A german audio magazine recently bought some cheap speakers on eBay to check if they're any good. The reviews were crushing. I think these were new speakers from powersellers, not from private people. The things they noticed are rather amusing, so i thought i'd share that; here's some stuff you can expect if you get cheap eBay speakers (pic).

1: Piezo-tweeter of the "Novex" speaker; no magnet, no voice coil, no frequency filter.
2: Bi-wiring or bi-amping? Forget it, only one pair is connected with thin wire.
3: Same here. The bass (above) runs without a lowpass filter.

Thanks for the warning. I was wondering, because these ads are splashed everywhere over eBay.
Now we know!

My advice if you want to buy speakers on eBay: only buy if you can see (and hear) the speakers beforehand. Speakers are heavy and in any case you won't get refunded the shipping costs, so a return warranty is not really a safeguard. And expect to get what you pay for, whether new or used. Also: many companies won't honor the warranty terms unless the audio gear is purchased from an authorized reseller.

Wow, those must sound horrible. The pseudo-tweeter is the best part, I am really impressed that somebody would go to that amount of effort to produce something that looks nice and is clearly terrible - real commitment to capitalism

That said, you can still pick up some bargains on ebay. I got a pair of ex-display Kef iQ3s for £160 which is pretty good considering they retail at £280. They arrived in excellent condition too.

Sam

Look here and thou shalt find answers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_van_speakers

Hello

I am the proud owner of 7 NOVEX speakers: 4 SmartLine 600, 2 Smartline 300 and 1 SmartLine center and I am talking just about this brand. I bought my first SmartLine 300 in 2005 from german ebay just for curiosity, they weren't expesive and I liked the design. Payed 60 euro including shiping for them. Now the sad part (from another point of view) is that these speakers sent my JBL TLX 600 right in the bathroom. Sudenly I was interested to hear the big one, SmartLine 600 and I bought a pair. I visited with them every friend I know with a HiFi system. 2 of them run Novex now.
With what I compared them: JBL TLX 600, Pioneer S-H240V-W, Unitra (some old monsters), Technics SB CD320, Magnat Motion 144, Infinity Kappa.
Only the last 2 stand against Novex. I am amused by my friends face when I told them the price of these Novex...it is a sad reality of the world where we live. Marketing is telling us to buy well known brand names and we keep put money in made in china's big boys products while some made in europe no names products are struggle to survive. For me, Novex is a reference for speakers of under 200 euros, only Magnat can stand against them but only when it comes to low freq, because at definition and sound stage you have to hear a Novex to believe it.
Today they don't make those models anymore and probably due of their succes they make another models which now compee directly in price range with Magnat. From my point of view I am a witness of a growing german HiFi brand, Novex. On the other hand, I hope they will still remain underground to get them at so low price. Give them a try if you find one, you might throw your old speakers.


Cheers,
Radu

Wow, are you talking about the eBay models here Radu?

It's a constant: "You get what you pay for"

He's probably the seller

It's far better to get known brand speakers second hand from ebay...currently after another set of KEF Coda 7s for a tenner! About 10 years old but I love em.

Yes,

I'm talking about the ebay speakers, and no, I am not the seller. Why I was sure that you ppl would react like this ? I registered here only to mantion an exception form rules, Novex in this case. Like I said, I am not talking about the other brands.
And yes, WOW said all persons that hear them, simply WOW.

the end.

Radu

Magnat, Novex, Pyle, Ratho, Crunch, McFun, US Blaster, Raveland, those are normally some of the brands i stay away from. There are dozens of such brands prominently featured on eBay, most of the things they sell is way too cheaply built junk with impressive numbers to bedazzle the unsuspecting buyer.

I would say that the audio component market is in a dilemma, because the transition from garbage to well-built to snakeoil is rather seamless and hard to notice without some prior knowledge and listening experience. But if there was a way to make very cheap components sound superior to more expensive and well-built ones, don't you think that this would become the norm, and they could ask higher prices for their articles? Nobody can just use the cheapest stuff, put it together and get a great sounding product. To get a good sound, you have to do some things right, and from the looks of it, Novex doesn't always do that.

I am surprised that you put Magnat in that list. I understand to stay away from no names, but not from Magnat. I think we really live in different worlds. The local AUDIO VIDEO magazine (romanian version of the german one) made in september 2006 a test of compact speakers for under 200 euros. Models involved in test were : Heco Vitas 200 (140 euro), JBL Balboa (200 euro), Magnat Monitor 220 (160 euro) and CENTRUM Gali (100 euro). Like in the above case, there are detailed pictures with all the components from these speakers. The reference speakers that they compared them is WHARFEDALE diamond 9.1.
At the end of the test Magnat is the new reference for AUDIO VIDEO in this class with 60 points (WHARFEDALE had 57, CENTRUM - 44, HECO-52, JBL-50)and probably now they are nr.1 seller here.

In november same year there was another AUDIO VIDEO test this time in the floorstanders class for under 400 euros. In test : Magnat monitor 880 (360 euro), Mission M33i (400 euro), WHARFEDALE Diamond 9.4 (400 euro). The winner in this test was MIssion with 63 points followed by Magnat with 61 points. I never thought that Magnat are not considered HiFi and "no name" brand that should be avoided. Check the Quadral series or Vector series. Here is their website: www.magnat.de

And no, I am not the Magnat seller

Radu

Image provided in leading post by hydorgen audio administrator CiTay is proof tantamount to consumer fraud (by manufacute of photographed speaker product). Note the dual binding posts but only one pair connected internally.

Radu, Magnat can build some decent stuff which costs more, but i was talking primarily about the cheap stuff. Maybe they changed their direction recently, but for instance, the car amps they sold were always not very good. My first car amp for the front system was a Magnat Energy (ridiculous pink-yellow amp with the old "Comic Sans MS" Magnat logo), and it was bad in every regard. One day, it refused to work and that was that. Later i found out that it was not too uncommon for that line of amps to just stop working. Well, i guess they learned a bit from their mistakes, and my prejudice comes mostly from their older models...

About the magazines, some people who work in some magazines don't have much of a clue of what they're doing when they test speakers. I know it primarily from the car audio world. They make some "durability tests" which destroys many good speakers and says nothing about the sound quality. I know the owner of a renowned car audio shop in the area, and when he went for a photoshoot for a car he equipped, he saw the pile of dead speakers in the corner. He asked what that's all about, then they explained the ridiculous testing they do, which was totally unrealistic and could never happen in real life. High-end speakers with very light membranes would be destroyed in under a second from that (i have to ask again how they tested exactly).

So those reviews are only as good as the people who perform them, and there i sometimes have my doubts. That also concerns many reviews i read online, also of PC hardware.