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Jubes vs “High end audiophile speakers”


AHall

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Question for the people that own or have experienced Jubilees with premium gear and drivers. Has anyone also listened to the very expensive premium speakers like Wilson, Magico, Focal, Martin Logan, Avantgarde, etc? I haven’t had the pleasure to do so yet, but hope to this year at RMAF. I was curious of your specific and overall thoughts on the matter. I know the this vs that is fairly pointless, but what the hay. 

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34 minutes ago, AHall said:

 

Its just for fun. I’ll never be able to afford or justify $100k speakers anyway so it won’t hurt my feelings. 

I'd like to hear some of those as well, and I'm in the same boat...I could never afford any of them. I do have a crush on the AvantGarde though.

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On 3/1/2019 at 2:48 AM, Shakeydeal said:

But if one wanted to buy a turnkey jubilee, or piece one together, what would the respective costs be?

I do not keep up with current prices but I would say under 15K, 10 or less for the speakers and 5 for active crossover, amps, and preamp.

Now, this is considering NOT going crazy with amps and preamp. I say this because you could easily spend the whole 15K  on just the amps if you wanted or wires.:o

 

This just a guess

 

 

 

 

 

.

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Martin Logan SL-3s driven by a McIntosh integrated sounded remarkably like my modded La Scalas driven by my Acurus Preamp and Parasound amp, but with a sound stage a mile wide and yards deep.  I got to listen to Holly Cole for almost an hour at Nicholson's in BNA.  They had Pipedreams, too.  Boucou $$$ and driven by a Mac MC-2000.  they were aweful.  Boomy like an old Infinity Reference Standard.  Just intolerable; I didn't even sit down. 

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No, I have never heard any of the $100,000 to $1,000,000 Speakers, but I have heard plenty of Jubilees in different settings and with different drivers. To your original question, I would make two statements.

 

1) An observation that MOST of the high end speakers are NOT fully Horn loaded tells me how much subjective distortion/coloring they probably have.

 

2) Money and names don't mean a lot to me, and shouldn't to you either. For reference of what I am alluding to, I would direct you to look up "Gotleib Big Red Camaro" This Camaro routinely blew the doors off of ALL the mega dollar cars in a multi state race of run what ya brung until they outlawed the Camaro for bruising to many big rich egos.

 

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18 hours ago, twistedcrankcammer said:

No, I have never heard any of the $100,000 to $1,000,000 Speakers, but I have heard plenty of Jubilees in different settings and with different drivers. To your original question, I would make two statements.

 

1) An observation that MOST of the high end speakers are NOTZ fully Horn loaded tells me how much subjective distortion/coloring they probably have.

 

2) Money and names don't mean a lot to me, and shouldn't to you either. For reference of what I am alluding to, I would direct you to look up "Gotleib Big Red Camaro" This Camaro routinely blew the doors off of ALL the mega dollar cars in a multi state race of run what ya brung until they outlawed the Camaro for bruising to many big rich egos.

 

 

It was more of a curiousity than anything for our experienced listeners. I’ve never seen much chatter about it. For the most part you seem to have the people that have jube experience that haven’t had a chance to compare them to other highly regarded speakers. Then you have the people that haven’t heard jubes that assume they sound like big PA speakers. Just an observation. 

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I have listened to avantgarde duos. It was about 15 years ago. They did sound wonderful but hard to justify price wise. I have not heard jubs but I have owned and still own khorns and for the $ they’re quite hard to surpass. Neighbor owns some German audiophysique omnidirectional speakers that overwhelm the house despite a ton of room acoustical treatments. I’ve listened to some other upscale brand that were pricey and very ‘beamy’. If I could get some avant-garde monos for cheap I’d get them as they’re not so massive. 

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I have had the opportunity to hear several "megabuck" systems:

 

*Avantgarde Trios driven by Audio Note Ongaku (liked)

 

*Wilson X-1/Grand SLAMMs driven by big Levinson amps (not my cup of tea)

 

*Full Levinson HQD system: stacked Quad ESL57s, Decca Ribbon tweeter, 24" Hartley on each side driven by 4 Levinson ML2s on each side (really liked)

 

And several other similar high end systems.

 

I've had Klipschorns, La Scalas, KG 4.5 and Belles, still have the Belles. Have also listened to Fortes at length in a friend's system.

 

I've never had the opportunity to listen to the Jubilees, something I need to rectify.

 

It is my opinion that most of the stratospheric "megabuck" systems will not work that well in the "real world" rooms most of us share with our families.

 

Just my opinion.

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14 hours ago, TubeHiFiNut said:

 

 

It is my opinion that most of the stratospheric "megabuck" systems will not work that well in the "real world" rooms most of us share with our families.

 

I think this is key.  If you have the money for the mega-buck systems, you will usually come up with the room (if you are smart at least).  Then the speakers and room can function as one which can be significant vs buying speakers and just plopping them down cause you have to live with them.

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I once listened to some Wilsons while in Atlanta.  Frankly, I was unimpressed.  Perhaps I was biased....  I don't know but I usually want to like what I'm listening to and try to keep an open mind.

 

I went to one of those Axpona (sp?) shows while in Florida.  I heard a variety of upper & high end speakers there.  I didn't lust for a SINGLE one of them as I was leaving....zero, nada.  Somewhere I have a thread about that with some pictures.  I'll try to find it when I get home.

 

Yeah, I probably have some bias in me....  but when the bias sounds as good as it does, it might be a bit justified.

