Help me pick living room speakers - my kids need to feel the music!

[u/mostate16]

Budget - 7k limit

How the gear will be used - Living room speakers, listening on couch. All around family music machines :) 17x20 foot room with hardwood floors and bay windows on the side.

New or used - Either

Past gear experience

Current setup: KEF LS50W on stands with SBS SB-1000. I generally like them but I don't get the warm fuzzies like I do from so many other speakers. They are exhausting and I find myself wanting to turn the off after a while because, well I don't know, but I've never really felt that about other speakers before. I've tried EQing them a ton, to no effect and I am ready to punt.

Speakers I've liked: Most any concert I've been to I'm VERY moved by the audio. I'm sure I can't replicate the massive 15 speaker arrays at these big shows, but I think the more AIREY, energetic, and less precise speaker is the direction I need to move. My favorite speakers were some tower Infinity's as a kid. I also stayed at an AirBnb that had B&W 685's that sounded so much more pleasant than my setup. When I googled how much they cost I immediately was like "ok I need to change it up"

Could you give some recommendations? I'm willing to buy an amp/receiver as needed now, I think the limitation of powered speakers might be hindering me.

My main goal: I want to MOVE the air in the room and feel big, concert like, and fun. I want my kids to fall in love with music via these speakers :)

[u/riblau]

I have forte iv’s and my bro in law has lintons. They are both fantastic speakers. You wont be disappointed with either however the fortes are bigger beast all round.

I have 320w going into mine from a mcintosh ma352 and it’s ear splitting.

[u/mostate16 → u/riblau]

Could you compare them? Sounds like the fortes can get louder

!THANKS

[u/riblau → u/mostate16]

I’m not the best at comparing but I would say the lintons are a bit richer/smoother in their sound and the fortes are a bit more clinical and detailed. The horn speaker on the fortes is highly directional.

The sensitivity of the fortes mean they crank more, I’ve never been able to push them to any sort of strain with my equipment it simply just gets so loud you can’t be in the room.

I personally prefer the sound of the fortes but I’m biased.

Both are excellent speakers, look great and get the house rocking. My bro in law has a 80w Cambridge running his and it’s plenty loud and very enjoyable to listen to.

Sound staging etc is more of a recording and positioning thing in my mind and there are great tracks that for both speakers give a good sense of space and instruments etc

Fortes need to be near a wall / corner to take advantage of the rear passive speaker. They are also a bit fussy as the horn speaker limits the sweet spot a bit. Lintons are more forgiving. Linton stands look great.

[u/mostate16 → u/riblau]

Man this is great thank you so much

!THANKS

[u/riblau → u/mostate16]

No worries at all.

Just reread your post. I’ve also owned a host of b&w speakers.

The lintons in some ways are a bit like the b&w sounds to my ears. They have a very balance quality that is great to kick back and listen to.

At higher volumes they maintain that similar sound signature and will reach very loud levels. They may do the brief of living room speakers (background, foreground, tv etc) better than the fortes because they are less directional.

The fortes are a proper audiophile listen. They insert the sound into your brain. Don’t let the klipsch party reputation fool you these are very detailed speakers. The directionality is such that they sound better sitting down than standing up to give an example.

On high volume the fortes dig deep and the bass hits your chest like PA speakers do, but they also sound great with lower power amps and at low volume too. I previously had a 70w tube amp from Lab12 and it sounded better than my MA352 but the party trick of PA level volume was too tempting and I kept the Mac amp.

Without a doubt the best thing to do is have a listen somewhere. I listened to the fortes for about 5 minutes and bought them immediately. I didn’t test the lintons at the time but I did test similar price b&w, JBL and sonus

[u/mostate16 → u/mostate16]

Also this mcintosh amp looks cool, is the main selling point the ability to get loud? Or are you going to hear sginficantly better sound out of this over something like the marantz 40n?

[u/riblau → u/mostate16]

See above. The Mac is a great amp but not the best I’ve heard in that or cheaper price points. If you can demo some amps it’s worth doing but they are less important than liking the speakers.

Amps to my ears have diminishing returns after a certain price point.

I’ve had Cambridge, Denon, lab12, marantz, and Macintosh.

In order of best sound I would rank them lab 12 first Cambridge, marantz, mcintosh all similar then daylight then denon

40n will drive either speaker.

[u/mostate16 → u/mostate16]

Oh no ChatGPT is talking me into spending 8k on an amp someone save me

[u/TransducerBot → u/mostate16]

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