704 or 805

[Don]

Just wondering if anyone has compared these two speakers for stereo application only.

Your comments are greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Don

[grit]

No contest. 805, but you'll need a sub. I'd consider the 703's.

[Joey_V]

703 has the FST... I'd consider that over the 805. But, between the 704 and 805.... 805 wins.

[audioqueso]

Yes, I did audition the 704, 703, and the 805 all at the same time at the dealership about a year ago. It was hooked up to a Rotel CD player (don't know what model), fed into a Rotel RSX-1067 and powered by a Rotel 1080 200 watt amp. The (annoying) dealer had some nice tracks he wanted to play for me. I also brought some of my own CDs. So you know what I was looking for, I listen to a lot of types of music, but my preferences were old jazz (Fitzgerald), japanese enka (tradition music), hip-hop (alicia keys, eminem), rock (Linkin Park), classical (Gershwin), salsa (Marc Anthony), and chinese soul (Faye Wong). I wanted a speaker for 50/50 movie/music, but I was mostly concern with music. I went with the 805s.

Bass:
The 704 obviously has a deeper frequency range which gives it a nice and full frequency range. I was quite surprised at how well controlled the bass was with the 704. I played some very bass heavy vocals and jazz with a bass (instrument), and it was so clear with the 704. Compared to the 703, I found the bass in the 704 to be tighter. The 703 went a little lower, but not enough to justify the price difference. (Plus, as many will complain, there is no perfect matching center for the 703 in a HT setup). The 805, though it does not go as low as the 704, was way more than able to hold its up. Very very controlled bass. Around the same frequency range, the 805's bass was not as present as the 704's bass, but it was just as controlled, and more in some songs. For hip-hip and rock, the 704 seemed to be able to play faster than the 805. However, for jazz and instrumental music, the 805's bass seemed sooo much smoother than the 704. If your room is small, you MIGHT be able to get away with the 805 without a sub. But in most cases I believe you'll need a sub for a good musical range.

Mids:
I found the better song for me for comparing these two speakers was George Gershwin's 'Rhapsody In Blue'. With so many instruments (no vocals), you can hear the biggest sonic difference between the two. The 704s have a bit of a forward sound, while the 805 is very natural. Because of this, I found hip-hop and rock to sound a lot better with the 704s. It was 'funner'. (Note: after I received the 805s, I was shopping around for a nice amp. Went through a few Rotels, Marantz, and then Parasound. I found that the Rotel amps left the 805 too laid back. The Parasound has a slightly forward sound and it really helped my 805. Hip-hop and rock now sounds great with my combination.) Old recordings (old jazz in my case) also had a difference feel with both speakers. Because the 704 has a more forward sound, the recording's instruments came out stronger and made the track sound cleaner, and 'newer'. The 805s sounded so natural which presented a good and bad. The bad was you can hear just how old and bad the recording was. The good is that it reproduced the track so true to its original recording, that it really felt like you are back in that time. Does that make sense to you? It was a nice feeling. There was a track I played that was in acapela with people snapping their fingers. The 704 does an excellent job of localizing the image. You can sit down and here VERY precisely where that sound was coming from. The 805 sounded more real, but sounded as if it was just somewhere in the room. So in general, the 805's mids were very soothing compared to the 704, but the 704 were far from lacking. One thing to note, though I did not listen to any movies at the time, the 704s seem to be a better choice for HT due to it's ability to localize the sound to the T.

Highs:
This is where the 805 smokes the 704. I guess it will depend on what you prefer. In general the 800 series has some very smooth highs. In COMPARISON to the 805, the 704's highs are a bit harsher. The 704's highs are not painful at all, but in comparison to the 805, it is a bit harsher. A track provided by the dealer was something that played the flute in a very high octive. The 704 gave a good reproduction of the flute putting it right in its place, but it still sounded like a speaker to me. The 805s put the flute right in the room. It has such a natural airy sound, that when I turned off the lights, you really could not tell that the flute was being played by a speaker. Yes, the 800 series is that good! The 704s high always draws out the high tones just right, but in a sense, it still just 'draws' them. Does that make sense to you? The 805s somehow seem to play the high notes so that it just surrounds you. Think of it like this. The 704 projects an elegant stream of liquid, as oppose to the 805s which just create aura of light. (Do I have weird analogies?) To me the 805s did a much better job with female voices, but I preferred the 704 for male voices. This is probably because most male singers don't have a high pitch silky voice, so most of their voices might be played by the dedicated midrange of the 704. But once again, I found the male voices to sound better with my 805s once I powered it by the Parasound amp.

