Intro
Contents
On Sunday, February 25, we held a livestream focusing on affordable floorstanding speakers. Price range around 1000 Euro. That you can buy some nice stuff in that price range, is evident from this test! That you should not go too low is also shown in this comparative test, because we had a super-budget bonus option.
By now it’s tradition: a Live Stream Test every last Sunday of the month at 10:30 CET. With the exception of summer vacations and if the stream falls around Christmas or New Year’s Eve. So if you find this kind of test interesting, subscribe to our Youtube channel and block the last Sunday of the month! :-).
We try to find a nice topic every livestream. The past streams have been set up around the 1000 Euro class. This is because we are curious what you can find in this price range. That there are nice streamers for sale, we now know. That there are good amplifiers for sale for 1000 Euro, we now also found out. But what about a floorstanding loudspeaker? Your author was quite skeptical. After all: a speaker cabinet is pricey to make. Therefore, a monitor speaker is – usually – a better choice in this price range…. Right? You can read the answer below.
The canditates
We have four speakers this time. A DALI Oberon 5 of 700 Euro per pair. A set of Acoustic Energy 120.2 of 990 Euro per pair. Then a pair of Focal Theva N2 of 1400 Euro per pair and as a bonus a pair of Fenton…. 200 Euro per pair. How low can you go?
The test setup
We test the four candidates on both the Pass Labs X150.8 and the Creek 4040A amplifier: one of the favorites of the amplifier test.
As a source we set up the Alpha PC which sends its signal out to a Mutec MC3 USB which sends the AES signal to the Sonnet Pasithea. This directly drives the Pass Labs X150.8. Or, in other words, the Creek 4040A.
The speaker cable is the Driade Flow Reference. The Pass X150.8 is connected to the Isotek Titan filter. The sources to the Yeti Reference. Interlinks are from Grimm. Power cables are from Yeti.
Let’s go see how they sound!