System that sounds so real it is easy to mistaken it is not live

@rauliruegas , I down loaded the article and will get back to you on it. Cool Loudspeakers for sure. 

@esputnix , Yes, it can be done and in many cases improve on live sound. Others here disagree with me but I have been chasing this gremlin since I was 13 years old. As others here have already mentioned reproducing the dynamics of a live event is the most difficult problem. It requires a subwoofer system much more powerful than is usual. It also requires main speakers with extremely fast transient response and a lot of power. Other important factors are an appropriate room, avoidance of analog crossovers using digital ones if they can not be avoided, group delays need to be corrected and the frequency response of the entire affair needs to be perfectly flat in both channels to start (or as close as one can reasonably get). I then boost the bass at 3 dB/oct below 100 Hz. This is to create realistic dynamic force at lower than ear shattering levels. 

We all develop our own way of going about this and I think there are several paths to nirvana. I have heard three systems in 50 years that I would consider to be state of the art and capable of fooling one into believing an acoustic instrument was in the room and only one that put you in the 10th row of a stadium rock concert. Two of then were/are based on electrostatic main speakers, one on dynamic speakers.

I think the hardest thing to do is getting the room right. It helps a lot if the room is designed specifically for two channel high fidelity playback. This is an option most of us do not have. We have to work with the rooms present in our houses. Although you do not have to buy the most expensive equipment out there to succeed it is still not a cheap endeavor. Forgetting about the room you are talking about spending at least $150,000 if not more. Many of us simply can not afford that much.

On the bright side you do not need a system that performs at that level to enjoy music. You can do that with earbuds and your telephone. 

Lots of opinions here in all directions.

Lets take an example. Two weeks ago I saw Smashing Pumpkins and Janes Addiction at the Boston Garden. We were dead center, 20 rows back. It was so loud I had to use my Etymotic ear plugs. The sound was in Mono and there is always an echo in that venue. The light show was fabulous. 

I have a Blu-Ray of the Smashing Pumpkins Oceana concert. I think it was in New York. The recording was probably taken off the sound board and was well mixed with the instruments and voices in their proper location with reasonable blackness between. Played back at 95 dB with the bass boosted just a little the dynamics are very pleasing and realistic. Given that my system is a line source top to bottom the soundstage is vary large and lifelike. The audio experience is far superior to the live concert but the light show is no where near as overwhelming. 

Next is Mike Stern at the Blue Note in NYC, again dead center and two tables back from the front of the stage. We were listening to the live instruments and not a PA. I would guess a little louder than 95 dB, but still quite comfortable. Mike also has a recent BluRay, The Paris Concert. Given there is no light show the experience is scarily similar. I can match the volume perfectly. The size and timbre of the instruments is close enough that you would need do do an A/B comparison to identify the differences. Perhaps there is not quiet as much snap to the snare. I wish all live recordings could be like this one. 

Creating life size images is the purview of line source systems. It is apparent that many people who have responded to this threat have not heard one, particularly one that maintains it's line source behavior down to 10 Hz. Assuming a quality recording, the sound is usually superior to what you hear at a live venue. The dynamic range may not be as great but if the volume is satisfactory you do not notice this.   

@rauliruegas , thanx a bunch Raul. I sit 4 meters away. You have to remember That my system is line source. It's volume does not fade with distance like a point source system will. Yes, each main speaker has two transformers. They are nothing near as complicated as the crossovers in most modern high performance speakers. I also take the bass below 100 Hz out of them with 48 dB/oct digital filters which increases their headroom rather dramatically. 105 dB peaks is not a problem at all. Each one has a 350 watt amp on it and each subwoofer has 1800 watts on it, all 4 of them. 

@atmasphere , come on Ralph you just squish them in there. Hold that thought:-)

@lewm , the 6 ohm MC Diamond has more gain in voltage mode, about 3 dB. It definitely sounds better in transimpedance mode. Bass drums have more punch and the bass has more definition. I spent 30 minutes going back and forth on a number of different records. You can't hear the background noise until the tonearm lifts but then there is a hiss you can hear clear across the room and you know how tall ESLs are when it comes to projecting noise. This is at 95 dB or minus 6 dB FS. The Seta L 20 is 12 dB quieter, an awfully expensive solution. 

