Speakers for Lamm ML2.1


I am pretty close to making a decision on speakers for my Lamm ML2.1. I listen to jazz and classical music mainly. Front end is currently Wadia but will probably switch to EMM set up. I have a Budget of $50,000 for the speakers. I usually prefer to buy new. Room size is currenly 20x21 with 9 ft ceiling, however custom room once the speakers are bought. Wanted to hear from experianced audiophiles on which direction they would go.

comments appreaciated
thx andy
rumney510

Showing 2 responses by wright2005

It hard to say. ML2 has it’s own issues (and partially if you “prefer to buy new”) and many speakers that might work with ML2 do have their own issues. Owl was correct insisting for over 100dB sensitively and high impedance for ML2. There is very little if any out there that might fit the bill.

Among the owl’s list:

Magico: they are ultimate foolish loudspeakers and they pretty much embraced all foolishness that an ignorant designer can stink into a loudspeaker.

Avantgarde Trio: have a lot of issues and might require a lot of work and experience to get a more or less civilized sound out of them. I doubt that it will be possible without a fundamental rebilling them.

Edgarhorn: it is hard to say. Bruce doe good speakers but au to the limited price point. Also, all of his customers are or dupes or juts not serious fools. No one even used Edgarhorn with ML2-level of electronics.

Siemens Klangfilms: Dispute to the flashy paranoia the recently was purely artificial created around them they are juts bad and none-interesting speakers with huge amount of problems and with complete inability of the speakers users to deal with them. This all is just a sweet audio myth and nothing else.

Tannoy GRF: The have some bass problems typical for dipole J-horns but they still listenable. Nevertheless I would not consider them as something around which I would bult a room. They are juts a very good drop in monitors.

Kharma Grand Ceramique: Unspeakably horrible loudspeaker with huge amount of problems. They have the worst in the industry ratio between the misery of sound and price.

Von Schveikert VR6: They are quite dead. Although I head them just once but I did not detect that they were in any way different then all the rest Schveikert’s speakers. You heard one-box speakers with a bunch of crappy driver then you heard them all.

Wilson Maxx2: I do not think that Wilson is the loudspeaker of ML2 level. Lamm in his web site suggests using ML2 with 94dB sensitively but it is he dose it juts to sell more of his amps. The largest Wilsons (Slams, Alexandria) surprisingly do not have this typical dynamic compression of the box loudspeakers but each of the still have a lot of issues for the price they cost.

I usually do not provide purchasing recommendations. However, in your case I would warn you that instead of buying a 50K worth not-well performing loudspeaker you might get a better cost-per-transaction yield if you spend 10K for some kind of Kharma3.2/GRF –level acoustic system and then work on the rest of you setup. For instance the Wadia front-end skew up sound much more aggressively than a bad loudspeaker. Also, beware about the new EMM gear – it might be quite dangerous thing.
Acapellas also have problems: non-integrateable tweeters bult around the Chernobyl particles, the “washed” ceramic mid-range drivers and many others. There is really no interesting high sensitivity speaker out there. Look at your Lamm as an amplifier building company. They show after show, year after the year demonstrate quite ordinary not to sat crappy sound in their listening rooms. Among many reasons one of the most important that there are no good commercial speakers out there. Still, I feel that to search “a loudspeaker for ML2” is not really a correct shaping of objectives. Find a loudspeaker that would be fine “as is” and then let ML2 to do with it whatever it could. A little tip: it looks to me that Lamm loads his output stage to push up the harmonics. I do not know how he configures his secondary but I learn that by severely under-loading the out stage you might get way more interesting result then ML2 meant to yield. Therefore, look for the loudspeakers that do not drop less then 12R and load them at min secondary impedances. It would help you to get some transient speed and do not worry about the harmonics why you do so – the ML2 is reach enough in the harmonic juice….