Hey all this was about a second hand pair on
eBay for well under a grand and a bargain of anyone's money.
Ideally you should audition loudspeakers, preferably in your own home with your own set up. But for the bargain hunters there is the opportunity on
eBay to buy cheap and if you change your mind or you don't like them you can re-auction and given a fair wind will get about the same as you paid for them or if you are lucky even make a profit.
With hi fi dealers being scarcer and scarcer and with limited opportunity to audition, it falls more to people listening to what friends have and doing the gamble bit on
eBay.
nva gave up on dealers and sell direct on
eBay and anyone who purchases an nva set up will not be disappointed, ok there may subjectively be betterbut it is all relative. Similarly if you buy an old second hand naim set up off
eBay you will not be disappointed (unless you happen to want to drive a pair of old Gale GS401s, or KEF 105 or 107 as the thermal trip cuts in if you drive them hard into difficult loads). The bang for buck works in that scenario with people buying classic older gear at a price that makes hi end affordable.
We all have our own preferences and tastes we all hear things differently. I remember when I worked in Guildford Hi Fi years ago we had an old pair of AR loudspeakers in part exchange. We fired them up and they sounded awful, we discoverd the attenuator at the rear, which could be used to tweek the high frequencies, had become corroded and the tweeters were not working. A chap in the demo room fell in love with them and bought them there and then and said he would pick them up later. By the time he returned we had fixed the problem and when he heard them he said NOOOOOOOO they aren't what i heard and liked. We disconnected the tweeter and hey presto he loved them and bought them.
So the answer is trust your own ears because if they don't like whatthey hear you won't either.
Thank god the wife seems to like the same as I do though asit was her that made me buy a pair of Impressions.
uzzy