Hey, welcome aboard!

Good to see you are already checking out Ebay!

So far, your choices look pretty nice. Those KEF may please you without a subwoofer.

I've heard that Kirsch name before...how did they sound when you hooked them up? I checked their website, nice! The retail is pretty high on their line of speakers. If you don't have your heart set on the KEF, those babies may be just the ticket!

Look forward to seeing how your system progresses.

Quote:

By the way...
One of my clients gave me a set of Kirsch (I could have swore he called them klipsch) K803's the other day, new in the box. They are beautifull floor standing speakers. I hooked them up tonight and listened to them.... I'll sell them cheap if anyone is interested...
S

I listened t a pair of Kirsch speakers a few years back...and forgot all about them. For obvious reasons, as you now know. You can find their top-of-the-line speakers on ebay for $500 (pair) - that should tell you something.
Someone compared them to the speakers sold out of a van on a parking lot/side of the road. Enough said.

The NAD and KEF set-up sounds like a good choice. I've heard the NAD 5.1 set up with Def Tech speakers...very impressive. Keep us posted .

Welcome!
I have bought used equipment on audiogon.com
Have fun and keep us updated.

> and I'm looking at KEF for speakers.

Why? (no criticism implied - I have owned several pairs).

> It looks like I can get a decent deal on 104.2's. With the
> big floor standing speakers like the 104's, will I still
> want a subwoofer?

It depends on your tastes in music. For example, loud deep bass is important to some types of modern popular music. The problem is that accurate loud deep bass is usually both expensive and requires attention to the room. Cheap subwoofers can often do the loud and deep but not the accurate leading to significant numbers of people preferring to do without.

> Any other recomendations for speakers?

Listen before you buy. Loudspeakers have by far the biggest influence on the quality of the sound and the manufacturers of audiophile loudspeakers do not all strive towards the same sound unlike, say, proaudio loudspeakers which generally do.

I have a confession to make.

The Kirsch speakers are part of the white van audio scam lines, like Paradyme, Teal, Technical, and other names that sound familiar to people but aren't real brands.

I was worried we had a white van person in our midst, so I mentioned their faux website and list price to see what would happen.

The Kirsch are worth exactly 20 dollars or so LESS than what you paid...which I do hope was zero dollars.

Best to end their legacy the best way possible and re-gift them. It would be tough to live with yourself knowing that an unsuspecting buyer on Ebay actually paid for them.

So, pardon my slight prevarication before.

Do keep us posted on your system, we love to help in that regard.

> Kef has some satalite systems, (as well as many other brands), how do
> they stack up against a big pair of floor speakers?

So long as they are not cheap then there is no reason for the mid or treble to be compromised but the bass will be. The laws of physics require a lot of air to get shifted to get bass and this requires big drive units which in turn require big cabinets. Trying to get bass by moving a small drive unit a long way causes distortion as does trying to use a big drive unit to play the mid frequencies forcing the use of 3 or 4 way systems for big cabinets.

Satellite systems try to take advantage of the fact that very low frequencies in a room contain no directional information for the ear and so you need only one subwoofer. The potential downsides of this are setting the crossover too high so that you can hear the bass coming from the subwoofer which is common with small satellite speakers systems.

About NAD surround equipment. I bought a NAD T752 surround reciever and wasn't happy with the sound. Put it on the bench and ran some tests and found that the frequency response rolled off quickly below 100Hz. Selecting speaker size between small and large made no difference. Returned it and got another unit. Same results. Contacted NAD and their response was that they only speced the power amp section and not the front end.
Don't know about other NAD models, but the T752 sucks.

> Put it on the bench and ran some tests and found that the
> frequency response rolled off quickly below 100Hz.

This behaviour is correct if you have the subwoofer setting selected because that is where the low frequencies have been sent. If the subwoofer was deselected then it is an error.

Misassembly often occurs in batches and dealers often take delivery of several units at a time making it fairly common for a dealer to have more than one unit with the same fault.

When you ring up customer support for pretty much any company these days with more than 1 employee the person answering the phone is usually the most junior person in the company because everyone else has something better to do and does not want to go nuts answering typical customer support questions. If they do not know the answer they can usually be persuaded to go off and find someone who can.