Is is not that a system should sound exactly like a specific live performance. It is that a system should be able to convince you that you are sitting in front of a live one and supply a similar amount of sonic satisfaction. The experience will never be the same without the visual aspects. A BluRay player and a large screen can take care of that. May not be quite the same but then you do not have to fight the crowds or the traffic. 

@atmasphere , not to mention that mine are 8 feet tall which means the volume does not dissipate nearly as quickly as point source systems. Horns can make up for this with extreme efficiency and controlled dispersion. Other dynamic speakers not so much.  

@lewm , tell me about it. For some strange reason Sowter stopped making ESL transformers and the ones I have found are peanut 50 or 75 to one jobs that will not handle the power I could throw at them. That resistance is primarily in the treble region, that Brilliance control which I roasted fine tuning it. I substituted the appropriate sized power resistor and it will heat the chassis almost to the point where you can not keep a hand on it. More wasted power. You still have to keep a resistor on the primary for most amps, just an ohm or two to keep them from shutting down. Since I take the bass and can fine tune the frequency response digitally I should easily be able to get away with one transformer and maybe a resistor if I could fine one with suitable power handling. I do not think the HF toroid will handle it. Roger is of the mind that you do not want to modify his speakers for any number of reasons.

@atmasphere , Ralph, do you know any makers of ESL transformers that could supply a 100:1 step up able to handle 200 watts continuous with a frequency response of 100 Hz to 20 kHz?

@rauliruegas , I think we may have different definitions of point and line source.

A point source is a driver that is smaller in all dimensions  than the shortest wavelength it is to reproduce. I line source is a driver that is larger in at least one dimension than the largest wavelength it is to reproduce. There are drivers that can be line sources at higher frequencies and point sources at lower frequencies. There are only two drivers that are line sources from zero hertz to over 20kHz. The first is an infinitely tall one and the second is a tall or long one that both ends terminate at fixed barriers like a floor, ceiling or wall. It is impossible for a driver to be both full frequency line source and full frequency point source. It is actually very bad for a speaker the swap radiation characteristics mid audio band as the power projection is very different and will cause frequency response  aberrations that vary with distance. 

Both my ESL and subwoofer systems end at fixed barriers. My system is line source from zero to as high as the ESLs will go which is probably not higher than 18 kHz. Roger West won't publish that spec. I am toying around with inserting a ribbon tweeter to go from 12 kHz up. This would relieve the main amp from having to deal with the crazy impedance curve of ESLs up there and give me a little more flexibility. I will have to biamp it and add a second digital crossover. 

@rauliruegas , Back in the 80 ADS made what were arguably the best dynamic speakers on the market. The L2030s were landmark speakers in several respects. They used and active crossover and required bi amplification.  They used a line source midrange array. Cross over points are at 450 Hz and 4000 Hz. To orient people the wavelength of 450 Hz about 2.4 feet depending on altitude and barometric pressure. 4000 Hz about 3 inches. In order to radiate as a line source an array has to be as tall as the longest wavelength it is to reproduce. In this case  the mid range array is 30 inches tall so it does act as a line source over its entire range. The woofers and tweeter however are point source as the tweeter is 1" and the woofers are 30 inches total. This is unfortunately a distinct problem for amplitude response except at one distance from the loudspeaker. Point source acoustic power drops off at the cube of the distance while line source drops off at the square of the distance. This is why you always see line source arrays at big concerts. They radiate acoustic energy more effectively. In this case the midrange drivers are going to get relatively louder as distance increases creating a hump in the amplitude curve. They will sound "right" only at one distance. This can be adjusted to some degree by the crossover so you can probably tune them to a specific distance. The other problem is that point sources radiate differently than line sources. Point sources are more or less omnidirectional whereas Line sources do not radiate above or below the array. This is why the line sources you see at big concert are always curved. In this case if your head is either above or below the midrange array the midrange will virtually disappear.  The speaker as a whole should be treated acoustically like a point source system from a room treatment perspective. It is not highly directional as is a line source dipole.  

As a whole I think this speaker system should sound wonderful at a specific distance while in your chair. I am sure they are capable of wonderful bass however, since the woofers run up to 450 Hz which is a big chunk of the mid range (middle C is 256 Hz) these speakers will still benefit greatly from the addition of two subwoofers, two very big subwoofers. I would also exchange the cross over for s digital system. Check out the DEQX Pre 8 which will be released shortly. It has all the power you need and 4 crossovers! I plan on getting one to run a ribbon super tweeter from 12 kHz up and the subwoofer system. It will take the stress off the MA 2s from running the treble of ESLs. 

