Epos M12.2 Main / Stereo Speaker

I spent a very long time researching speakers for my two channel stereo system to replace a very old pair of Infinity speakers from the early 80's. I listened to many speakers in various stores in my home town and even drove 4 hours to listen to some speakers that I couldn't buy at home.

I decided to only buy speakers that I had heard with my equipment in my home. I demoed a number of speakers at home and in the end decided on the Epos M12.2. The rest of my equipment is an Arcam Diva A90 integrated amp, a Rotel RCC 1055 CD player and an old Rega Planar 3 turntable. That's an all English system!

I first heard the Epos speakers in the local shop and was favourably impressed with them, but I thought that I could do better. I also thought that I would be better served with floorstanders than with bookshelves in my room with my gear. So I bumped up my budget and continued searching. Here are the ones I eventually brought home: Proac Studio 140, Totem Acoustic Forest, Spendor s5e, Monitor Audio Silver 8, Studiolab Reference 1 and Angstrom Omega AO 203. Whew! The prices ranged from $850 - $4000 Canadian dollars!

OK, so why did I end up buying the Epos M12.2. Well, unlike some of the others, there's nothing irritating about them. They are very smooth sounding, no obvious frequency biases. Admittedly they don't go very low (58Hz according to the specs), but I found the bass response to be very realistic with these speakers. Nothing boomy, like with some brands like Paradigm. These speakers produce an amazing amount of bass from such a small enclosure with a 6" driver. The mid-range is very pleasant - not overly warm. High frequencies are nicely reproduced. I listen to some pieces specifically for the cymbals or other metal-based percussion (e.g., triangle) and these speakers handled them beautifully.

I would summarize by saying that these speakers deliver an amazing quality of sound for a pretty modest amount of money. That's one thing I have learned from this experience - there is absolutely no correlation between sound quality and price. It's totally scattered. Don't get me wrong, I heard some amazing speakers with some amazing electronics, but they were in excess of $20,000 systems.

You can listen to these speakers for extended periods with no listener fatigue that you may find with more coloured or biased speakers. On first blush, you may be unimpressed with these speakers, but upon closer listening, they will reveal their clean sound and easy they are on the ears.

One other point, I would recommend getting decent speaker stands for these. Epos makes a wrought iron stand that works well, but there are better stands out there that may have more WAF!