M-Audio AV40's

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Pixelated Taco

Limp Gawd
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Dec 29, 2005
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So as I'm reading through this forum I spot several threads praising the M-Audio AV40's as a great alternative to those Logitech and Klipsch's computer speakers.

I decide to try them out at a store and love they way they sound. So I order a pair from B&H Photo and promptly set them up when they arrive. At first I have this slight sensation that the bass is very anemic for some reason but write it off as a "burn in" process before the woofers open up. The next day I decide to run my old subwoofer with the two new speakers and run the left to right tests and realize that the left speaker only has the highs coming out of it and nothing coming out of the woofer. I replace the wires, try the Aux in from an Ipod but nothing works to coax the woofer to give me sound. I talk to M-Audio and they say to send it back to the dealer. Fine...

2 days later I realize that the misses has throw out the styrofoam packing from the box and it has gone to the magical land..fill. I call up B&H and they tell me that they are going to have to charge me a restocking fee of 15% + the shipping fee I have to pay to send it in. These are the breaks :eek:

So I decided to go to bestbuy and think...well why not buy the speakers from bestbuy and just return the other ones with the new speaker box. So I buy them, get home and set them up only to find out that the left speaker does not turn on. Mind you I plugged it into another power strip to rule out any power spikes and to my dismay it's fubar. So now I'm sitting here with two nonworking AV-40's and I just want to say this could be a bad batch or bad quality control. Time to eat that 15% charge.

Any one want to recommend me some great speakers in that range OTHER than AV40's?
 
Dude, your luck sucks.

Swans are an option. You could go for cheap passives and a t-amp. A few other actives.

If you can stretch the budget slightly, I would look at this and a t-amp. It's B-stock but condition is listed as good / open box. I would also phone them just to confirm the details and any way which it affects service. It should be under $200 shipped, and t-amps go from about $50 for the cheap ones to a few hundred for more powerful ones (IIRC the amp I linked should work fine for the speakers I linked).
 
Damn, sorry to hear about your bad experience with the AV40s I have the AV40s and have no issues with mine. If you're looking at other 2.0 speakers in that range, I would say the Swan D1080MkII
 
ashmedai said:
Dude, your luck sucks.

Swans are an option. You could go for cheap passives and a t-amp. A few other actives.

If you can stretch the budget slightly, I would look at this and a t-amp. It's B-stock but condition is listed as good / open box. I would also phone them just to confirm the details and any way which it affects service. It should be under $200 shipped, and t-amps go from about $50 for the cheap ones to a few hundred for more powerful ones (IIRC the amp I linked should work fine for the speakers I linked).
Click to expand...

Since i'm a college student that's really stretching the budget but I think I can afford the Swan M200MkII. I hear these are fantastic for the price but I really wary about buying anymore speakers online (with my luck I may have to ship the Swans back also) but they're cheaper online that in store.

HardwareGuru said:
Damn, sorry to hear about your bad experience with the AV40s I have the AV40s and have no issues with mine. If you're looking at other 2.0 speakers in that range, I would say the Swan D1080MkII
Click to expand...

Yeah my luck is stuff of legends.

How do Swan D1080MkII compare to the AV40's? In terms of sound and also low end? I may or may not be connecting a sub to the speakers so I can keep the rattling down. I heard that the AV40's had decent low end sound hence why I bought them but how do the Swans fair? I don't need a subwoofer just something that sounds nice and gives me acceptable lows.
 
Pixelated Taco said:
Since i'm a college student that's really stretching the budget but I think I can afford the Swan M200MkII. I hear these are fantastic for the price but I really wary about buying anymore speakers online (with my luck I may have to ship the Swans back also) but they're cheaper online that in store.



Yeah my luck is stuff of legends.

How do Swan D1080MkII compare to the AV40's? In terms of sound and also low end? I may or may not be connecting a sub to the speakers so I can keep the rattling down. I heard that the AV40's had decent low end sound hence why I bought them but how do the Swans fair? I don't need a subwoofer just something that sounds nice and gives me acceptable lows.
Click to expand...

m200mkii's are very nice. I bought a sub to use with them and I have mixed feelings having done so. There's definitely some improvement, but the m200mkii's go down pretty low on their own. The d1080's are a little smaller drivers, but still go down fairly low.

Either one should be pretty good. If you decide to get the d1080, get it from parts express, as it's a few bucks cheaper and has free shipping.
http://www.parts-express.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?Partnumber=310-450
 
seemlessthunder said:
m200mkii's are very nice. I bought a sub to use with them and I have mixed feelings having done so. There's definitely some improvement, but the m200mkii's go down pretty low on their own. The d1080's are a little smaller drivers, but still go down fairly low.

Either one should be pretty good. If you decide to get the d1080, get it from parts express, as it's a few bucks cheaper and has free shipping.
http://www.parts-express.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?Partnumber=310-450
Click to expand...

I'd love to get the M200MkII's but it seems they are sold out everywhere. I'm going to keep searching for them. If anyone spots them hit me with a link and thanks for the helpful reply's. :)
 
If they're the ones I think they are, they may still be between production runs. D1080s are fine if you don't want to wait indefinitely.
 
Oh and if you're spending ~$200, I would really, really go with the B-stock ELTs. You'd have to go over by shipping costs, but you'd get that for the M200MkIIs anyway.
 
ashmedai said:
Oh and if you're spending ~$200, I would really, really go with the B-stock ELTs. You'd have to go over by shipping costs, but you'd get that for the M200MkIIs anyway.
Click to expand...

If these are powered give me a link. As long as I can call and see if I can get them to test them out before they ship (so I won't have another dead pair of speakers) i'd be gold.

Searching are they the Rocket ELT's? Never heard of these speakers before and since I don't have an amplifier anything powered would suit me better. Thanks!
 
The ELT525s and the Rockets are two different product lines by AV123. The price on the ELTs is down right now and they're a very good buy starting around a $200 budget. Really, they're a great option until your budget encompasses a very solid amplifier and subwoofer with enough left to spend several times the ELT's cost on speakers. Great sound for the price, especially for music.

They are passive, but AFAIK you could get away with the very small t-amp I posted ($45 shipped) as the ELTs are relatively high efficiency. The Gizmo that was sold with it for a while would be better at $120 shipped, but the t-amp is more in keeping with the cost of the other options discussed.
 
Yeah, the benefit of getting passives is that if you decided to go surround sound later, you could still use them and upgrade to a receiver + more speakers to fill out your setup. Both of those are good choices in your pricerange
 
Or resell the t-amp later and get a better one...it's modular, so you can easily replace parts as you have money to improve specific aspects of the system.
 
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