@rauliruegas , at $85K a pair I would hope so,  but from a cost/performance ratio I will take the JC1+ any day. Is Meitner any better than John Curl? I do not know the answer to that question. At this point due to the reputation of the Atma-Sphere MA 2s driving my speakers. I am spending 1/2 that amount on them. We shall see how that works out. The JC 1s will be shifted to subwoofer duty. 

@lewm , The Plitrons will not handle the power I plan on dishing out. I can have a pair of 100:1 Sowters made that will and I should think would do a dandy job of driving the SLs from 100 Hz to 12 kHz.

@rauliruegas , see, you already had it all figured out! The subwoofers not only add bass but they clean up the midrange! It is important for people to know that. You certainly have a system capable of life like performance. 

@lewm , I went back to Sowter and they will make custom transformers. I drove the Acoustats with 100:1 transformers from 125 Hz up and it worked well. Right now I am crossing out of the stats at 100 Hz. I also am thinking about getting RAAL ribbon tweeters too cover 12 kHz up. I wonder if the bass transformer would handle that range or should I have 100 or 150:1 transformers made. The Plitron is too small. 

@lewm  Plitron is no more. It was bought out by Noratel Canada. They do have a custom transformer department and will design transformers for audio use in larger lots. I doubt they would just build two, but who knows. If I remember correctly the 1:75 Plitron was good for 100 watts. I have much more power than that. Remember, I have already burned up a brilliance control. My old Sowters were good for 300 watts. If I do this the plan will be to use one transformer, straight up to power the SLs from 100 Hz to 12 kHz. This would get rid of the RC networks. Correct, all the crossovers will be digital handled by the soon the be released DEQX Pre8 which has the capability to do four 2 way crossovers. I will use a small class A amp to drive the tweeters which I will hang at  ear level on the medial sides of the SLs. ESLs do not do the highest octave well, the diaphragm falls away from pistonic motion and starts vibrating haphazardly. Ribbons are perfect for this but again because of their very low impedance a transformer is required. The Magneplanar 20.7 tweeter would be perfect but they will not sell a pair separately. I would have to have the serial number of a pair to order replacements. 

@lewm  It was sort of iatrogenic. The processor was doing what it was programmed to do which was make the frequency response of the speaker flat. Because of that speaker's location there was a large dip in the high frequencies that the processor was correcting. I then poured the coal into that situation with very powerful amplifiers. New processors have programmable limits to keep such an event from happening. I corrected the problem by removing the window next to the speaker and replacing that brilliance control with a 500 watt resistor and a very large heat sink. 

Sowter does not make toroids. I used a 1:100 transformer successfully on the Acoustats using the same set up. It was one of their standard ESL transformers at the time. They may help design transformers to suit. I do not know yet. Using a super tweeter next to 8 foot ESLs is sonically risky. I would prefer a 6 foot ribbon out of a Magneplanar which would be less likely to call attention to itself as the radiation characteristics are the same. Above 12 kHz I think the tweeter will likely be less obvious. With the new processor I'll have four independent crossovers and I can experiment with less expensive equipment before I go to town.  I can buy used Maneplanars, get new tweeters with their serial numbers then sell them. Perhaps I can get the local Magneplanar store to wrench a pair out of the company. I'll figure something out. What else is a retired guy going to do?

@rauliruegas, I suppose that makes both of us (without technical foundation). I am moving my JC 1s to subwoofer duty and had a choice between the JC 1+ and the Atma-Sphere MA 2s. Both amps have a reputation for excellent performance on SL speakers. I opted for the MA 2s. They are class A all the way and have a very fast slew rate. Their output impedance is on the high side but I am not using them to make low bass so, that is not important. I also like hand made in America. Atma-Sphere does a beautiful job wiring it's amplifiers.

@jetter , they will be exactly where the JC 1 are. There are two cooling fans for each amp. I will know right away when a tube fails as the power in that channel will drop enough to skewer channel balance. It only takes a dB or two to change balance enough to alert me to a problem. I am not at all worried about it. 

@atmasphere , I should have phrased that differently. It is the SLs that do not like making bass. The MA 2's should be fine driving the SLs in the bass because the impedance is so high. I am not asking the MA 2's to drive 2 ohm subwoofers.

