2013 Stereophile recommendations

chumlie

http://www.stereophile.com/content/2013-recommended-components

cnh

I was happy to see that the new Polk LsiM 703 bookies came off well in that review. They deserve it!

cnh

Inspector 24

Thanks! Mentally exhausted from spending a couple hours reading crap, but lots of fun stuff!

mrbigbluelight

Very nice review indeed.

I like the reviewer (John Atkinson) and his methodology.
"Ok, the 703's sound excellent with excellent source material, let's see how they sound with a crap source".

"In honor of the death of actor George Lindsey, who played Goober Pyle on The Andy Griffith Show from 1964 to 1968, I dug out his 96 Miles to Bakersfield (LP, Capitol ST-230), the sequel to Goober Sings. I was a fan of the show in my childhood, but that's not why I chose this record. It holds the unique honor of being the musically worst of my 12,000 LPs. Stereophile's founder, J. Gordon Holt, once posited that a recording's sound quality tends to be inversely proportional to its musical merit."

And, as could be expected, the 703 was able to fully reveal what a horrible recording this record was. In ALL its horribleness.
There's actually a method to that madness.

If you can pull yourself away from the Class A ("slobber & drool") section, Polk's Rti A3 can be found in the Class D section ("You'll easily live with these affordable speakers while you save up for better").
Nice realistic review there, too.

Thanks for posting Chumlie.

hochpt21

Yes, I found this very entertaining. I was doing the slobber and drool thing also.

ZLTFUL

DSkip wrote: »

The pioneer bookies were not listed and, quite honestly, would get my vote over the rti or monitors. Astounding speaker for a bill. Simply astounding.

QFT brother...CUE EFF TEE!

cnh

The entry level Pioneers? Really?

I know BB is not the best place to demo speakers, but that's all I've seen. I've run those Pioneers against Polk TSI-100s several times and EVERY time the Pioneers sound muddy and dull by comparison? So either it's the Yamaha receivers they're running on, or the lower Efficiency of the Pioneers. It's always struck me as ODD that Pioneer would design a cheaper speaker that was so inefficient, especially when they KNOW that such speakers are going to be run on cheaper receivers that are not power mongers?

cnh