Aperion floorstanders, could they be compared to the Usher 6311s in white? Same sort of price range etc
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