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What speaker to choose for 130 Pro
#1
I have a USD15K budget for my new HiFi and is closed to choose the 130 Pro; have also short listed the Sonus Faber Venere Signature or Olympia 2 Speakers or the Focal sopia N1 speakers; are those good match? what are your suggestions?
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#2
The Golden Ear Triton Reference is getting good writups as is the Hyperion 968, although they may stretch your budget once you factor in cables.
Edit: don’t forget the Olympica ll.  My pair are still running in, but are fantastic.
Project Eperience X Pack with Ortofon Rondo Red MC, Oppo BDP 105D, 2 x Sonos Connect, QNAP HS251+ NAS with 2 X 6TB Western Digital Red, Mac 5K 32GB running Lifetime Roon, iPad Pro 12.9" for remote control.  Etalon Ethernet Isolator, Devialet 440 Pro CI, Sonus faber Olympica ll with Isoacoustics Gaia ll feet, Auralic Taurus Mkll headphone amp.Denon AH-D5000, Sennheiser HD600 and HD800 with Cardas cable,  Van Den Hul The First Ultimate and Crystal interconnects, Furutech power cables, GSP Audio Spatia speaker cable.
South Coast England
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#3
I would suggest looking at Harbeth.  Just about anything out of their line makes for a wonderful combination with Devialet.
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Roon for life, VPI Aries 3D le/Dynavector XV-1s, 1000 Pro, KEF Blade Two
Okanagan, British Columbia
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#4
Thanks Axel and Jim.
I have checked and found pretty good review for the speakers you both have suggested, yet I could obtain the consent from my wife due to their appearance. Now we are struggling if we should spend more for aPair of KEF Blade 2. Any suggestion?
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#5
(07-Oct-2017, 10:30)Albert Ho Wrote: Thanks Axel and Jim.
I have checked and found pretty good review for the speakers you both have suggested, yet I could obtain the consent from my wife due to their appearance. Now we are struggling if we should spend more for aPair of KEF Blade 2. Any suggestion?

Coincidently, I have just been corresponding via PM with another member about Devialet amps and the Blade 2, part of the correspondence is worth repeating here:

The first demo I had of the Blades was a Dealer that used a Devialet 240 for the audition.  It was a good demo and I think this is when I fell in love with the Blades.  Anyway, at the time I was not convinced that I wanted a Devialet amp, I much preferred the idea of big class A mono blocks, separate DAC, and so on.  So I then went on a mission to try the Blades with all kinds of amplifiers, various Plinius including the big class A's, Bryston (various), Chord Electronics (various), Audio Research, and others.  After all this, I concluded that the best was the Devialet D240 that was used for that first audition.  Thinking things through, I felt that the D170 (as it was before the firmware upgrade that created the D200) was probably all I would need, and it was a lot cheaper than the D240.  So I then arranged to try the Blades with a D170.  Here is the thing, of all the amplifiers I had tried with the Blades, the D170 was the worse!  A curious thing considering the D240 was the best.  The key problem with the D170 appeared to be that all bass definition and control was messed up, creating a rather flabby and muddled sound. 

For me, the combination of the KEF Blade and Devialet is a match made in heaven, I absolutely love it, but I would worry as to if the 130Pro would do them justice.  Of course, if you start looking at the Blade 2 and say the 440Pro, then your original budget is well and truly blown!  It's just so easy to start looking around, thinking, and what started as a decent budget starts to look in peril.  That said, second hand D400's are going for very tempting prices at the moment, with the prospect of the 'Pro' upgrade scheme restarting next year. 
The other member I mention is running the Blade 2 with a D200 and is about to receive a D200 companion and go dual mono, so he may have some relevant experience coming with respect to what I have written above, it is up to him if wants to chime in, of course.
1000 Pro - KEF Blade - iFi Zen Stream - Mutec REF10 - MC3+USB - Pro-Ject Signature 12
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#6
Thanks confused. The lack of sufficient power is my worry too. Has any one experienced with match the Blade2 with 220pro.?
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#7
Hi,
I've got a pro130 connected to a pair of Focal Electra 1028be. Cables are Chorus reference. I agree with Confused: Be careful with the power as the 130 will have difficulties to drive high power demanding speakers. I tried the Sopra 2 and I could fill that the 130 had difficulties to drive them.
The 1028be works very well, Crystal sound. SAM helps to get the best of them in bass range.
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#8
And I have a 130 Pro connected to a pair of Focal Sopra 2s. In general it works fine, at least for me. It may not work for others.

