A friend had a pair of red active diamonds back in the day, nice little speaker.

Then I bought my Dad's next pair of speakers when he upgraded, a pair of Epos ES-14 Loudspeakers with dedicated stands. I loved these speakers and had them for around 15 years in total.

I call these my first proper pair of speakers. They were massive upgrade over the Linn's, although ironically similarly priced.

Yes I always harked after a pair of the active speakers. I heard a pair once and they were excellent. But to be fair the passive pair were pretty good for their size and price.

Yes Paul, that's the second pair of Diamonds I had!

Absolutely brilliant little speakers, superbly musical.

Another speaker shoot-out.
The Thiels won.



Had to have some Quad 57.



And some SD Acoustics SD1 (sharing time with the Bowers Avtive 1.



And JBL L110 Monitors.
Fantastic speakers.



And a group shot of Thiel CS2.3, Rogers JR149 and 150.

Currently on duty at la casa de eslinga

I've never heard ES22, that I can recall.
Did you ever hear the ES30, Paul?

No, they didn't have the speed of the smaller 14, but were interesting in their own way.
But getting rid of the 'slow' deeper bass is often a good way to make a speaker sound snappier. - just not as good on some music as other types.

It has been quite a journey over 40 odd years. But one thing stands out for me - its as much about the room characteristics as the speakers themselves and I constantly dream of a house with a separate room I can use for hifi. One day !

Anyway, her we go

1) Leak 250. I didn’t know much about stereo at the time so these were part of our first system (with Leak Delta 30 amp and GL75). Had me conducting orchestras in my bedroom for several years in my early teens. Fond memories indeed.

2) Wharefedale Lintons - my companions for the first year of Uni. Driven by a Ferrograph amp these were pretty awful, soft sounding (the amp psu must have been woeful) and soulless.

3) Monitor Audio MA4 - a chunk of my second year grant (yep, we got paid to go to Uni in those days🙃). A step up from the Lintoms certainly, but still pretty coloured with not much in definition at either end of the frequency spectrum. A change of amp to a Cambridge Audio P110 helped, as did the acquistion of a Rega Planar 2.

4) Quad 57s - heard these by chance at a London hi fi store and was bowled over by the improvement in sheer clarity and soundstage. Sure, they didn’t go that loud and presentation of my favoured prog rock was a bit lightweight but in a good deal with a Quantum 102 pre power amp I couldn’t say no. They did need a bit of space around them though but worked fine in my first flat with its Victorian room proportions.

5) Magneplanar 2.5r - the Quads just couldn’t give me the scale I longed for, but I had become fascinated by planar speakers. And the P50/A70 pre-power combo from a manufacturer whose name I cannot say really did not like driving the Quads. So the Maggies came in, at 6’ tall, provided that illusion and a pretty convincing wall of sound. Yes, I lost a little of the Quads fabulous midrange but the overall presentation was more to my liking. 

6) Decware radial hybrids - A change of house meant downsizing so the whole lot went to be replaced by a 15w KT88 valve integrated and these strange, omnidirectional ribbons. Never got them to sound right - floaty and imprecise soundstage, poor bass and dynamics. Did acquire my first CD player though, a Marant CD80.

7) Cadence Anina - a hybrid electrostatic design. Although a vast improvement on the Decwares, especially with an amp change to a Plinius pre/power setup, these were a mistake. The integration between curved electrostatic panel and cone bass was a lesson in how not to do it. 

8) Audiostatic ‘Wings’. A variant of the infamous ES100s these remain the most transparent ‘speaker I have ever owned. Rubbish power handling, no bass, but clarity to die for. I tried using. Final S200 sub but could not seem to knit the system together.

9) Martin Logan Prodigy - wow, big beasts that did a lot of things right. Scale, bass, it was all there. But, sadly just too big for the wife so they had to go. By then I had changed the power amps to Parasound JC1s and saw the shelf sag under their weight and my electricity bill rise !

10) Final 400i ‘stats and Lyngdorf W210 corner woofers - a bit more manageable size wise and provided a decent compromise between the Audiostatics and Prodigys. But the icing on the cake was a switch to Lyngdorf TDA2200/2175 digital amplification (by now I had moved on from analogue sources, letting go of my Rega and the LP12 that followed it). With its inbuilt room correction software the bass in my room was much improved and, freeing the relatively small ‘stats from the bottom couple of octaves meant the system could play loud enough.

11) Quad 2905 - which is where we are today. Fabulous coherence from these (almost) full range stats and their monolithic appearance has been surprisingly easy to live with. I would love to try them with corner woofers (which now sit unused together with a second Lyngdorf amp used to drive them) but just cant squeeze them all in. Will be seeing how they fare with my latest acquisition,Lyngdorf’s new TDA3400. Setting that up later today.  I know they could be even better, but cannot manage to get them more than 80cm from the wall behind (acoustic panels in place !).

There have been others, in second systems, such as the little Genexxa Optimus Pro LX5 with their ribbon tweeters which I have raved about for years (anyone remember them from the AS get together at Victory Hall ?). Still have half a dozen of those (down from 12j in the idea I put together a small surround sound system. But once again, a lack of space precludes.
oh, and a pair of Tannoy Chatsworths (12” HPD drivers, so dynamic! and Tannoy DTM15 monitors. Would have kept either for general purpose duties but I just need a bigger house . . . 

Memories - those Leaks giving me my first peek into decent reproduction, the 57 s and Audiostatics for their midrange magic and planars in general for showing my my favoured direction.

What for the future. Well, retired now so drinking vouchers are in much shorter supply. But if a Premium Bond ever comes in I would love to hear the Sandersound hybrid systems. On paper they seem to have it all - clarity, dynamics, tonality, reasonable domestic footprint coupled with very personal support from their creator. What’s not to like ?

That's a really great tale of ups and downs with a few speakers many will never have heard. Thanks for that.
I am with you on the Genexxa speakers, as I have been raving about them for years too.

By the way, there is no ban on mentioning NVA gear here, and nor will there ever be.