Hi All.
'One can never have enough speakers' a wise man (and it was definitely a man) once told me in the 1980s. I can live with aphorims like this and have attempted to follow this rule/guideline ever since. The fact that my SO and myself for professional reasons currently spend half the week in our abode abroad and the other half here in Blighty has made new speaker acquisitions necessary, as two pairs have now been moved from one location to the other, leaving me with a floorstander-sized hole in my reading room.
Now I am not made of money, and two households are a costly affair, so I looked at the (very) lower end of affordable floorstanders. As they garnered a content panther, I started with the Polk Audio T50s and was quite pleased with my acquistion, as they are indeed lovely speakers (though I found that they need quite a bit of oomph, so not perfect for my vintage Rotels). I then stumbled over a set of floorstander described by the blurb as 'a stylish 4-way HiFi floor-standing speaker pair for the best sound at home', 'low-vibration bass reflex cabinet made of wood-look MDF', '960 watts max. total sound power' and, most importantly a "side-firing 16.5 cm subwoofer, two 9.5 cm midrange speakers and a 9.5 cm tweeter per speaker". All of that for £89 ($115 in US money). Auna, their distributor, is a Berlin based outfit and the reviews on Amazon were definitely mixed, with people complaining about the build quality (tweeters loose, screws falling out, MDF busted, etc), so I knew what to expect. They arrived via UPS within 3 days, and indeed were broken.
On both speakers the tweeters and their bracket had fallen out, as had one of the middle speakers. The wood screws that attach the tweeter are far to small for their holes, so they are not particularly well attached. The middle speaker is not screwed at all, you just push it back into it's hole. Repair took only 15 minutes (might have to revisit them to find a better solution), and then they were hooked up to the mighty Fosi Audio TPA3255-A.
And you know what? Music was produced. It wasn't particularly subtle, but there was definitely imaging going on and a soundstage was present. Boy were they boomy: mid bass reverberated around the room, and I had to reduce the volume to appease my poor neighbours. Steely Dan and Donald Fagen's vocals sounded a bit like the Don was hiding behind an unlifted veil while recording, but it was definitely not unpleasant. Chamber music worked well, Level 42's 'Love Games' didn't break the MDF or made the woofer pop out of their hole. The only time when I started getting suspicious of some distortion and rattling was the end of Mahler's second symphony (David Zinman, Tonhalle Orchestra), but hey, even my KEF 105s struggle with that recording. As a teenager I would have probably loved them (I imagine BIC's 'eviction' model sounding similar). Rameau's 'Dardanus Suite' was perfectly listenable, as were various other baroque and early classic oevres.
This being ASR, I feel rather guilty for not being able to supply you with measurements (though if you point me to a guide how to do this with a Rode NT USB microphone in an echoey room I'll give it a go), but from a purely subjectivist point of view, you can't really go wrong with them. If you have to supply a teenager/student with a pair of floorstanders or have a garage/kitchen that needs music and are not afraid of a 15 mins of DIY, you have a choice for a pretty competitive price. Not sure whether you would find bookshelve speakers with stands in that price bracket.
Picture to compare size to Polk T50. Definitely high WAF. They now do duty as surround speakers where their narrowness makes them easy to hide from the SO. Happy to answer any queries.
'One can never have enough speakers' a wise man (and it was definitely a man) once told me in the 1980s. I can live with aphorims like this and have attempted to follow this rule/guideline ever since. The fact that my SO and myself for professional reasons currently spend half the week in our abode abroad and the other half here in Blighty has made new speaker acquisitions necessary, as two pairs have now been moved from one location to the other, leaving me with a floorstander-sized hole in my reading room.
Now I am not made of money, and two households are a costly affair, so I looked at the (very) lower end of affordable floorstanders. As they garnered a content panther, I started with the Polk Audio T50s and was quite pleased with my acquistion, as they are indeed lovely speakers (though I found that they need quite a bit of oomph, so not perfect for my vintage Rotels). I then stumbled over a set of floorstander described by the blurb as 'a stylish 4-way HiFi floor-standing speaker pair for the best sound at home', 'low-vibration bass reflex cabinet made of wood-look MDF', '960 watts max. total sound power' and, most importantly a "side-firing 16.5 cm subwoofer, two 9.5 cm midrange speakers and a 9.5 cm tweeter per speaker". All of that for £89 ($115 in US money). Auna, their distributor, is a Berlin based outfit and the reviews on Amazon were definitely mixed, with people complaining about the build quality (tweeters loose, screws falling out, MDF busted, etc), so I knew what to expect. They arrived via UPS within 3 days, and indeed were broken.
On both speakers the tweeters and their bracket had fallen out, as had one of the middle speakers. The wood screws that attach the tweeter are far to small for their holes, so they are not particularly well attached. The middle speaker is not screwed at all, you just push it back into it's hole. Repair took only 15 minutes (might have to revisit them to find a better solution), and then they were hooked up to the mighty Fosi Audio TPA3255-A.
And you know what? Music was produced. It wasn't particularly subtle, but there was definitely imaging going on and a soundstage was present. Boy were they boomy: mid bass reverberated around the room, and I had to reduce the volume to appease my poor neighbours. Steely Dan and Donald Fagen's vocals sounded a bit like the Don was hiding behind an unlifted veil while recording, but it was definitely not unpleasant. Chamber music worked well, Level 42's 'Love Games' didn't break the MDF or made the woofer pop out of their hole. The only time when I started getting suspicious of some distortion and rattling was the end of Mahler's second symphony (David Zinman, Tonhalle Orchestra), but hey, even my KEF 105s struggle with that recording. As a teenager I would have probably loved them (I imagine BIC's 'eviction' model sounding similar). Rameau's 'Dardanus Suite' was perfectly listenable, as were various other baroque and early classic oevres.
This being ASR, I feel rather guilty for not being able to supply you with measurements (though if you point me to a guide how to do this with a Rode NT USB microphone in an echoey room I'll give it a go), but from a purely subjectivist point of view, you can't really go wrong with them. If you have to supply a teenager/student with a pair of floorstanders or have a garage/kitchen that needs music and are not afraid of a 15 mins of DIY, you have a choice for a pretty competitive price. Not sure whether you would find bookshelve speakers with stands in that price bracket.
Picture to compare size to Polk T50. Definitely high WAF. They now do duty as surround speakers where their narrowness makes them easy to hide from the SO. Happy to answer any queries.
Last edited: