ME Geithain

Hard to get in the USA workd on RL 906 very nice soundstage super wide sweetspot.
Was about to buy them myself and I refused becasue they did sound too good to be true, they are super accurate monitors and no consumer has something like this at home, and thats where in my opinion the probelm starts. I get lazy on them with the width and depth thing. But I never get lazy on my GENELECs 8040 with all the phase issues they have. Or maybe its just I know the Genelecs for over a decade now. Who knows.

If you buy them you get monitors from a small EX GDR East-German company which do thier thing with tons of passion.
The Geithains are very popular in our public broadcast service.

I think you cant go wrong, if you like them is something diffrent.

For some reason I thought the Geithain was more expensive like around 8-10k for a pair so that's why I mentioned the kii three however the Kii are def almost $10k a pair ... I apologize for throwing out an errant suggestion, I should have dug a little info out on the rl 906.. Anyway not sure what country you are in but Genekec are crazy low priced in Europe compared to USA so that would be my rec for Europe but US I would recommend maybe used pairs of the usual suspects like you mentioned ( Adams etc ) however look at Tyler acoustics if resale is not an issue for you.

Which Equators?

I have a pair of those and a pair of Q8s... The D5s have a lot of detail but they're really bass shy.

Didn't you have a budget of like $700 for your entire rig last week?

Check out The dynaudio or the unity audio pebble and bam bam combo! I have done work on the unity audio and they are fabulous monitors. Some of their line has ribbon tweet some soft dome so it's up to you! They are located in europe and ray to deal with from what others have said! Check out the rock as well, very very nice monitors . Also in your budget 😀

Yes those are the ones. Ragan was speaking highly of compared to the Adam a77x and he has good ears. I prefer the a7x over their bigger brother, however I prefer the hs8 over them both 😱 And waiting to get my Barefoot FootPrint's back from Barefoot so I can tell you more about those! The unity audio are in UK no sleepers either 🤘

For anyone interested, these were initial thoughts after testing:

Initial impressions

Three of us (myself, partner and a friend / sound engineer) spent the day listening to all three of these coax monitors. The consistant theme across all of them is how the sound appeared directly in front of your face. It never sounded as though the speakers were relaying information L/R, surreal to people who had never heard it before.

All of them in their own right great monitors.

Equator D5 vs. ME Geithain

I went through my usual playlist of various metal / rock bands, from LOG to Scar Symmetry all the way over to AFI.. The one thing that stood out was the low end response of the Equator's, it seemed somewhat more accurate / representative of what every monitor I've heard from $250.00 to $4K gave me.

One thing that became immediatley apparent is the ME's needed a sub, apart from that the ME's honestly wiped the floor with the Equators. Better imaging, flatter / more neutral sounding revealing details I never even noticed on the Equators.. Once I'd become accustomed to the ME's the Equators sounded boxy and the mid range was somewhat veiled compared to ME's.

There was no real comparison here, the ME's were in a different league.

Fluid Audio FX8 vs. ME Gethain

Uhh, this is going to be a difficult topic. If I'd of never heard the FX8's, then it would be simple, the ME's would outright win across any monitor I've heard sub 2.5K..

I don't think the FX8's are good for their price, I don't think they're good monitors for 2K or 4K.. They are just damn great monitors, or that's what I would be saying if they didn't shoot themselves in the foot with compromises.

Talk about a david vs goliath battle, the FX's had a far better low frequency response whilst the ME's had better LMF response and clarity, they both sounded relatively neutral up to the point where the FX8's had too much HF information, although the FX8's had slightly better mid frequency accuracy and translation. If I could of notched the HF back a couple of dB on the FX8's then problem solved but oh wait, I can't because they didn't add this feature (it's a budget monitor of course).

The FX8's had a more stable phantom centre although the ME's had a massively wide sweet spot, the FX8's were bad enough that you could move your head to the side a couple of inches and all of a sudden imaging started to collapse, which is rather frustrating.

If you're looking at monitors sub 1K then add these to your bucket list to try out, IMO there's nothing I've tested from Focal, Sonodyne, Presonus, JBL, Genelec, Adam within their price range (and much higher) that outright beats them if you can live with their limitations.

If you're just looking for a great monitor irrelevant of price then I can't recommend the FX8's, too many compromises which the Gethain's simply do not have.

I'm almost annoyed at Fluid Audio, they weren't far off making one of the best budget monitors / or simply just monitors of the decade but they decided to cheap out and yes I have tried your FPX7's with the Adam style tweeter and they aren't better than the FX8's.. You had a mammoth and wrapped it in chains.

Let's see what the Dynaudio's bring to the table.

Don’t feel to bad about your Genelecs, Genelec, of all the pro monitors out their are the one company that has a particular sound to them, far from transparent yes, but useable after you get to know them. The people who seam to love them most are post guys who find them less fatiguing than most, and I think image wise great at acting like a typical low end home theater.
Now like baby 99% of speakers should never be put in a corner (never thought I’d quote Dirty Dancing in loudspeaker discussion) but unless it’s designed for corner placement (Klipsch Horn ) , I know in the real world you have to deal the hand your dealt but that’s just mean to a speaker even a Genelec! A great Niche would be for somebody to design a studio monitor to be used in a corner, but I see somebody saying they wouldn’t sell enough to justify it!

I ended up with the Dynaudio LYD48's because:

www.gearslutz.com/board/so-much-gear-so-little-time/1169919-fluid-audio-fx8-vs-equator-d5s-vs-dynaudio-lyd48s-vs-gethain-rl906s.html

Although the Gethain's are a fantastic set of monitors and I've been thinking about getting one as a B-Pair, not that the Dynaudio's aren't some of the best monitors I've come across and translate extremely well, it's just nice to have a separate sound source to A/B..

I might go Barefoot, not decided yet.

I borrowed them for two weeks from Gethain themselves, personally I thought the Dynaudio's had less distortion / better frequency alignment and much better low end response. Also the phantom center was stronger with the Dyn's, the imaging was clearer.. I just trust the Dyn's more..

The Gethain's were far better at placement / proximity than the Dyn's but apart from that for me at least that was the only place they won.. But.! They were better than most pairs I'd come across sub $3K, so for a B pair they're near the top.. Although I am looking at others too.!

Of course monitors are a personal thing, I'm glad they work for you.