14-12-2020, 11:04 PM
Choosing speakers is highly subjective, and specific recommendations from anyone on the internet is basically worthless as it will be coming from people who have different taste to you, and will have a different room. You just have to try a few different things in your room and figure out what works well. The speakers you mention are a world away from the performance of a '63 in good condition, but your (relatively) positive comments about the Bose does suggest that you perhaps don't need ESL performance. But if you do, then the £6,500 asking price is actually quite reasonable, all things considered.
I have heard the 2812 in a hifi show, and as far as one can tell in that sort of environment, they were pretty good. But obviously you need a massive room for ESLs to work well. This room was about 40 foot or so (medium-sized conference room in a large hotel), and it's perhaps the only time I've heard anything approaching an accurate and believable stereo image from ESLs. Every other experience has been in much smaller rooms, and the imagery is always "interesting", but never correct. But, some people seem to like that. Even in a larger room - by UK standards - perhaps about 20 foot square - is not big enough in my experience. While the 2812's were one of the best things that I heard at that show, it was basically the room making that difference. Most others were exhibited in standard-sized hotel rooms (perhaps 10 foot square, give or take), and anything larger than an LS3/5A just didn't work well in the space. The rooms were all hard acoustically, with very thin carpets, concrete block walls and large windows. The company I was helping out got reasonable results after letting me tweak the position of the speakers in the rooms - it looked a bit odd, but provided there were 5 or 6 people in the room to help with the acoustics, it actually sounded pretty good. We did a second walk-around a couple of days into the show and discovered a handful of people who copied our layout! Once word got around that there was a Nagra T in the room, it resulted in a lot of traffic, and many people did comment on the sound quality once they'd got over the novelty of 1/4" tape. That was the only tape machine in the whole show, but that was about 6 or 7 years back - now, 1/4" tape machines are everywhere at hi-fi shows! But I digress...
Personally, I always recommend monitors rather than speakers. As you've specifically said you want neutrality and transparency, that's the only sensibly option, frankly. Hi-fi speakers are rarely neutral as they are designed to sell - hence they tend to be "impressive" and "exciting" - which is all very well at first, but quickly becomes tiring to those who know what audio should sound like. Monitors, meanwhile, are tools to let you make decisions about mixing and microphone placement, etc, so they shouldn't add anything to the performance. They don't flatter poor recordings, but they allow good recordings to really shine.
If that sounds like the sort of thing you're after, there's plenty of choice. But it's all about personal preference, so I can't be too specific. And again, I would be extremely cautious of anyone who recommends specific models based on what little (basically zero) you've told us about your listening room, taste in music, and your existing audio system. Unfortunately, everyone likes to be an expert - especially in the hi-fi world.
But FWIW, I like brands like ATC and Genelec, and I'm also fond of most of the BBC-style monitors being made today by various companies. Because you pay a hefty royalty for a BBC licensed design, you might find that the non-BBC models in the ranges from some of these brands might be preferable (the BBC licence is actually a bit of a restriction in practice, as it's quite possible to do better than the BBC did all those years ago). If looking second-hand, Rogers did a lot of nice stuff, but support is non-existent today, obviously. There's a little bit about BBC speakers on my website, but relatively little about the new BBC-licensed designs available today because positive reviews of those would cause a certain competitor of those companies to accuse me of a conflict of interest. But there's no shortage of other reviews, including some from non-hi-fi press such as Sound on Sound (often with measurements).
Perhaps as a starting point, how did your BC1s work in your room?
I have heard the 2812 in a hifi show, and as far as one can tell in that sort of environment, they were pretty good. But obviously you need a massive room for ESLs to work well. This room was about 40 foot or so (medium-sized conference room in a large hotel), and it's perhaps the only time I've heard anything approaching an accurate and believable stereo image from ESLs. Every other experience has been in much smaller rooms, and the imagery is always "interesting", but never correct. But, some people seem to like that. Even in a larger room - by UK standards - perhaps about 20 foot square - is not big enough in my experience. While the 2812's were one of the best things that I heard at that show, it was basically the room making that difference. Most others were exhibited in standard-sized hotel rooms (perhaps 10 foot square, give or take), and anything larger than an LS3/5A just didn't work well in the space. The rooms were all hard acoustically, with very thin carpets, concrete block walls and large windows. The company I was helping out got reasonable results after letting me tweak the position of the speakers in the rooms - it looked a bit odd, but provided there were 5 or 6 people in the room to help with the acoustics, it actually sounded pretty good. We did a second walk-around a couple of days into the show and discovered a handful of people who copied our layout! Once word got around that there was a Nagra T in the room, it resulted in a lot of traffic, and many people did comment on the sound quality once they'd got over the novelty of 1/4" tape. That was the only tape machine in the whole show, but that was about 6 or 7 years back - now, 1/4" tape machines are everywhere at hi-fi shows! But I digress...
Personally, I always recommend monitors rather than speakers. As you've specifically said you want neutrality and transparency, that's the only sensibly option, frankly. Hi-fi speakers are rarely neutral as they are designed to sell - hence they tend to be "impressive" and "exciting" - which is all very well at first, but quickly becomes tiring to those who know what audio should sound like. Monitors, meanwhile, are tools to let you make decisions about mixing and microphone placement, etc, so they shouldn't add anything to the performance. They don't flatter poor recordings, but they allow good recordings to really shine.
If that sounds like the sort of thing you're after, there's plenty of choice. But it's all about personal preference, so I can't be too specific. And again, I would be extremely cautious of anyone who recommends specific models based on what little (basically zero) you've told us about your listening room, taste in music, and your existing audio system. Unfortunately, everyone likes to be an expert - especially in the hi-fi world.
But FWIW, I like brands like ATC and Genelec, and I'm also fond of most of the BBC-style monitors being made today by various companies. Because you pay a hefty royalty for a BBC licensed design, you might find that the non-BBC models in the ranges from some of these brands might be preferable (the BBC licence is actually a bit of a restriction in practice, as it's quite possible to do better than the BBC did all those years ago). If looking second-hand, Rogers did a lot of nice stuff, but support is non-existent today, obviously. There's a little bit about BBC speakers on my website, but relatively little about the new BBC-licensed designs available today because positive reviews of those would cause a certain competitor of those companies to accuse me of a conflict of interest. But there's no shortage of other reviews, including some from non-hi-fi press such as Sound on Sound (often with measurements).
Perhaps as a starting point, how did your BC1s work in your room?
