Speakers for my audio system

Could you please give us:
room dimensions?
wall and floor materials?
music preferences?
budget?
freq extension?

My strong advice for you is to listen as much as you can and not rely on things you read. I hope you live in a place where you can audition some equipment. Don't get caught up in any preconceived notions about:

• floorstander vs standmount
• active vs passive
• "pro" vs "consumer"
• single-driver vs multi-way
• cone vs electrostatic vs. ribbon vs. horn vs. ...
• high efficiency vs. average efficiency
• metal vs. paper vs. ...
• ported vs transmission line vs infinite baffle vs. ...
• old vs new
• balanced vs unbalanced (amp)
• etc.

For each of those points, if you do enough reading you can find any number of people proclaiming that they have found the silver bullet. Don't believe it. It may be the silver bullet for them, but not necessarily for you.

Your budget is low enough that you need to be very careful how you spend it. I would recommend putting as much of it as possible toward the speakers and not the rest of the equipment (not a popular view, but it is my advice). At that price, you will probably find that putting more money toward the speakers is going to give you far more improvement than putting it anywhere else. Some ideas:

• don't get a subwoofer
• buy used (audiogon)
• look for the cheapest amp you can get
• don't worry about wattage and speaker efficiency (but make sure it can drive whatever impedance curve you end up with)
• if the squeezebox is the only source, get a power amp (not an integrated) and use the volume control on the squeezebox
• return/sell the DacMagic and use the DAC on the squeezebox

Given your budget and room space I would go with active bookshelf/monitors.
Spend on some good speakers - perhaps used Genelec or Dynaudio pro-line? Can save on a power amp and plug the DAC directly in..

Where to start? You have lots and lots of options at $1,000. There are terrific used speakers and quite a few DIY ones. For that price range, I've built a pair of ribbons, built the ProAc Response 2.5 clones, picked up the ESS AMT-1s and Quad ESL-63s, and a pair of Moth Cicadas. All of them are excellent. If you're willing to take a stab at DIY, the ProAc clone is excellent and not too tough of a build. Keep in mind that these cost $4,500 new.

You might also want to look at planars if you have the room to set them up. Several new and used Magnepans are in your price range, and they are truly special. If you have the room to let them breathe, they'll give you a soundstage like nothing you've heard short of the real thing.

Planars are exceedingly difficult to place, and to my opinion not worth it at your price if you compare to what a monitor or active monitor can do. I would look at brands that are famous for giving super bang for the buck. I would look for monitors, look for a frequency extension around/bellow 40hz. I am of the opinion that floorstanders (unless they are dual driver) sacrifice a lot of coherency at your budget (at this price crossovers do a lot of damage) 3, 4+ drivers will sacrifice a lot, so dont be impressed by multiple drivers! start auditioning brands like Reference 3A, Dali, Mark & Daniel, Dynaudio, Neat, Focal, KEF... once you found your preference, look for the best deal at Audiogon.

Seriously consider getting active monitors and if not, pay a lot of attention at the efficiency of the monitor try getting monitors that measure above 88db, they will be more flexible once you start searching for an amp.... Good luck

For recommendation, the best monitor I have heard around your budget (all used) is the Reference 3A Doucet, followed by the Mark & Daniel Ruby, the KEF XQ20 and the Dali Mentor 2. Any of these will surprise you, they are really good speakers and perform the wonderful disappearing act....

By "p/a amp" do you mean "public address"? There are some good inexpensive "pro audio" amps out there, but most of them have cooling fans that might be another source of noise in your listening room. Also, a lot of them are class-H, and I'm not sure I'd recommend that unless you need the power.

You needn't spend much money on the amp if you decide to go passive. For example, I recently saw a NAD 2400 on craigslist go for less than $100. That was a powerful and capable amp in its day and really is all you would need for a long time.

Actives have some advantages, at least in theory, but one thing to keep in mind is that there are far far fewer active models to choose from, so you might not hit on the one that's right for you. Also, most of them are designed for the studio, so if you want some nice wood veneer or some other domestically acceptable appearance, the choice dwindles to a scant handful at your price. The Quad 12L at $900 is one of the few that comes to mind that actually looks nice. But maybe appearance isn't important to you.

