paritosh
Active Member
hello friends,
if some of you happen to come accross my earlier postings, i started my journey with a decent 5.1 setup in mind within a budget of 30k. that was slowly increased to 75k after having auiditioned some floor standers like JBL, Jamo, Polk TSi300, Wahrfedale Obsidian etc. with matching components.
the breakthrough came today.,.... and in a VERY BIG WAY..... an audio dealer in my native place happens to be a friend of my architect looking after the renovation of my flat. we had him visit my place to check the living room where the setup is supposed to take place. he cleared my doubts regarding acoustics and said the floor standers should perform well in the environment. [its still to be realised though, could take another 3 months before the results are out-i.e. my flat is complete and i have my setup singing in full glory after proper runup]. i was quite a bit releaved.
today, we rode to my native togather and during the 3 and half hour ride, i played my choice of music- late 90s bollywood, some recent favourites and Jagjit Singh's old Ghazals. this gave him a fair bit of idea about my taste and helped a great deal.
i was surprised to find such a good showroom, that too in my native place, which happens to be a much smaller city that Rajkot. not only the setup, but the choices were also quite good.
we started with two pairs, Polk TSi400 and Paradigm Monitor 7. both of them powered by Onkyo 8255 amp. the setup was not in a dedicated room, but in an open listening area with all the normal living room elements and without any heavy acoustic treatment [baring a rug on the floor and a small wooden table in the middle]
we did a lot of A-B auditioning of the two pairs. starting from slow classical instrumentals of Sitar, then classical vocal by Bal Murli Krishna then a few bollywood numbers romantic slow tracks with good instrumentations, a Jagjit CD. the guy was really too good in explaining and the setup too was just perfect as he kept on switching between the two pairs as well as the Anthony Gallow globes to enable a good comparisions. the tracks were played over and over again and he explained the doubts i had in my mind. this lasteed for about a couple of hours.
during the very first few minuites, after a listening to sitar and a few switching, the dealer incerted a vocals cd. first it was played for some three to four minutes on polks, but as the guy switched over to paradigm, within seconds i could recognize that it was Bal Murli Krishna [ I had not seen the cover of the cd he incerted, so i did not know it till this time. and me being a gujarati, have only heard Bal Murli Krishna in the Desh Raag recital on tv]. this really hit me hard and from that point onwards i was leaning towards the paradigms. we continued with different bollywood numbers and Jagjit Singh.
Till the first two hours, we only listened to two chanel audio setup and i was thoughly impressed. then we proceeded to the dedicated home theater auditioning room to checkout elacs FS57 + BS51 + CC51 + Sub50 hooked up to Denon 1611. we had the Avatar for audition. looking at my liking towards the sterio setup, the dealer suggested to have a look at the same scene with sterio mode audio. the inside=ht room- audition lasted for about 20 minutes. i could see where i was going.....i had made up my mind that i really wanted to go with a steario setup rather than a 5.1 [phew.... after four months of searching and googling and discussion variuos aspetcs in this forum, a visit to two different cities other than where i live..... i had my vectors right...]
.... we later had the elac FS pair moved to outside room and had another round of knock out audition with previous two pairs. after a few switching auditions with bollywood and pakistani numbers, we started with Jagjit Singh, then an AR Rehman composition and at last Aawarapan Banjarapan from my Audio CD. [Yes Venkat sir, i obeyed your suggestions, got a hold on Auidio CD of Jagjit Singh's Journey and a rew Bollywood movies which i carried for audition. this time, we heard all the three songs, one by one on the three pairs witout switching. after an hour of this knockout round, i would rate the pairs as below
Polk TSi third
Elac second
paradigm first
p.s. the Polk pair was a new born [less than 20 hours] while the other two were veterans [burned for more than 100 hrs]
after i zeroed on paradigm, the dealer suggested to pair them with Onkyo 8555 rather than 8255 which was used for auditions.
guess i've found my Holy Grail. waiting for a quote. i guess its going to run into 80k region including cables, interconnects [ixo banana plugs] and shipping plus installation. wish me luck.... and do suggest whether the choice i've made is ok or not.