@rauliruegas , I had Velodyn subs for the better part of a decade. The surrounds corroded and they literally fell apart. I can not quote you figures but I do know that given appropriately large drivers in well constructed sealed enclosures distortion levels are easily under 0.5%. It is only when using smaller drivers in flimsy enclosures that distortion becomes a problem.  An amplifier that has tight control over the driver like the JC 1s with their damping factor over 1000 will result in excellent performance far in excess of what any Class D plate amplifier can provide assuming a large driver in a well constructed enclosure of which there are very few. The Velodyns do not qualify as a well constructed enclosure. No commercial subwoofer excepting the Magico Q series qualifies. If you commission me I will build you a knock out set of subwoofers. 

@atmasphere ​​@rauliruegas , OK guys, I'm the one who owns the SLs. You are both right and both wrong. Asking Dipole ESLs to make bass causes a lot of trouble. They will do it but it knocks the wind out of them in regards to headroom and increases distortion very obviously unless you only listen to them whisper quiet. Ralph's amps do a better job of driving them but I am still going to cross out at 100 Hz to subwoofers. I am not crossing out of the SLs because I am using JC 1s and am worried about their ability to make bass into ESLs. I am doing it so I can get a clean 105 dB out of the SLs and not be slapping the stators with every drum beat. Roger West knows this and has actually made ESL subwoofers. Last we talked he was making a client subs using 30" woofers. 

@lewm , thanks Lew. That is a common subwoofer mistake, crossing over too low. The makers of commercial subs using just a low pass filter suggest that but, it does not clean up the main speaker as much. Info below 40 Hz is relatively rare. If you can see the cones of the subwoofers moving then Doppler distortion is at play not to mention the non linearities you get into on far excursions. If you play test tones you can easily see the cones moving up to about 100 Hz. This is double important on ESLs because the driver is full range. When dealing with a dynamic speakers it will only be the range of the woofer that is cleaned up. This is still substantial in most instances. This mandates a complete two way crossover. I am also talking about digital crossovers which are a benefit as delays can be adjusted so that the signal arrives at the listening position at the same time in phase. The best location for dipoles in the room is never the best location for subwoofers. It is not easy to make subs blend in with 8 foot tall ESLs. It is not the dipole nature of ESL that creates the conflict but rather the line source characteristics. It requires a line source subwoofer especially if crossing up higher. As I previously mentioned Dr West is aware of all of this but he has to sell loudspeakers to survive and many people do not want to get involved in loudspeakers that require subs. Jim Strickland of Acoustat was the same way, maybe worse. He stubbornly refused to admit his speakers benefited from subwoofers. 

@rauliruegas, Raul, we built our systems over many years guided by our own preferences which vary to a large degree even though we agree on many aspects. On these issues I can tell you that you need to alter your opinion. I owned Apogee Divas for 6 years. A very enticing speaker that was seriously fragile and unreliable. Magnepans are much better from a durability standpoint and I think the 20.7 is even better sounding. The Scintillas could never reach realistic volume levels even with subwoofers. Apogee was right down the road from me in Massachusetts and I was in the factory on numerous occasions.

The Velodynes I owned were UDL 15s7's. The surround was foam and they all disintegrated.  I have never heard a plate amp of any type perform anywhere near the level of a powerful class A or AB amp. These were the last active subs I ever and ever will use. Turn your system up to 90 dB playing any bass heavy number and put your hand on the subwoofer. That vibration you feel is distortion. In order for any subwoofer to be competitive it has to be a balanced force design, two identical drivers in phase directly opposed to each other.  A 100 lb plate on top will not achieve the same results. Just wishful thinking. There are many subwoofer drivers with very low distortion specs. Just go to Parts express and have a look. The problem with subs is not the driver, it is the enclosure. Your servo system corrects the driver but not the enclosure. Of the commercial subs I have heard the Magicos are handily the best. I have not heard all the subwoofers out there. I have heard enough to know what designs have a chance of performing well. The problem with the Magicos for me is their size. I need to use four subs to form a line source and the Magicos are way to big. Fortunately, with digital subwoofer management and modern drivers you can make larger drivers perform wonderfully in small enclosures as long as you have enough power. I would love to use 15" drivers but again due to size I am limited to eight 12" drivers in four very special enclosures that have never been seen before. They are balanced force and stiffer than any enclosure in existence. They do not resonate at all. They are also pretty cool looking. At my current shop rate a pair will cost $50,000. That is how much work goes into them and they are passive so one would need to by amps and crossovers.  