Long, but I hope this was helpful. Unless you mainly listen to hip-hop and rock, the 805 is the better choice for music, but in most cases, you will need a sub. I purchased a Velodyne SPL-R 800 sub (sealed, not ported), and it blends very nicely to the 805. Combined with my Parasound, I now love the way all types of music sounds and I'm glad I received the 805s. If you'd like to read what I have to say about the 805s in an HT setup, please read this thread. So that's my opinion, but they both have a different sound so you really should go to the dealership, if possible, and audition both speakers. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. Good luck.

[LikeCoiledSteel]

Hi audioqueso,
Very nice write up and very detailed. I enjoyed reading your review because of how you had approached each speakers strengths and weaknesses. A lot or reviews will just take the approach that if it is the 800 series it has to be better all around. Even though the comparisons are between a bookshelf and a tower speaker, it is evident that there are more differences other than just more bass. Especially since you liked the 704's tighter bass over the 703. I have heard that the 704 can be more "musical" than the 703. Nice post.
Steel

[asrovnal]

I have 703s powered by a Denon AVR 3806, input device is a Denon DVD 3910. I adutioned the 704s and 703s at the same time, the break point for me was the mid range and well controlled base of the 703s. When I got the 703s home they sounded very high pitched but one day (after about 200+) hours of play they just sounded right, the highs mellow out and the mids and bass blended well.

When I got my 3806 and was going through the set up menue I found a section pertaining to 2 channel set up. It provides a seperate 2 channel corssover point for the sub woffer. Also, the back surround channels can be redirected to the frount speakers for bi-amping purposes. I bi-wired/amped the 703s and set the crossover to 40htz. The 703s never sounded better very well controled more open and slightly deeper sound stage. Note: When utilizing the 2 channel function all two signal input is processed via the 2 channel set up. I have the DVD 3910 set up with the Denon I Link for multi chanel play back and have the two channel outputs conected to the CD input with analog cables. I personnely favor the analog sound for two channel play back. My sub woffer is a B&W 700 and I never found a setting that worked well for both home theater and 2 channel listing but, with the new settings available with the 3806 with the dual subwoffer crossover points everthing works great. No more getting up changing volume controls on the sub. PS: The remote for the 3806 sucks it is the most evil thing ever created by mankind. After setup I use a $10.00 Sony remote that does most of what I need. Have a Nice Day.

[audioqueso]

Thank Steel. Glad all that typing helped someone out. lol

Asrovnal, you need to be introduced to the wonderful world of the Home Theater Master remote. Look them up. Best thing to happen to the home audio world.

[asrovnal]

Audioqueso: Was sort of looking at a Harmony 520, $100 +/-, but will check out your recomendation. Thanks Tony

PS: Seems like no one cares in this forum cares for Denon receivers, if it is not a Rotel or above you are out in the cold!

[CP-Mike]

This is getting a little off topic, but.... I used to think the MX 500 (Home Theater Master) was the best there was...until I set up a system for my parents. I decided to buy them a Harmony remote (659 or something) off of good recommendations I saw on this forum and elsewhere. It just about blew my socks off with how simple it was to configure and use. Once I got everyhting set up properly, I don't think there could be an easier-to-use remote out there. The MX 700 may be more powerful with custom macros, etc, but for anything I would actually use, the Harmony does a better job.

For example, say you're watching TV and get bored and want to watch a DVD. With another remote, you'd have to activate the DVD player, turn it on, then activate the receiver, select the DVD input, then maybe activate your TV and cycle through the inputs if your sat is svideo and your dvd player uses component inputs. With the Harmony, you just press "watch DVD" and it takes care of EVERYTHING, regardless of what state your other gear is in. Sure, you could probably write a macro to do this, but the difference is that with the Harmony remote, it knows the state of all your gear. So say you write a macro to press "TV/Video" three times to get you from your sat input to your DVD input. What happens when the TV is already set to the correct input? You either have to write a lot of macros to cover all the possible cases, or you need to manually "fix" it. With the Harmony, it's seamless. It even has a Help button in case the IR beam gets interrupted or something. It asks you questions to troubleshoot the "action" (what they call the sets of macros) and fix the problem.

