REVIEW: Swan T200B Desktop Monitors - Page 3

I get absolutely nothing when I run a search, and in any case I probably wouldn't be able to audition them. Swan just aren't very big over here, fact. If they were they'd actually turn up in a search or via the online retailers.

Anyway, I made a list of what I wanted to hear that was fairly available in my part of the world, what I could audition, and then what I could fit in my limited space and used that. :)

Yeah, I mean the ones I want won the 2009 MIPA at Musikmasse, where the products are voted for by 100 industry magazines. They won best nearfield speaker. :) Don't get me wrong, I'd like to hear the Swans, but it's a similar situation to you guys being able to hear XTZ speakers. Some things just have very little presence outside their own country/region. The Swans would certainly be cheaper to buy!

Speaking of American speakers, I am absolutely dying to build some Linkwitz Plutos after reading so much about them. The Orions are well out of my budget, but the Plutos seem like an awesome semi-DIY project with outstanding cost/performance ratio I could afford in the near future. Anyway, sorry. Swans. Carry on. :D

I am finally gonna get a real pair of speakers and I am thinking about getting these.

I dont have an amp so I would just use them for music and home theater in largish (15 by 20) room.

I love my K701s for their detail and soundstage, but wish they were a bit warmer and had more bass.

Should I buy the t200b?

Thanks.

If you want a warmer sound, no.

These aren't meant to be listened to in a room where you're sitting back. They're desktop speakers and work best when facing toward you sitting close to it. And since you plan to use them for home theater in a largish room, I would suggest against these. The bass is good, but it won't suit what you're going to need.

If you still want Swan and not a subwoofer, I think the M200 MkIII is best for your needs since you can change the sound right on the speakers. 6moons has done a very good review on them.

Good thread. Any thoughts on pairing the MKII with a lower level DAC in the $150-200 range? Or if it scales up well, what is a good price range for a DAC?

This is for a computer system where I will listen mainly to lossy iTunes files, rock (Apple lossless), and any other Apple lossless files of CDs of mediocre quality.

Edited for clarity.

I ended up ordering the M200MKIII from Lockware. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by HxCKhaos 

Great choice man, you will cry when you hear how beautiful swan speakers sound xD

 

Btw if your still interested in a cheaper dac, I've heard good things about this one: http://www.amazon.com/NuForce-uDAC-2-Black-Headphone-24bit/dp/B003Y5FRNS/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1310967341&sr=1-2

I've decided to forego the cheap dac option--not sure which dac I'm going with yet. Ground shipping from the east coast is going to take forever.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Somnambulist 

This one's a great sub test:

 

As is this, those 10hz 'mines' have ruined many a speaker!

Wow my modded BX5's can handle the lowest note on the top one & be audible at 1/2 volume.I did have to  crank it a bit to make it audible but not excessively. The notes on the bottom one are a bit lower on average it seems but are also buried by louder midrange sounds. Obviously these speakers will never make 10 Hz audible but niether will any other either. 10Hz is not directly audible to the human ear. These speaker do handle the 10Hz signal quite well as far as not bottoming out at high volume though, then again at less than 50 watts power amp capability I would not expect most speaker to bottom out

 One of the mods done to these speakers was D.C. coupling the woofer amps & secondly removing the subsonic filter. The tweeter amp is D.C. capable in term of amplification but the nessesry item such as the crossover blocks D.C. from getting to the tweeter amp. Thats ok as you don't actually want any D.C. on the drivers but having the amps that have that capability seems to remove a lot of coloration & radically improve the soundstage with recording that were designed to capture the soundstage anyway.

Quote:

Originally Posted by germanium 

 One of the mods done to these speakers was D.C. coupling the woofer amps & secondly removing the subsonic filter. The tweeter amp is D.C. capable in term of amplification but the nessesry item such as the crossover blocks D.C. from getting to the tweeter amp. Thats ok as you don't actually want any D.C. on the drivers but having the amps that have that capability seems to remove a lot of coloration & radically improve the soundstage with recording that were designed to capture the soundstage anyway.

What you've done is dangerous. The subsonic filter is there and caps are there for a reason. If your source passes through DC (can happen with computer sound cards), there's no protection for your tweeter and woofer. As for the subsonic filter, it is there to filter out the really low frequencies that can bottom out and kill your woofer. Tread cautiously.

Anyway, your speakers didn't 'handle' 10hz; all you heard was harmonic distortion from the amp, woofer or both.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sorue 

What you've done is dangerous. The subsonic filter is there and caps are there for a reason. If your source passes through DC (can happen with computer sound cards), there's no protection for your tweeter and woofer. As for the subsonic filter, it is there to filter out the really low frequencies that can bottom out and kill your woofer. Tread cautiously.

 

Anyway, your speakers didn't 'handle' 10hz; all you heard was harmonic distortion from the amp, woofer or both.

I made no claim of even audibility of 10 Hz & 10 Hz would not be audible anyway no matter the speaker. As to the cap issues & the D.C. coupling as well as the removal of the subsonic filter I have been doing these things for years & I have never seen a computer soundcard fail in a way that put out huge D.C.. They just seem to cause problems with the functioning of the computer itself it seems due to data corruption when the processor starts going on the soundcard (all X-Fi based cards I've had). I have analysed the amp to woofer perameters & determined before hand that bottoming the woofer in my current setup would not be an issue I had to contend with (not enough power)

I poted the post basically to say that curren generation of 5" woofers can put out an amazing amount of bass for thier size

Also I would appreciate reading the whole post before addressing me as most of the issues you brought up about my post pertaining to what I claim were clear the way I posted them that I was not for example claiming audibility of 10Hz , quite the contrary I made it clear in my post that I was referring to not bottoming the speaker in spite of the removal of the subsonic filter. As to the tweeter I mentioned that the crossover was still intact for the tweeter in that outside D.C. could not reach the tweeter. Yes the tweeter amp is capable of D.C. amplification but D.C. is not allowed to get to the amp from any source.D.C. can get to the woofer amp though & I measured the D.C. offset & it was low enough to not be a concern.

Consider this, there are big name amplifier companies that do D.C. coupling as well. This is not as unusual practice as you may think & it is my personal feeling that it produces the best most neutral sound. I have taken amps that were very colored before hand & D.C. coupled them & they sounded identical to the source afterwards.