Hi y'all, this is almost certainly the wrong group for this thread but I honestly couldn't figure out where would be the better circle for my stupid, near-idiotic situation, so here goes:
I have a small 2BR, poured concrete apartment in Phnom Penh which I like very much, but I'm early retired so I'd gotten mostly out of high-ticket audio after a middle life of joyful experimentation at near the top of the range. I've owned a McCormack HT-DNA5 (is that the right model number) and a pair of Salk Songtowers, and I've owned a Naim Supernait with Audio Physic Spark IIII's and almost everything "in-between." But these days I can't comfortably swim in $5,000 pools -- or at least I wouldn't enjoy myself as much.
About a year ago I bought a pair of Edifier s2000mk-iii's for $300 NIB and they work really well at concrete-apartment listening levels, so they were in my main living room / home theater and I didn't mind them there a bit -- but recently I've started spending a lot of time working out of a second bedroom converted into a home office, so I thought I'd add about a $500-ish system for that room as well. After much research (but no auditions because they're not very practical here), I settled on a decision to get an SMSL AO300 and a pair of Dali Spektor 2's. Everything made sense -- from the price match to the total budget to the role.
Then I did what turns out to have been a very foolish thing: I tried the Edifiers in the home office and they are just *so* much better when they're being used for their intended purpose. They're better at mid-bass grip, the detail resolution doesn't add any tizziness like it can out in the bigger room, and the slight class-D hardness at higher SPL's doesn't have a chance to materialize. They sound so much better in there that it seems foolish not to use them in that room moving forward.
Why is that a problem? Because it immediately threw a huge spanner into my plans for the Dali's and the SMSL. I started looking at living-room-appropriate solutions and got pulled up the price ladder pretty quickly into the range of the Amphion Argon 1's, the Dali Menuet SE's, and the PMC Prodigy 1's -- but with the added budget hit represented by the fact that the SMSL would no longer be price-appropriate for any of them.
I'd very much prefer not to spend $3,700 in the main listening room, not least because I do more of my listening in the home office anyway. So the options seem to be:
1) Try to pair one of the three speakers named above, with the SMSL. It seems to have plenty of chuff but I'm not sure that the tonal quality will stand up to the added scrutiny of any of those speakers -- though of the three it seems from the review literature like the PMC's offer the best chance of success.
2) Try to go a *little* higher up the amp food-chain by looking second-hand. I can get a Naim Nait 5i for about $400, which isn't a huge step-up from the SMSL, and I already own a terrific DAC, so the SMSL's all-in-one functionality doesn't really commend it that much.
3) Go second-hand on the speakers -- specifically with Linn Katans, which I also love. The system won't be state of the art but if I pair the Katans with the Nait instead of the SMSL, I'm still not spending nearly as much as, say, the Argon-1's and the SMSL, and the price-appropriate synergy is much more reasonable.
4) Shop for new speakers but which aren't as high up the price ladder. I hear good things about other speakers a little less expensive than the three mentioned above, of course, but I don't know nearly as much about them. For example the Hecco Aurora seems pretty good, but I've read far less about these $500 - $800 candidates, and not everything I've heard is encouraging.
5) Just don't worry and get the SMSL and see what it can do. I can re-sell it for most of what I paid and that might be worth it for the chance to sneak away with a less-expensive overall rig.
FWIW, the priorities are dynamism at low volumes, off-axis response, and cohesive, PRAT-friendly musicality. The Dali Oberon 1's seemed like a candidate until Paul Robinson said they don't sound their best unless they're loud. That's a deal breaker.
Am I a complete idiot for imagining that I could pair a $1400 pair of speakers with a $250 amplifier?
Thanks in advance.
Dave.
