The here's what I'd buy in such & such a situation thread

[Docfoster]

A common feature of hi-fi forums are threads along the lines of "I have £X to spend. What should I buy."

Whenever I've chipped in with my suggestions on what I'd buy, no one has ever followed my recommendation - as far as I know.
I think my tastes in audio equipment are too non-mainstream for the vast majority of people to follow. Which is fair enough. We can all have different tastes and different ways in which we make buying decisions.

So for this thread, feel free to put yourself in a hypothetical situation. Maybe a situation you've seen on a thread on some other forum. And let us know what you'd buy in a given situation.

For example, to get the ball rolling, if I'd just moved into a house in Los Angeles with a listening room that measured 20' x 24' x 10' and that didn't have 2 available corners due to door and window positioning and wanted a pair of speakers for filling the room, with a budget of US$8000 and didn't want to DIY, I would buy these:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Urei-Time-Alig ... SwrcReL5Ny

Urei 813A in custom cabinets for $1200 or best offer from Ohio.

I'd either get them crated and shipped over, or I'd take a 4 week vacation in a large SUV to go and collect them. With the vacation being my prefered option, but that would depend on lockdown restrictions in the States.
When I got them home I wouldn't build them into a soffit and I wouldn't bother with a sub-woofer to go with them. I might plonk them on very sturdy drinks cabinets to get the tweeter up to ear height. I'd keep the amplification that I'd use with these speakers relatively low cost too. Something like an NVA A20 would be fine.

So, what speakers would you buy if you moved into an LA home? Or maybe you'd like to tell us what complete system you'd buy for a Tokyo flat, on a budget of a million yen? Or what digital source you'd get for a hermit cave in the Dolomites for 100 euros? Etc etc etc...

[Docfoster]

Whenever I've chipped in with my suggestions on what I'd buy, no one has ever followed my recommendation...I think my tastes in audio equipment are too non-mainstream for the vast majority of people to follow...

Cue photo of two enormous side-boards on castor wheels.

Seriously, I'm with you Lindsay. I bet those sound awesome. I'll join you on your Ohio road trip!

[Daniel Quinn]

Such threads are started for confirmation of what the person as or his going to do. They'd be more correctly called 'how long before somebody says what I want them to say'

[Daniel Quinn]

Those speakers require a room only
5% of English audiophiles posses

[Geoff.R.G]

If I had a listening room 20' x 24' x 10' I certainly wouldn't buy speakers the size of a sideboard! For the suggested $8,000 I could probably find a string quartet to play live or get some musician friends in for a curry, regularly, and just get them to play/sing for their supper. Orchestral music might present a bigger problem though.

[karatestu]

If I lived in a flat I would buy some AVI ADM9 active speakers. No chance of annoying your neighbours with too much bass as there won't be any bass

[Docfoster]

How about these Lindsay?
You get to keep the Altec drivers AND the castor wheels, but don't need a village hall to put them in.

[Lindsayt]

How about these Lindsay?
You get to keep the Altec drivers AND the castor wheels, but don't need a village hall to put them in.

Are they Altec 604's?

Altec 604's or 605's would be my suggestion for a house in southern Spain, for a fairly large room, plus happy to do a bit of DIY, but don't want anything that will be too large or take up too much space.

With the Altec coaxials, you just buy the drivers and knock up a cabinet and a crossover. The Onken style cabinet looks like an interesting one.

OK, the 604's and 605's aren't the best at the frequency extremes, but the midrange, especially vocals, and the imaging and soundstaging should be good. And they're not fussy about amplification.

Altec made some great drivers in their time. Great Plains Audio still make classic Altec drivers - at a cost.

BTW, for a Tokyo flat for a million yen system, I'd be looking at small simple cheap speakers and some headphones. I'll freely admit that I know nothing about headphones. So I'd probably end up with some rather sub-optimum ones.

[Lindsayt]

Those speakers require a room only
5% of English audiophiles posses

As the seller says in the ebay listing:

"Up for sale are my Urei 813A control monitors. (Altec 604 circa 1978) Drivers and crossover units came from Mix Room A at Grammy award winning Unique Recording Studios in New York City."

How big is Mix Room A at Unique Recording Studios? Is it bigger than 95% of English listening room?

They'd look imposing in a recording studio mixing room sized domestic listening room. They'd sound great in such a room for the price spent on them for turnkey (non DIY) speakers. As I said, my tastes are different to most people's. Too non-mainstream.

[Docfoster]

How about these Lindsay?
You get to keep the Altec drivers AND the castor wheels, but don't need a village hall to put them in.

Are they Altec 604's?

Altec 604's or 605's would be my suggestion for a house in southern Spain,

Loving the specific geographical "such and such".
And I think I feel the congruence with Spain.
605s I think.
(So maybe Portugal...?)