It's not a simple issue of amp size. You also have to consider speaker sensitivity, room size, listening distance and choice of music plus your preferred listening level. The difference in rated sensitivity between the Sopra 2 (91 dB) and 1028Be that stef74500 has (91.5 dB) is only half a dB which is inconsequential. I sit around 2.5 metres from the Sopras in an L-shaped room around 30 sq metres in size and most of my listening is small group jazz and other small group music and I listen at what a lot of people would regard as low to medium loudness levels. I don't listen at loud levels. I rarely have any issues and mostly when I do it's with something like the occasional large scale musical work like symphonic music and even then it's recording sensitive. There's no standard for mastering music recordings like there is for movie soundtracks and some music discs seem to be mastered at much lower levels than other discs. I do most of my listening with the volume set between -15 dB and -20 dB so I have plenty of head room to play with but there are some discs where I need to increase the volume to something like -5 dB. I've never had to go to 0dB or higher. I don't think my system sounds as good with symphonic music as it does with the jazz I normally listen to but part of that is going to be due to the size of my room as much as it is to any lack of power from the 130 Pro.

Prior to the Sopras I was running my 130 Pro with a pair of Dynaudio Contour 1.3 SEs with a sensitivity rating of 84-85 dB and felt the 130 Pro worked fine with them. The Dyns were 6 dB less sensitive than the Sopras and that is a significant difference.

I can understand some people feeling that they would need more power with the Sopra 2s than the 130 Pro can provide, especially if they like lots of large scale symphonic music or loud rock and/or if they have a large room and listen at greater distances than I do. My point is that I have difficulties with black and white absolute statements that such and such a speaker needs a bigger amp than a 130 or a 220 or any other specific amp you care to name. In general I have found that a lot of speakers work better if you can couple them with larger amps but that doesn't mean that they don't work, or work only badly, with a smaller amp. A speaker can often work well with a smaller amp, and work better with a larger amp, and you're faced with the problem of whether or not you think that the improvement you get with the larger amp justifies the extra cost of the larger amp and once you start going down that rabbit hole you're also faced with the question of how much larger an amp you should go for. If you're interested in the Blades I'd look for a demo with a 130 Pro if I could get one, and see if you can arrange it in a room around the same size as your own room with your choice of music. Depending on your room size and taste in music and listening levels you may be pleasantly surprised or you may decide that it's a combination which simply does not work but I find it hard to make decisions on what will or won't work simply on the basis of a given amp's power rating. I've been surprised more than a few works over which speaker and amp combinations work and which don't.

When it comes to whether a particular speaker/amp combination will work or not, I've come to believe that the only way to find out is to "suck it and see" for yourself.
Roon Nucleus+, Devilalet Expert 140 Pro CI, Focal Sopra 2, PS Audio P12, Keces P8 LPS, Uptone Audio EtherREGEN with optical fibre link to my router, Shunyata Alpha NR and Sigma NR power cables, Shunyata Sigma ethernet cables, Shunyata Alpha V2 speaker cables, Grand Prix Audio Monaco rack, RealTRAPS acoustic treatment.

Brisbane, Qld, Australia
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#9
(06-Oct-2017, 10:49)Albert Ho Wrote: I have a USD15K budget for my new HiFi and is closed to choose the 130 Pro; have also short listed the Sonus Faber Venere Signature or Olympia 2 Speakers or the Focal sopia N1 speakers; are those good match? what are your suggestions?

If you consider little more expensive speakers. Why not audition TAD Evolution One? A bargain on the US second hand market.
Tidal --> New brand streamer/dac/preamp --> InterM R500Plus monoblocks --> Intelligent Sound Double 12 --> fractal cables --> La Suède
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#10
(06-Oct-2017, 10:49)Albert Ho Wrote: I have a USD15K budget for my new HiFi and is closed to choose the 130 Pro; have also short listed the Sonus Faber Venere Signature or Olympia 2 Speakers or the Focal sopia N1 speakers; are those good match? what are your suggestions?

I have the Atom GT1's supplied when they did a package with a 130. With Sams they shouldn't be ignored. They take a while to break in, but I have been delighted with them. They sound like floor standers. I am not saying you can't do better, but My AE1's with their own Sam's profile were completely blown away by them. 

If you want to drive big speakers you may need a 220, but my system is plenty powerful enough for me. Clarity of the system is extraordinary, every instrument , every vocal is defined. That said, unlike other systems in the past that have gone for detail, the Expert pro is melodic and lovely to listen to for long periods.
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