Nope, after the Argon 2s I had floorstanders for a few years so got rid of the stands ages ago. The Argon 3s are going on small stands on a multimedia cabinet where I had the KEFs Not ideal but its gonna have to do.
In my room I found that the Argon’s were happier about a foot out from the wall behind them. Distance from this wall seemed to have more of an effect than sidewalls (in my setup). What I would recommend as the optimal solution is to put them where they have the most WAF, then try and maximise the distance from the wall behind and side walls. Once you’ve got that make sure you’ve got a nice rug on the floor (seriously!). And then I’d invest in a calibrated measurement microphone and do some measurements and send them to Thierry to create you some HAF filters.
I’ve got my Amphion mono’s underneath my speaker stands on the floor. I made a DIY-isolation pad for them consisting of 1" MDF/4mm sorbothane and then the amp on top of that. The MDF is sat on four nut/ball bearings (one at each corner) to isolate from the floor. No idea if any of that helps but the sound is fantastic so I’ve left it as is! 
Thanks @Rik_Carter
That’s really useful, especially about speaker placement.
What’s WAF btw? I’m being lazy could Google it
Is the rug for acoustic diffusion, to stop reflections/standing waves etc? Am considering a few acoustic panels with artwork on them too.
Tobin
How did the Powernode2 + Amphion compared to he LS50W? I’m reconsidering the T 758 v3 because the Powernode is so flexible.
Wife Aggro Factor, is my guess
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Close… Wife Acceptance Factor… although your suggestion is probably a truer reflection
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The main difference between the Amhion/Powernode and the Ls50w is that the former has more natural, deeper and authentic bass (the Amphions are designed to go down to 38Hz… the KEF driver is really designed to roll off massively from 80hz downwards but with the onboard amp/DSP they ‘engineer’ it to reproduce 50hz bass credibly). Also the Amphion/Powernode are a lot sweeter in the higher frequencies so don’t get that slightly tiring treble of the LS50Ws. Put it like this… the Amphions do everything as well as the Ls50W and they do deep bass and higher frequencies better. Stereo imaging, directionality, phase timing, transparency, etc. are equal.
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Thanks Rik!
Well, not close at all, rather the opposite
Wife Acceptance Factor is null in my home though, so Wife Aggro Factor gives more meaningful measurements!
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The Argon 3S seems pretty similar to the new Buchardt s400 which I listened on today, it would be interesting to see them compared.
The Buchardt produce some quite unbelievable bass for its size, down to 33 Hz at -3 dB.
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Those Buchardt speakers are almost identical to the Argon 3S except the tweeter/woofer positions are swapped (and about the same price too).
Yes they are very similar, but only sold direct from Buchardt (to keep cost down) so have to wait for some reviews. I liked them when listening to them today, but it was an event so lots of noise and other people running around.
Interesting.
They have a free 30 day in home trial.
Yes, if I where to upgrade right now, I would probably do it like this:
- Buy a power amplifier, for example the Schiit Vidar (my DAC is a preamp as well).
- Borrow or buy with options to return the following speakers: Argon 3S, Buchardt s400 and Dynaudio Special 40.
- Try at home and select whichever sound best.
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I have been reading along and decided to jump in with Node 2 hooked up to my Dynaudio 110A active speakers. I took Audio Alchemy DDP-1 with PSU and a microRendu 1.4 out of the chain. I like the lower box count, and the Node 2 sounds different, but not bad at all. If I decide I like the Bluesound/NAD sound, I might try the Powernode 2 and one of the speakers discussed here. The Argon3s seem like amazing speakers, but I doubt I could get a trial in my home. But I’ll be visiting NYC in March and maybe I can find a place to listen to a pair.
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Fingers crossed you like it. I took the microRendu 1.4 out of the chain completely after extensive A/B testing (which, admittedly, is a highly subjective process so not really worth much) I decided that the rendu didn’t really add anything.
I hope you don’t mind if I just re-iterate what I now recommend to people investing in a music system:
(a) Speakers/Amp/DAC. Invest in these. But invest in kit that is designed to accept low-noise, stable balanced connections between the DAC and the AMP e.g. XLR*. This will be money well spent.
(b) Interconnects. In my time I have spent £600 on a single Naim mains cable. I bought two of them. I convinced myself they made a difference. I asked my wife to help me with an experiment. Either (a) replace them with decent quality mains cables (£15 each), (b) replace just one of them, or © leave the £600 cables plugged in. I did not know what she did and I couldn’t see the cables as they are behind my AV rack. I spent the weekend listening to my set-up and, to be honest, I forgot about the experiment. She asked me how I was getting on so I went and checked. They were both stock cables. The Naim cables were sold a week later. So, lesson learned. ‘Audiophile’ interconnects are a waste of time and money. Seriously. Invest in kit that accepts XLR interconnects. Spend £20-30 on a pair of Kimbar XLR interconnects and be done with it. Speaker cable: have them as short as possible and a decent gauage (14-16AWG) (mine are 1m each and cost £30 in total).
© Speaker positioning/Room Treatment/Room Correction. Cannot be overstated how important it is to spend time on this. Your speaker manufacturer’s know how to get the best from your speaker so read the manual on where they like to be positioned! Once you’ve optimised the physical set-up, hire/buy a calibration microphone and capture measurements using REW. Send your measurements to HAF. Use them in Roon as your convolution filter.
If you do the above I can confidentally say that after a few weeks of just letting your system do its thing and you do your thing (i.e. just listen to music) then you’ll realise that you don’t need to spend £10k+ to have a great sounding system.
- I appreciate that this is not an option with the Bluesound kit so try to keep the digital (analog?) interconnect to your active speakers as short as possible to minimise noise. It’s not a biggy.
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Well, the room is what it is. Treated pretty well for my primary listening position, but it has an open floor plan and I listen a lot at low levels and off-axis. Actually I think the Dynaudios are pretty good for this. I like that the Argon3s are supposed to be good for wide-field listening, and also the Buchardt s400 referenced above. Do you find this to be the case?
Well @Rik_Carter, my new Argons will be here today, so starts my next evolution…
I thought I was going to be happy forever with the KEFs, and they still sound amazing to me. I’m going to try to keep them for a 2nd home. It’s completely impossible to beat them for quality --> simplicity ratio, and there’s a very addictive quality to the sound.
That said, I’m now really looking forward to getting those Argons connected to my new DirectStream and Stellar m700s mono-blocks.
In a lot of ways I think I’m going to miss the LS50w’s until I have them set up again.
(As far as the Node/PowerNode 2… I considered going that route, but, I don’t want to give up balanced out/xlr)
… and what are you finding?
Argons with DirectStream DAC and Amphion 100w amp… sound absolutely incredible.
I’m always a little shocked to see how much the technology can progress in a few years, making smaller, simpler, less expensive setups sound as good or better than earlier ones with significantly greater cost. The KEFs made me realize this in a very stark way, and my current system is a sort of compromise somewhere between the LS50w’s and a larger, more complicated, uglier setup. I am extremely happy with it though.
My setup before LS50w had 4 more pieces of equipment, cost probably 5x as much as what I have now, and the current system is simpler, as good if not better in some ways.
The LS50w do many things really well, and the setup is as simple as it gets (and I found it perfectly reliable - never had one problem). They’re sexy, modern, with a high WAF, sound great, and very easy to use and manage. I could have easily lived with and enjoyed them, alas, the acquisition and tinkering bug bit again.
As far as SQ, the only thing I really wasn’t happy with on the LS50w, oddly, was movie dialog. It was just tough in my setup at least, to hear spoken word clearly.
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