To buy a budget system or not?...

Got it. Wish the prices in Indian followed the trend in US/UK

err...what trend is that?...u mean cheaper hi-fi?

Cheap and hi-fi should not appear in the same sentence

Why is that? Can't good hi-fi be cheap?

Nice one, cant blame you!- that is indeed a very sweet cdp. If you like Rega, why not go all the way. I really like the combo I heard that consist of the Appolo, Mira3 and R3. Very impressive setup.

Best Regards.

Hey unleash....is there anyplace in Bangalore where I can listen to the Rega?..

Hi
You can come by anytime. There will always be someone in the store, but if you like, you could call me @9880925992. Between floorstanders and monitors, I would say keep an open mind, you would be surprised at what some monitors can do. Good monitors can outdo floorstanders in some aspects (its also a question of what is important to you in terms of sonic presentation) For stands you can always get cheaper stands or get them made. As Ranjeet mentioned, you should try the other speakers. In fact you should listen to as many as you can before you make the plunge
The naim 52 is 30W, the Cyrus you mentioned is 40W, I dont know the size of your room but you should check the sensitivity of the speakers before you finalise an amp/speaker combo, ideally you should try this combo out. The dyn and Ushers are both 86 dB and they like a bit more power.

cheers

Okay....!
had a great evening. Just came back from ARN systems in Bangalore. Listened to some good music and demoed Usher bookshelves and MA RS6 side by side for almost 2 hours. Mr. Sridhar was there taking care of every request that I made for switching back and forth between the MAs and the Ushers. The speakers were being fed by odyssey amps and Usher CD player.

My impressions:
Both Usher and MA speakers that I demoed are very capable and awesome performers in their own way. It would be wrong to compare them head to head and declare one as a winner(which ideally has become a problem for me). The Ushers were great with high and mid. Bass wasnt bad at all and in fact for a small sized room like mine they would produce very decent bass. The Ushers kind of snipped the bass and did not let it go deep and linger for long. But bass is not what the Ushers intend to do. Vocals and highs were profound and clear. Though when the music got busy the Ushers were a little lost. This could get better with time because the Ushers I was listening to had only clocked about 6 hours of playing time. This lost feeling was also present with the MAs. But MAs impressed me with rock and percussion. The MA did present clear vocals and highs without a doubt but not as cleanly as the Usher did. We kept switching between usher and MA with every song that we played. Whenever we swithched to the MA, I felt as if singers were suddenly singing from behind a curtain or something. Bass was very impressive in the sense that everytime that I felt the MAs are going to mess up the bass they seemed to keep it tight and under control while still going plenty deep. They never felt like they will give up this and start sounding like cheap hi-fi. The only time I almost hated the MAs was when we played a Hindi song. The song was very colored and different.

Well all in all this was a great experience. After listening to 2 hours of music at high volume I had NO ear fatigue. I am going to try some more speakers b4 taking the final plunge. I am still wondering about the amp though. Lets see....

Thanks Manditri for posting your impressions. Just so that folks are aware, the MA RS6s are about a year old and fully broken in, they are our store demo piece, while the Ushers X-718 had a few hours on them and the Usher CDP has about 10 hours on it. Both speakers were about 4 feet from the back wall and about 3 feet from the side wall. The room was approx 16 x 13.
As many of you are well aware, A/B comparisions are flawed unless the gain is adjusted such that both setups are played at the very same level. In fact tests conducted show that ear sensitivity is near steps of 0.15dB. The louder one tends to sound better. We dont have a decibel meter accurate enough to make that measurement. The Ushers are 86dB whereas the RS6s are 91 dB The RS6 extends down to 38 Hz whereas the Usher does only 42Hz. The RS6s have a classic box sound whereas the Ushers have a very open sound especially with the mids and highs. Compared to the Ushers as Manditri said the RS6 sounded veiled, the soundstage and depth, imaging was not also as good as the Ushers, however for the price they are good speakers, in fact as I mentioned before the RS6 are good speakers for the money.

Experts can chime in for advice to Manditri here a bit - from my understanding what he is planning to spend on the speakers as a function of what he is spending on CDP and amp is a bit less. I mean for the Rega and a naim integrated the speakers he is looking at will not give the full potential or do justice. The classic suggestion is either 50/50 (speakers to amp/cdp) or 60/40, in this case I think its coming to almost 33/33/33.

Cheers
Sridhar

Hi Sridhar,

I've already told him about this and also asked to make sure that he doesn't look at every option available as its only gona confuse him, so I think he's understood that and in the final process of finalising the ideal set-up for him.

So I guess our friend here takes a final call on something of his linking soon !!

Regards.