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High-End Audio Buyer’s Guide: Floorstanding Loudspeakers $2000-$5000

High-End Audio Buyer’s Guide: Floorstanding Loudspeakers $2000-$5000

Vandersteen 2Ce Signature II
$2395
The Vandersteen 2 is the classic three-way floorstander, delivering excellent top-to-bottom balance and an engaging musicality. Moreover, Vandersteen’s baffle-less, time-and-phasecoherent design can suggest the spatial focus usually heard with planars. It benefits from bi-wiring and should be placed away from walls. The first-order crossovers essential to the time-coherent performance somewhat limit maximum sound-pressure levels.

High-End Audio Buyer’s Guide: Floorstanding Loudspeakers $2000-$5000

Dynaudio Excite X32
$2800
Sounding surprisingly large for its relatively small dimensions and driver complement, the Excite X32 also delivers a fair amount of detail and dynamic impact at its price. The details come across as well integrated into a musical whole that also blends in tonal colors and a sense of weight quite well. While it can’t keep up with more expensive Dynaudio speakers like the Confidence C1 in soundstage size or that sense of a continuously layered musical event, the X32’s main attraction is its engaging, compelling musical verve.

High-End Audio Buyer’s Guide: Floorstanding Loudspeakers $2000-$5000

Thiel SCS4T/USS SmartSub
$3490/$3690
The SCS4T is an excellent, smaller-room floorstander. Equipped with Jim Thiel’s coincident driver it is a beautifully executed product with class-leading imaging and spatial precision. On its own it has a fast, tightly controlled presentation, leaning a bit to the drier side in the treble. Partnered with Thiel’s powered USS SmartSub it takes on an entirely new character. With Thiel’s patented room-boundary correction circuitry and outboard passive crossovers, the SmartSub becomes one with the SCS4T. Bass frequencies are delicately feathered in precisely where the towers roll off, adding greater ambience, dimensionality, and acoustic warmth. Integration is both natural and seamless.

High-End Audio Buyer’s Guide: Floorstanding Loudspeakers $2000-$5000

PSB Imagine T2
$3500
These elegant floorstanding speakers of moderate size offer a surprisingly “big” sound, with dynamics sufficient to present largescaled music convincingly and enough bass to cover orchestral and rock music, though pipe organ enthusiasts will want to add a subwoofer or two. The T2s vanish into the soundfield and present a suitably expansive sonic picture when the recording justifies it. They sound very low in distortion with a pure midrange and a very clean treble. And they have a truth to timbre, a tonal neutrality, that is top level, showing a clean pair of heels in this regard in particular to many high-end speakers of far higher price. Orchestras have a life-like tonal realism that is startling, pianos sound like pianos, vocals like people singing. Paul Barton has produced a masterpiece here, and at a most reasonable price.

High-End Audio Buyer’s Guide: Floorstanding Loudspeakers $2000-$5000

 

Vienna Acoustics Mozart Concert Grand SE
$3500
The SE or Symphony Edition of the Mozart Grand is a 2.5-way floorstanding speaker in a bass-reflex configuration with twin rear-firing ports. The SE has a wide-band responsiveness, transparency, and micro-dynamic resolving power that keenly suit classical and acoustic music. Tonally it conveys a delicacy often found in narrow, small-driver, columnar speakers—only the SE adds genuine mid-30Hz bass and great midrange dynamics. Some may find its relaxed upper mids almost too pretty, lacking in forward thrust, and its bass a little thick and slow when the speaker is pushed hard. But keep in mind that the SE is designed to play at realistic levels in medium-sized and smaller rooms. A beautifully constructed and appointed floorstander with the soul and fast moves of a compact.

High-End Audio Buyer’s Guide: Floorstanding Loudspeakers $2000-$5000

Vandersteen 3A Signature
$4495
Like all Vandersteens, the Golden Ear Award-winning 3A Signature is time-andphase accurate. Its driver complement features the patented midrange and tweeter used in the vaunted Vandersteen 5. The 3A Signature has a relaxed presentation, is musically seductive, and will appeal to those who want to forget about the sound and enjoy the music, though it does trade off some dynamic contrast and midrange resolution for its overall ability to involve the listener.

High-End Audio Buyer’s Guide: Floorstanding Loudspeakers $2000-$5000

Dynaudio Focus 260
$4900
Dynaudio has completely redesigned its popular Focus line with new cabinets, drivers, and crossovers. The subtly updated cosmetics and new model numbers may not necessarily catch your attention as a significant product-line revision, but the Focus 260, for one, is noteworthy. It is a fabulous, small, floor-standing, all-around performer. This three-driver, 2.5- way speaker is easy to power and is not particularly difficult to place in a listening room, either. It has a neutral tonal balance and wonderfully articulate and extended bass for its size and price. The 260 can’t keep up with speakers like the Maggie 3.7 in overall resolution (not many similarly priced speakers can), but the 260 is easier to drive and doesn’t require as much space to perform well. The Focus 260’s main trait is its beguiling musicality. An easy speaker to like in every way.

High-End Audio Buyer’s Guide: Floorstanding Loudspeakers $2000-$5000

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