To be honest, I didn't really believe all the claims people made of how great the remote is. I assumed it'd be difficult to program, or you could only program it to do things a certain way, or that it'd be buggy and not really work, or that it wouldn't be able to learn codes from other remotes. Well now that I've set up and used one, I know that none of that is true. It really is as good as it sounds. And it's very wife/parent/user friendly. Which, really, is the most important requirement for a remote, second only to functionality, which the Harmony also excels in.

[audioqueso]

Mike,

Just curious about the Harmony. If you press 'Watch DVD', what does it actually do? Is it not a macro? How long does it take?

[CP-Mike]

You have to spend a while setting it up, but the idea is that it turns off all the gear you're not using (or you can have it leave them on if you want), turn on the new gear and put it in the right mode (if necessary) and set the receiver/preamp/etc and the tv to the proper input. The setup is fairly lengthy, but it's all done as a web-based app, so you install just a helper driver on your computer, and it communicates with the Web.

First, you tell it what gear you have, and what sort of "actions" you want to be able to perform. Watch TV, Watch DVD, Play CD, that kind of thing. Then for each action, you have to tell it what input stuff needs to be set to, whether to turn unused stuff off or leave it on, etc. It uses a big database of IR codes, but you can always learn codes from your old remotes, in case some of those codes are wrong. I had trouble getting it to turn off my Dad's NAD cd player, so I had to go into the advanced properties, tell it that there was a button for ON and a button for OFF, then teach it the codes from the remote. Once I did that, the macros worked smoothly when switching from CD listening to something else.

The remote does use macros, it just doesn't refer to them as such. The macros are a series of IR commands, so you have to keep pointing the remote at your stuff. Of course, if you forget, and point the remote away, you can always use the Help function to get yourself back on track. For my dad's system, the macros took about 3-4 seconds to execute and get everything turned on/off/etc. You can speed it up by shortening the command delay time in the setup program, but I never did.

You can also use the full functionality of the original remotes, as long as it's programmed as soft keys or whatever. Similar to the MX 500, except you obviously have fewer soft buttons. Also, if you don't want to mess with one of their macros, you can issue on/off commands manually.

[Don]

I did an audition yesterday unfortunately they did not have an 805, so I listened to the 704 and the revel concerta f12. The revels are quite nice and half the price of the 704. I also listened to the 705 and they are nice but not as good as the 704.

Has anyone heard of the revel concertas before?

Don

[rav934]

I lived with the 704s for 1 year. Now have 804s.....

Do yourself a favor and get the 804s. The difference is amazing, especially in the critical mid-range.

[BTB]

Hi Don

I've had a pair of 704's for about 2 months now. I listened to the 703's as well, to compare even though I couldn't afford them. The fancy FST midrange driver on the 703 makes for a very different sonic character when compared to the 704. IMO, the 703 can be a bit pushy on recordings with a "brighter" bias, but on the plus side sounds far more open than the 704. The 704 can sound a bit "shut in" in the midrange. I've not listened to the 800 series model you've referred to but because one is a floorstander and the other a standmount consider your room and amp set up carefully to determine the best one for your application. I've got a pretty big room and therefore I've had more success with bigger speakers.

I'm capitalizing on the 704's recessed midrange by experimenting with really revealing interconnects which afford me great detail resolution, but would probably push a "on the edge of brightness" midrange over the top. Another thing to consider is the the bass performance of the 704 which is pretty good, nice balance of snap and extention, not flabby or slow at all (some people seem to prefer smaller speakers over towers because of their speed and accuracy, but for a floorstander this is pretty quick), and I'd guess probably go a few Hz lower than the standmount, which can't be a bad thing?

Hope it helps.

[JKalman]

Just wondering if anyone has compared these two speakers for stereo application only.

Your comments are greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Don

I owned the 703s before trading them in for the 802Ds. I would get the 703s hand down over the 805s. 805s will require a sub, but with the 703 you can live without one. If you can do it, spend the extra $1000 on the 804s, since you will have to buy stands for the 805s anyway, might as well spend the $1000 extra and get those sweet 804s. That's my advice. If you must get either the 704 or 805, then get the 805 and buy a subwoofer later on... I wouldn't get the 704 though.

[JKalman]

PS: Seems like no one cares in this forum cares for Denon receivers, if it is not a Rotel or above you are out in the cold!

Wow, when you say something like that, you are sure to get a warm reception...