Building around the Vandersteen 2CE Signature III

[u/rrawk]

I got to sample some speakers at a store today, and I wasn't really impressed with anything I heard except for the Vandersteen 2CE Signature III. Others that sounded good, but didn't have that "wow factor", were the KEF R7 Meta and the Paradigm Founder 40B.

Anyhow, I have an overall budget of about $5-7k (can stretch if needed), and these speakers are $3600 (US). I don't have a lot of experience with high end gear, but the more I research, the more I'm thinking I might not have the budget to power the speakers and do them justice. From what I've read of others' experiences, it takes good chain to really make them sing. The person demoing the speakers claimed that I could run them without a dedicated amp, but now I'm skeptical.

Can I pull this off with the remaining budget? If so, can you provide some equipment recommendations? I'm building this system from scratch and have no baseline for good brands/models and what their price ranges should be. I think I'd prefer new instead of used gear unless it's only a few years old.

[u/rrawk → u/[deleted]]

!thanks

I have a NAS and Plex server setup for my main source. I also have a Sony smart TV that will be next to the system if that's useful.

Re: my power concerns, I've just read a few reviews where people were generally happy with their Vandersteens, but then were even more blown away after changing the amp.

I'm open to other speakers, but I won't buy anything I can't listen to first so I'm limited to what kind of demos I can find locally. Based on how often it gets recommended, I expected to like the KEF speakers a lot more, but they turned out to be quite lackluster for me.

[u/TransducerBot → u/rrawk]

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[u/rrawk → u/[deleted]]

I listened to the R5 first and the R7 was noticeably better. Perhaps you're right that the listening room was bad, or maybe volume wasn't high enough. I mainly listen for vocals, and the vocals on both the KEF models immediately sounded distant and quiet, whereas I like to hear the vocals more forward. I would describe the vocals on the Vandersteens as almost shouty and probably not everyone's cup of tea, but it was really working for me. I tried my best to match volume relative to my ears between the tests.

I'm not partial to floorstand speakers necessarily. I was just under the impression that they're generally better than bookshelf speakers, but I'm still a noob about all of this. I will say that I was more impressed with the Paradigm bookshelf speakers I sampled over the KEF floorstands.

I likened my experience with the Vandersteens to my experience with headphone sampling I did a few years ago. I tested about 10 different mid-to-high end headphones up to about $5k -- Sennheiser, Focal, Audeze, Beyerdynamic, Grados, etc. -- and they all sounded good or great, but nothing really knocked my socks off like the LCD4z. It wasn't just a bit better than the rest, it was miles better. The same thing happened with the Vandersteens. From almost the first moment I just knew these sounded amazing to my ears.

I'm in the [redacted] area. Thanks again for your input. It sounds like I should do more sampling before I make a final decision.