SteveInNC
Well-known member
I presently have a system (#99) based around Ascent i and Depth components. I'm about to close on a second-home condo in downtown, so I'm looking to equip it with some AV gear, mainly two-channel. I'll still have my single-family home with the original gear for the full-on home theater and "rock the house" listening experience. I'll eventually sell my house, then move to the condo full time in the interim while I build another house further out.
The new livingroom space is comparatively small, roughly 12wx12lx10h (feet), with hard surfaces everywhere, and the left "wall" is open to the dining and kitchen area, extending that dimension to about 26 feet. I'll be doing various forms of floor and wall treatments to deal with some of this, but the space itself is never going to be that good.
I'm considering Motion 12s as main speakers. I'm a long-time owner of ESS AMT 1C speakers, so I'm familiar with the whole Heil air transformer technology and sound. I probably won't have a sub in this setup regardless of whether I get Motions or panel speakers since I don't want to annoy the neighbors.
My main concern is that after having listened to ESLs for many years, will a more-or-less conventional speaker, even from ML, sound yucky? The only likely place to audition Motions around here is Best Buy/Magnolia, which will undoubtedly have crappy setup and electronics, so would be an unfair test of the speakers themselves.
The next option would be to move up a bit to the Source, but I don't particularly like their look. The Purity is better in that regard, but then I'm starting to push the limits on what I want to spend on a second system. While I've bought used electronics on Audigon before, I'm not so sure I'd want to do that with speakers unless they were in the immediate area where I could audition them and transport them myself.
Thoughts?
The new livingroom space is comparatively small, roughly 12wx12lx10h (feet), with hard surfaces everywhere, and the left "wall" is open to the dining and kitchen area, extending that dimension to about 26 feet. I'll be doing various forms of floor and wall treatments to deal with some of this, but the space itself is never going to be that good.
I'm considering Motion 12s as main speakers. I'm a long-time owner of ESS AMT 1C speakers, so I'm familiar with the whole Heil air transformer technology and sound. I probably won't have a sub in this setup regardless of whether I get Motions or panel speakers since I don't want to annoy the neighbors.
My main concern is that after having listened to ESLs for many years, will a more-or-less conventional speaker, even from ML, sound yucky? The only likely place to audition Motions around here is Best Buy/Magnolia, which will undoubtedly have crappy setup and electronics, so would be an unfair test of the speakers themselves.
The next option would be to move up a bit to the Source, but I don't particularly like their look. The Purity is better in that regard, but then I'm starting to push the limits on what I want to spend on a second system. While I've bought used electronics on Audigon before, I'm not so sure I'd want to do that with speakers unless they were in the immediate area where I could audition them and transport them myself.
Thoughts?
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