Seeking advice on Speakers that create an intimate 2 channel listening experience


So the past month I started a couple of threads on speaker choice on AVS forum (One asked for Powered/Active floor standing Speaker choices and another one around non-active FS speakers for a tube amp I was looking at).

But I've come to realize this was the wrong tact, got lots of flack much deserved and wanted to try to solicit the advice/opinions on this forum which I just discovered.

Short background...Hunkered down in a suburb just outside NYC now for the past 3-4 months, I started to get the itch for a dedicated 2 channel stereo Turntable setup in our living room in May. After much research and twists and turns and immediate upgraditis, as some know on here from other posts, I've finally settled in and now own a Rega Planar 10 Turntable. I also own a Sutherland phono --20/20 with LPS and that's staying. Right now the phono preamp is hooked up direct to a pair of ELAC ARF51 floorstanding speakers (all drivers powered by built in AB amps) which I like a lot BUT ITS HERE THAT I WANT MORE. Btw, I love the ELAC design of mounting the tweeter concentric in the mid driver -- makes sense to me.  I kinda wish ELAC would take the same design and make a reference speaker but thats for another day.

So to swap out the ELACs, I will obviously need an amp, but I will figure that out later and want to focus on getting the right speakers for me for what I want. So what do I want?

1. Floorstanders. Close to full range as possible. No subs.
2. Looks count since in my main living room.
3. Speakers that prioritize Imaging Imaging Imaging. That disappear in the room creating an intimate but 3D listening experience. Clean (Accurate) warm sound. No distortion. I would easily sacrifice low end for untiring highs and warm mids I don't listen to metal or hiphop anymore so I don't need loudness, more like lounge experience if that makes sense. Apologize if I got the adjectives wrong but its personal description of what I'm seeking.
4. Price Point - -$10k-25k. Room is 22x18 with 25 foot ceiling

I would like to audition/demo before I buy and since I live in the Tri-State area it should be possible. But I'm finding that obviously difficult to do right now. I listened to a pair of Salk speakers but didn't love them. And have an appt with the Audio Doctor in NJ in two weeks.

Thanks in advance.
aj523

Showing 4 responses by audiokinesis

If you are interested in being immersed and enveloped in the soundscape on the recording, if you want a warm tonal balance combined with superb inner detail, plus an utterly relaxing and fatigue-free presentation that you can listen to all day long and never tire of, then let me suggest SoundLab fullrange electrostatics. They have models in your price range. And there is a dealer in New York, one in Pennsylvania, and one in Connecticut. Two of the three were customers of mine before they became SoundLab dealers. I have been a SoundLab dealer for over twenty years and what you are describing is what they do well, in my opinion.

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions about them. I have zero interest in making or participating in a sale as I do not "poach" in other dealers’ territories, but there are few speaker designs that I totally believe in, and the SoundLabs are at the top of my list. I am a speaker manufacturer too, and I aspire to make the second-best loudspeakers. I think mine can do what you want, but SoundLabs can do it better.

Duke
AudioKinesis
" Has anyone compared Magnepan to Martin Logan? "

I have owned both, so yes, but that was years ago and Martin Logan’s product line now includes a wider range of formats. The ones I owned had a tall electrostatic panel sitting atop a short woofer box. The Martin Logans were better at some things, and the Maggies were better at some things.

But there is one inevitable acoustic characteristic of the tall panel/short wooferbox format that you should be aware of, and unfortunately it’s not common knowledge. First a bit of background:

Sound propagates differently from the point-source-approximating woofer than from the line-source-approximating panel . Sound pressure levels falls off by 6 dB for each doubling of distance from a point source, but only 3 dB for each doubling of distance from a line source.

This means that the tonal balance of a hybrid electrostat with the tall panel/one woofer configuration changes with distance because the relative loudness of woofer and panel changes with distance. The farther back you are, the louder the panel is, relative to the woofer. I have measured this and it’s not just theoretical; it’s real. 

In my opinion the key to a tall panel/single woofer hybrid adapting to a wide variety of room sizes and/or preferred listening distances is adjustability. The relative loudness of woofer and panel should be user-adjustable. I don’t know whether that is the case or not for their current line.

Duke
@bdp24 wrote, " Duke is of course absolutely correct about sealed and ported subs not being able to be satisfactorily mated with planar loudspeakers, for the reason he cited..." 

That’s not what I said, or at least not what I meant to say. 

I was talking about hybrid electostats, wherein a tall (line-source-approximating) panel sits atop a (point-source-approximating) box woofer, but failed to make that clear.

For the record, in my opinion sealed and ported subs can be satisfactorily mated with planar loudspeakers, but doing so calls for a somewhat unorthodox approach. I have great respect for both Rhythmik Audio and Danny Ritchie, and would expect their servo-feedback dipole collaboration to be superb.

Duke
@bdp24, whether or not a sound source behaves as a point source or a line source depends on its physical dimensions in comparison to the wavelengths produced. The Rhythmik/GR Research dipole sub is far too small to approximate a line source at subwoofer frequencies.

" The dipole null to either side of planars/line sources/dipole subs eliminates sidewall-to-sidewall modes..."

Not entirely, but it does take the side-to-side modes longer to develop. Remember the front wave and back wave are each spreading out omnidirectionally, cancelling where and when they combine out-of-phase, but not cancelling elsewhere and elsewhen. You can think of a dipole as two monopoles back-to-back, in opposite polarity, with a wrap-around path length separating them. After a sufficient number of bounces the frontwave and backwave have energized all of the room modes, but their energy is also dissipating as this is happening, so a dipole does have somewhat smoother in-room bass than a monopole.

But two intelligently-positioned monopoles approximate the in-room smoothness of a single dipole, and impact is preserved. This is why I use four monopole subs in my system, which is designed to blend well with two dipole main speakers.

"... the sound of the room itself being pressurized is conspicuously absent. Employing four subs instead of two does not provide that benefit, does it?"

I’m not convinced that a net unpressurised room is an advantage at low frequencies. My experience has been that good, solid low-end impact is facilitated by pressurization.

That being said, it is quite possible to configure four subs to not provide net pressurization at low frequencies. Just reverse the polarity of two of them. I have done this and imo it does some things well but impact is noticeably softened, so it is not something I recommend. 

On the other hand, I generally find reversing the polarity of ONE of the four subs to be beneficial. Or as an alternative, the phase of two of the subs can be set 90 degrees apart from the other two. These techniques improve the in-room bass smoothness in the modal region while preventing excessive bass energy down below the modal region.

I owned a set of those Gradient subs when I had Quads and agree with your assessment.

As I said before, I have NOTHING against the Rhythmik/GR Research subs. I’ve chosen to do something different, which arguably also works well.

Duke