 

 

 

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26 minutes ago, pzannucci said:

I think this is key.  If you have the money for the mega-buck systems, you will usually come up with the room (if you are smart at least).  Then the speakers and room can function as one which can be significant vs buying speakers and just plopping them down cause you have to live with them.

 

Very true.

 

I'm fortunate to have our 14' x 25' basement den as my listening room. Works great for my Belles, JBLs and Lowthers. Not big enough for most of the huge, multi-way megabuck speakers I've heard.

 

Just my opinion.

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3 hours ago, Coytee said:

Yeah, I probably have some bias in me....  but when the bias sounds as good as it does, it might be a bit justified. 

 

You took La Scalas to college, so you are pretty well justified in saying that...😁

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When we were in Hope several years ago and heard the Jubs vs. the Paladiums that was telling.  It was a totally different type of sound.  It is hard to compare horns bass to bass reflex.  The Pals had a much smoother sounding bass.  I can remember the Jubs sounding "bumpy"...........a bump in the cabinet, less smooth.

 

JWC used to have a pair of McIntosh towers that had multiple woofers and like 70 tweeters or something like that.  I don't know which model.  When I would hear those I was always very impressed.  Everything sounded great on those.  Nothing like Jubs horn bass.  Hard to compare.  He ended up trading them eventually.

 

But I will say this...........if someone wanted to trade me a pair of Wilsons or other mega-buck speakers and take my jubs............I'd take the deal.  I'm not stupid.  Jubs sound great.  But they are not the end all.  Let's be serious.  There are a lot of speakers that can sound better.  I really like some of the JBLs.  Let's not even discuss Danley.

 

I won't be selling my MCM anytime soon either.  Yes........there are other Klipsch that sound better than Jubs, and I have them.   :)

 

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On 2/28/2019 at 9:50 PM, AHall said:

I haven’t had the pleasure to do so yet, but hope to this year at RMAF. I was curious of your specific and overall thoughts on the matter.

At some level of performance, it is my experience that loudspeakers+rooms will begin to all sound alike when the performance gets to a threshold level (just like very good amplifiers, etc.)  Once you begin to achieve really good performance, you soon start to be limited by the recordings themselves--in my experience.  I've run into this limitation in spades--which is probably why I've started to demaster my own recordings...(YMMV).

 

Here are some problems that won't go away from this type of discussion:

  1. there will be people that have imprinted on a certain sound that loudspeakers can produce in either home or professional venues (not their acoustic instrumentation),
  2. others will have imprinted on the real thing, i.e., the sound of acoustic instrumentation (either on stage or in the audience), and
  3. others that have imprinted on music that has no "realistic sound" other than what you'd hear if you want to a big electrified concert in an arena or perhaps rave type of environment--i.e., electronica of the various and sundry flavors.

These groups of people will never agree on what sounds best, especially if they can see the loudspeakers that they're listening to (and their brand names). 

 

I'd personally listen to people who are trained musicians to their impressions of a sound system and that have a good concept of what acoustic instrumentation sound like in real life.  If you can reproduce good acoustic instrumentation very well, you can reproduce anything else well--in my experience (like PWK also said).  Conversely, if you have a system that is suited only for a particular type of music genre, it usually can't reproduce other music well, certainly not accurately to the signal being fed to it.

 

I've found, unfortunately (but perhaps not surprisingly) that many/most loudspeakers in typical homes are not dialed-in very well (even though the owners might think that they are) and are regularly playing music that is at least 10x worse fidelity than the loudspeakers are capable of reproducing well--especially on this forum with the capabilities of well-designed horn-loaded loudspeakers.

 

I know that the weakest link (by far) and the ultimate limiting factor in any sound reproduction system is the room.  Most people I find don't even know what they need to do to get better room acoustics.

 

For me, I've never heard a sound reproduction system at an audio show that sounded anything near what I've got dialed in at home presently.  There's also a lot of BS that I've read about how these high priced systems sound.  I think people's memories of the sound quality of these loudspeakers and rooms are often contaminated by other factors not related to the sound itself.

 

The best systems that I've heard were built into custom venues in fairly large theater or stadium-type seating arrangements (i.e., much larger than a home installation), and having a very large horn radiating areas and controlled reflections/reverberation times vs. frequency.  They never seem to be at audio shows.

 

Chris

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15 hours ago, mark1101 said:

When we were in Hope several years ago and heard the Jubs vs. the Paladiums that was telling.  It was a totally different type of sound.  It is hard to compare horns bass to bass reflex.  The Pals had a much smoother sounding bass.  I can remember the Jubs sounding "bumpy"...........a bump in the cabinet, less smooth.

 

JWC used to have a pair of McIntosh towers that had multiple woofers and like 70 tweeters or something like that.  I don't know which model.  When I would hear those I was always very impressed.  Everything sounded great on those.  Nothing like Jubs horn bass.  Hard to compare.  He ended up trading them eventually.

 

But I will say this...........if someone wanted to trade me a pair of Wilsons or other mega-buck speakers and take my jubs............I'd take the deal.  I'm not stupid.  Jubs sound great.  But they are not the end all.  Let's be serious.  There are a lot of speakers that can sound better.  I really like some of the JBLs.  Let's not even discuss Danley.

 

I won't be selling my MCM anytime soon either.  Yes........there are other Klipsch that sound better than Jubs, and I have them.   :)

 

Interesting statement....

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