I had done a ton of reading on speaker upgrades. One name kept coming up - "Salk Sound", so I focused my research there. So many positive comments put my trust in the Salk brand, so I started looking at the used market.
The lack of speakers available on the secondary market was actually to me more proof of the high quality of Salks. And then about 2 weeks ago, I noticed a pair of Song3 BeATs available in Michigan of all places. I made an offer, worked out the logistics, and a nice pallet was delivered by FedEx freight to my driveway yesterday.
After strategizing how to get them downstairs, I moved my old Paradigm Studio 100 v5's aside (the Paradigms are very nice speakers). Went back and brought them downstairs to my home theater. Attached the base (didn't install the spikes), and had them up and running in about 90 minutes. I treated them with a lot of TLC because they had been out in the cold, so I just watched some low-volume NBA action for the night.
This morning, I took a vacation day and performed a Dirac DLBC session. Measured 17 positions, applied my favorite target curves, and then got to listening to some great music.
I'm a Roon user that subscribes to Qobuz (I fired Tidal over MQA). Put on some hi-res music (Zoom from the Commodores stood out), and I was blown away. Forget the old "a veil had been lifted" - this was like listening to a concert from outside the fire door and then being let into the theater - sitting next to the sound engineer!
Everything I listened to gave my wife and me the same, "I've never heard it like that before!" or "my God - this is stunning" reaction. All genres blew us away, acoustic vs electric, vocal, etc. I also love new music, and the current Sturgis Simpson and Joe Bonamassa albums shined.
I'm sold. Salk is the best speaker I've ever heard.
I wrote to Mr. Salk today to place an order for a Salk Veracity HT2C center speaker. Yeah, the tweeter is different, but I'm convinced it'll work well.
Thanks to everybody here for their wisdom, as seen in previous posts, and convincing me from afar that Salk was the way to go!