If you have your heart set on "pro audio" gear and want active monitors, I might hang around ebay until I could pick up a pair of Digidesign RM2 for your budget. They take digital input, so you wouldn't need your DacMagic. It's essentially a PMC monitor for a bargain price (if you are patient enough) and with a built-in phase-corrected digital crossover and DAC. Or there's the smaller RM1 that's easily in your budget. But again, if I were you I wouldn't listen to me; I'd try to audition for myself.

This is excellent advice. The only thing I would add is that most planars such as Magnepans are very amp, source and room dependent. Based on your requirements and set up, I would stay away from them.

Also, stay away from Electrostatics...those are beautiful, but a pain to setup...

If I am completly wrong let me know and I will delete my post.

As your speakers go through the frequency range their impedance changes,some speakers that say they are '8 ohms' actually get down to maybe 6 or less as you get in the lower Hz and therefore can get harder to drive with an amp that is not very good.

Here is a post I found with an impedance curve for the K1000s:
http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f6/k10...1/#post1419253

What devin_mm said, and I will add a little more. When you turn the volume knob on your amp, you're basically making the output voltage go up or down. But to turn that voltage into sound, it has to push current through the speaker. Ohm's law:

I = V/R

means that, for a given voltage (V), when the resistance (R) goes down you need to push more current through. Impedance is basically like resistance. So a low-impedance speaker is going to be harder to drive than a high-impedance speaker because it's going to require more current.

For example, a lot of home-theater receivers have trouble with 4-ohm impedances. If you have 4-ohm speakers, you're probably better with a 20-watt amplifier that is able to drive a 4-ohm load than a 200-watt amplifier that isn't.

To make matters more complicated, as devin_mm points out, impedance changes with frequency. So if a speaker says it's "8 ohms", it might actually drop much lower than that at some frequencies. The risk there is that an amp might be able to drive those speakers well over most of the range, but won't be balanced throughout the entire frequency range.

A lot of times, people think about the wattage rating of an amplifier, but don't consider its ability to drive difficult loads. Most of the time, people can get away with a lot less watts than they think. Also, how wattage translates to loudness is counterintuitive to many people. Roughly speaking, 1000 watts sounds only twice as loud as 100 watts, which sounds only twice as loud as 10 watts, which sounds only twice as loud as 1 watt. So 1000 watts is going to be only 8 times as loud as 1 watt.

To understand impedance further and how different speakers are easier or harder to drive, I suggest looking at some stereophile speaker reviews freely available online. Don't read the reviews, just look at the measurements taken by John Atkinson. One measurement he takes is the impedance and phase graph, and he discusses how it translates to an easy or difficult load for an amp.

One more thing about this. One thing you can look for in an amp is if power doubles into 4 ohms. Remember that P = I*V. So again with Ohm's law, P = V^2 / R. So for a given voltage (V), the power (P) into 4 ohms will be double the power into 8 ohms -- assuming the amp can actually deliver the current. Most amps in practice poop out at lower wattages into 4 ohms. So, for instance, an amp that is rated at 100W into 8 ohms may only be rated at 150W into 4 ohms instead of the ideal of 200W. It doesn't mean they're bad amps or cannot drive 4 ohms. It just means that the point on the volume knob (remember, volume knob position = voltage) where it runs out of steam is lower into 4 ohms than into 8 ohms. The flip side is that 4-ohm speakers generate more acoustic power for a given voltage than 8-ohm speakers, so you won't have to turn the volume knob up as high anyhow. I hope this is making sense.

The point of all this is if you want to be really really safe, one thing you can do is look for an amp that gets close to doubling into 4 ohms. And even better, that quardruples into 2 ohms. Most amps that quardruple into 2 ohms are pretty expensive and overkill. But it's possible to find reasonably powerful amps that double into 4 ohms. For example, one of the British rags tested the Cambridge Audio 840A above its rated power into 8 ohms and exactly doubling into 4 ohms.

This is not the only measure of an amp, of course, but it's just one thing to keep in mind.