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Review 2 of 42
Price Paid:
$300.00
from Fluance's EBay store Summary:
This is an extraordinary set of speakers. I combined them with an HK 230 amp that I bought as a warrantied refurb from H/K's Ebay store for about $150. Combined with the $230 (after shipping) H100 subwoofer, and the $370 (after shipping, but $100 more than they've sold for in the past), this is one hell of a $750 5.1 system.
A few specific comments:
The bass is plenty for music. The mains are rated to 50 hz, but they're flat down to at least 10 hz lower in a room setting. The bass response isn't quite enough for movies, however, and I connected mine to an Acoustech H100 subwoofer. Extremely capable HT system; playing Twister at reference volumes was a terrifying experience.
Music sounds best from the two towers alone. The center channel doesn't draw attention to itself in movies, but it's a bit on the nasal, colored side for music. A bit, not a lot; one could get used to it. If you want to use the surrounds, Dolby II also sounds very good.
The towers can be bi-amped, but they certainly don't need to be. The binding posts are all gold-plated, very high quality.
I recently auditioned these Fluance against a pair of $350 Ascend 170SEs, a bookshelf speaker reputed to run with others at double the price. This is the result:
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I took the Ascends home today and compared them back to back with the Fluance SX+. The Fluance were in stereo mode, mains only. No subwoofer. The room is hardwood floored, 10' ceiling, 12x24', with both sets of speakers about two feet from the far walls.
I didn't do any serious comparisons with the Harman AVR 230 amplifier. It was ponderous to change the speakers from one amplifier to another; too long for me to preserve a memory of the music. The character of the sound was far more influenced by the speaker, so I used the Panasonic XR55 amplifier for these comparisons.
I also invited my Mom to listen to three tracks in particular. She's a classically trained pianist with an excellent ear. I only played three tracks for her; she preferred the Ascends for two tracks of three, saying the Fluance sounded slightly tinny on the piano in John Hiatt's 'Have a Little Faith'. She also preferred the Ascends in Jurassic Park. She did point out that in Deanna Carter's 'We Danced Anyway', Deanna sounds like she's singing from behind the instruments on the Ascends.
My impressions are similar, though I wouldn't go so far as to call the Fluance tinny. A very slight metallic, more like, on the higher midrange frequencies. The Fluance have a stronger midrange, a noticeably forward sound. The extreme high range is recessed compared to the Ascends, which sounded immediately airy when I switched to them.
The Ascends have more neutral tweeter. High tones, like trumpets, sound slightly strident on the Fluance speakers, with some color. The Ascend version is very neutral, and certain extreme recordings that play harshly on my Grados, the Fluance, and my Klipsch (Future Corp's 'Maleguena') become more tolerable on the Ascends.
I tended to prefer the Fluance vocals. The Fluance put the singer almost universally front and center. The lisping quality of the Ascends at the end of certain notes isn't present in the Fluances, and while there was some color to them, it seemed more a different rendition to the Ascends than anything particularly objectionable. As per the Ascends, the vocals are better in this room than they were in my room at home. The accuracy is better than the Fluance, but the pushed midrange of the latter makes the Ascends sound veiled. It's the other way around with certain very high-pitched singers like Sia.
Another area the Fluance excelled was in lower midbass, but this was to be expected. They're tower speakers. Strangely though, even when the Panasonic crossover was set to 80 hz, the Ascends sounded quite a bit thinner in the low end, so much so that I have to wonder whether the 'B' speakers are affected by the crossover settings on this amp. The Fluance are double-rear ported, and because they're physically deeper, also closer to the wall.
Anyway, the point of all this is not to be a Fluance advertisement. As before, I found the Ascends exceedingly good at instrumental music and most vocal tracks where the instrumentation didn't overwhelm the singer. Imaging was also better than the Fluance; the Fluance singer was dispersed in front of me, only occasionally coming into focus on higher attacks. The Ascend singer sounds like he's coming exactly from the unconnected Fluance center channel.
However, given the fact that the entire Fluance 5.0 system with floorstanders goes for less, or if you're clever in auction timing, WAY less than the Ascends, that I can even make this comparison is a major win for Fluance. Strengths:
Excellent build quality
Excellent sound
Can be bi-amped
Hands down, the best 5.0 value in existence. These speakers have gone at auction for as little as $140, before shipping, brand new from the factory from Fluance's EBay store. The floorstanders alone are worth triple that. There is literally no competition, because no one else sells anything remotely comparable at the same price.
Weaknesses:
Strident for the first hundred hours; break them in before you judge
The brass bars on the base of speaker look old-fashioned
Difficult to blend with the BIC H100; could be my room acoustics Similar Products Used:
Ascend 170SE
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4.62 of 5
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