if some of you happen to come accross my earlier postings, i started my journey with a decent 5.1 setup in mind within a budget of 30k. that was slowly increased to 75k after having auiditioned some floor standers like JBL, Jamo, Polk TSi300, Wahrfedale Obsidian etc. with matching components.
the breakthrough came today.,.... and in a VERY BIG WAY..... an audio dealer in my native place happens to be a friend of my architect looking after the renovation of my flat. we had him visit my place to check the living room where the setup is supposed to take place. he cleared my doubts regarding acoustics and said the floor standers should perform well in the environment. [its still to be realised though, could take another 3 months before the results are out-i.e. my flat is complete and i have my setup singing in full glory after proper runup]. i was quite a bit releaved.
today, we rode to my native togather and during the 3 and half hour ride, i played my choice of music- late 90s bollywood, some recent favourites and Jagjit Singh's old Ghazals. this gave him a fair bit of idea about my taste and helped a great deal.
i was surprised to find such a good showroom, that too in my native place, which happens to be a much smaller city that Rajkot. not only the setup, but the choices were also quite good.
we started with two pairs, Polk TSi400 and Paradigm Monitor 7. both of them powered by Onkyo 8255 amp. the setup was not in a dedicated room, but in an open listening area with all the normal living room elements and without any heavy acoustic treatment [baring a rug on the floor and a small wooden table in the middle]
we did a lot of A-B auditioning of the two pairs. starting from slow classical instrumentals of Sitar, then classical vocal by Bal Murli Krishna then a few bollywood numbers romantic slow tracks with good instrumentations, a Jagjit CD. the guy was really too good in explaining and the setup too was just perfect as he kept on switching between the two pairs as well as the Anthony Gallow globes to enable a good comparisions. the tracks were played over and over again and he explained the doubts i had in my mind. this lasteed for about a couple of hours.
during the very first few minuites, after a listening to sitar and a few switching, the dealer incerted a vocals cd. first it was played for some three to four minutes on polks, but as the guy switched over to paradigm, within seconds i could recognize that it was Bal Murli Krishna [ I had not seen the cover of the cd he incerted, so i did not know it till this time. and me being a gujarati, have only heard Bal Murli Krishna in the Desh Raag recital on tv]. this really hit me hard and from that point onwards i was leaning towards the paradigms. we continued with different bollywood numbers and Jagjit Singh.
Till the first two hours, we only listened to two chanel audio setup and i was thoughly impressed. then we proceeded to the dedicated home theater auditioning room to checkout elacs FS57 + BS51 + CC51 + Sub50 hooked up to Denon 1611. we had the Avatar for audition. looking at my liking towards the sterio setup, the dealer suggested to have a look at the same scene with sterio mode audio. the inside=ht room- audition lasted for about 20 minutes. i could see where i was going.....i had made up my mind that i really wanted to go with a steario setup rather than a 5.1 [phew.... after four months of searching and googling and discussion variuos aspetcs in this forum, a visit to two different cities other than where i live..... i had my vectors right...]
.... we later had the elac FS pair moved to outside room and had another round of knock out audition with previous two pairs. after a few switching auditions with bollywood and pakistani numbers, we started with Jagjit Singh, then an AR Rehman composition and at last Aawarapan Banjarapan from my Audio CD. [Yes Venkat sir, i obeyed your suggestions, got a hold on Auidio CD of Jagjit Singh's Journey and a rew Bollywood movies which i carried for audition. this time, we heard all the three songs, one by one on the three pairs witout switching. after an hour of this knockout round, i would rate the pairs as below
Polk TSi third
Elac second
paradigm first
p.s. the Polk pair was a new born [less than 20 hours] while the other two were veterans [burned for more than 100 hrs]
after i zeroed on paradigm, the dealer suggested to pair them with Onkyo 8555 rather than 8255 which was used for auditions.
guess i've found my Holy Grail. waiting for a quote. i guess its going to run into 80k region including cables, interconnects [ixo banana plugs] and shipping plus installation. wish me luck.... and do suggest whether the choice i've made is ok or not.
