Monsoon FPF-600 Planar Speakers - Should i buy?

[brandontw 10+ year member]

Ive been thinking about buying these speakers for about two weeks now, and the fact that they are still available for this price almost makes me even more apprehensive.

They are Monsoon FPF-600 Speakers with planar midrange and treble, and a conventional bass driver.

They look to be high quality, it seems when they were brand new and just came out they were going for about 1000$, then they dropped in price to about 699$ retail before they got discontinued (I think they are D/Ced). And I can get these, slightly used, for 150$, I talked him down from 200$. He says they have been played only like 5 hours since he bought them.

I'll definitely listen to them before i buy them, and i guess that's all that matters, but i just want to know what you guys think about the deal. I looked around for other speakers for the 150$ out the door price range, and there isn't anything that might be mistaken for audiophile quality at all, but these are supposed to be pretty decent, so I'm tempted.

Here is a review and some info of them:

http://www.audioasylum.com/cgi/m.mpl?forum=speakers&n=69829&review=1

and their big brother with two bass drivers:

http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/1001monsoon/

These would be replacing my very large home-made line array speakers for our main listening room. I know i wouldn't have the volume that I do with the line arrays, but hopefully more quality.

I'll be running them off of a HK-3480.

Click to read more...

 

[hayden 10+ year member]

The short answer is yes - as fast as you can give him the cash. They were very good speakers at retail, for that price it truly is a "no-brainer"

JP

 

[brandontw 10+ year member]

The short answer is yes - as fast as you can give him the cash. They were very good speakers at retail, for that price it truly is a "no-brainer"
JP

Well I went out and looked and listened to them last night, and like you said, it was a no brainier for 150$

They are definitely the best speaker I've ever owned.

The build quality is just awesome, you can just tell that they are high end speakers, no riff-raff. Cast iron bases, heavy duty everything else. Good looks.

And they sound really good.//content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif I've listened to quite a few high end brands at a local shop that i hang out at and can never afford, like B&W, martin logan, Energy, def-tech, klipsch and even some maggies, Quads and Theils.

These dont quite get up there with some of the 10-20000$ martin-logan, theil, quad, or maggie setups i've heard, but they definitely sound like a high end speaker.

I'm still working on developing my speaker taste and vocabulary, but so far, compared to the line arrays, they are just cleaner. There isn't any extra sound, your hearing the music, not the speaker. I believe they call that transparency. And these baby's get down pretty nice and low, so nice in fact that I'm going to ditch my fairly cheap home-made sub setup until i can afford something better.

But, i did notice a problem with the left speaker. It sounds like the tweeter and or mid range was cutting in and out intermittently or reducing its volume or something, I couldn't quite pinpoint the problem. So i tore the tweeters out of each speaker and swapped them to make sure that wasn't the issue, and it wasn't, so i fear it may be a crossover or wiring issue, because it does it when you move the speakers, especially when your changing the volume. i messed with them a lot last night, and the problem seemed to get less and less as the night went on, until i couldn't get them to do it at all. When i get some time, i might pull it all the way apart and check out the crossovers to see if i can see any bad capacitors or anything like that.

So that kinda sucks, but for 150$ for some high end audiophile class speakers, i cant complain too much. I looked around and you cant get Sqwat for speakers for 150$, let alone some floor standing dipole planar speakers.

 

[brandontw 10+ year member]

Here is a couple pics of them side by side with the line arrays i was rockin' up until now. The bigguns are getting sent out to pasture in the garage soon.

Excuse the house, we just moved in and got done painting recently, i just set up the stereo quick-like so we could have some tunes while we are setting up the house.

 

[BaaH268 10+ year member]

How do you like your towers?

I want to build a set like that just for the hell of it. I want a tower from floor to roof, but I want it to sound awesome and not just look awesome.

 

[joetama 5,000+ posts]

I guess his new speakers sound better than his line arrays. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif

Glad you like your new speakers. They look pretty cool, great find for the money!

 

[brandontw 10+ year member]

Ive been comparing them side by side all weekend, I probably put in about 6-7 hours of listening and adjusting. I've gotta say, I still love the line arrays, they still sound really good, and i would be happy with either set in that room (our main listening room)

The line arrays are defiantly not as clean sounding as the monsoons, the sound is a lot more "colored" than the new speakers, but they have a bigger sound and a higher soundstage, and i still love listening to them.

But for being half of the size, with a 5th the amount of speakers, the monsoons are very impressive, and they are very transparent and accurate, and I feel I made a good buy.//content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/cool.gif.3bcaf8f141236c00f8044d07150e34f7.gif