I think your speakers are a cool design that fails in two major ways. Dynamic drivers are much heavier that the air they move. It is like trying to run a motor without a load on it. It is very inefficient and due to their uncontrolled dispersion cause more difficulty with room acoustics. Your speakers have fractured dispersion. They are point source and omnidirectional in the bass and high frequencies and line source in the midrange which controls dispersion up and down but not to the sides. All this means that the amplitude response is going to vary with distance and you are still stuck with the acoustic problems of omnidirectional speakers. 

My experience with ESLs goes back to 1978. I have owned five different versions, three of them hopelessly flawed because of bad electronics and fractured dispersion characteristics like your speakers, point source at lower frequencies and line source in the upper octaves. In order for an ESL to perform at it's best it has to be a full range dipole line source. This solidifies the image and makes them much more powerful. In order to function as full range line sources they have to extend from the floor to the ceiling, within a couple of inches. In order to produce realistic volumes with the extremely low distortion they are capable of they have to be mated to subwoofers and cross with steep curves no lower than 100 Hz. This requires digital crossovers. It can not be done with analog crossovers without significant damage to the sound. The beauty of Line source dipoles is that they do not radiate at all to the sides, up or down. They only send sound in a figure 8 pattern front and back. This make room acoustics a much more trivial problem. You only need absorption behind the speakers. The result is a very solid well defined image at all distances. There is no dynamic speaker that can match the transient response and detail of a proper ESL. The only advantage Dynamic speakers can have is size. They can be made much smaller. That is about it. 

@rauliruegas , That Evolution sub is absolutely nothing special and will resonate it's a-s off. The only subwoofers that have a prayer of performing at state of the art levels are those with a balanced force design. This is the only way to neutralize Newton's forces and keep the whole affair from shaking. After this subwoofer performance depends entirely on the construction of the enclosure which has to be absolutely stiff and non resonant. I have figured out how to do this in a small attractive package. Laugh all you want, the last laugh will be mine.

The physics of line source and point source speakers are well know and not a theory. Your system has a fractured radiation pattern and will sound correct and image properly at one single distance assuming no significant room interaction then they will not sound right or image at all. 

Scintillas are perhaps a little less fragile than Divas because they do not have a 1/4" tweeter. But the high frequency ribbon rapidly becomes loose and "flappy" The woofer can be dented with a light touch. They were also responsible for destroying more amplifiers than the Divas. The company did not last long because of these problems. Properly driven Acoustat 2+2's, where a much better speaker overall and virtually indestructible. 

The only SL speakers I fully support are the ones that are floor to ceiling. The shorter versions like the A1s have the same problem your speakers have. They are line sources at some frequencies and point sources at others fracturing the radiation pattern and causing room interaction at exactly the frequencies you do not want it, the mid bass and down. Floor to ceiling ESLs are way more powerful and no other speaker in existence can project a realistic life size and exquisitely detailed image. No point source speaker can this and the multiple driver line source speakers like the Near Field Pipe Dreams have uniformly been awful.

@rauliruegas just because a sub is a balanced force design does not necessarily mean it is going to be good. It depends on the quality of the drivers and the construction of the enclosure. All internal bracing does is change the frequency of the resonance. Play a 20 Hertz test tone at 90 dB and not only will your sub be shaking but so will the whole house. There is no coating you can put on a sub that will keep this from happening. There is no subwoofer enclosure made of MDF that can perform at the state of the art. 

Next using a subwoofer with a two way crossover under a 3 way dynamic system will relieve the system's woofer from taking long excursions which will keep it in a more linear zone of operation lowering distortion and Doppler effect of the woofer. If any of the woofer's "upper harmonics" are getting through to the rest of the loudspeaker someone really f-ed up on the design of the woofer to midrange crossover. In which case I would toss that loudspeaker and buy another one. 

The reason that using a subwoofer under an ESL is because there is only one driver thus, keeping it from taking long excursions cleans up everything and allows it to go VERY LOUD. And because it is a full range line source it sounds VERY BIG just like a real rock and roll concert. 

Raul, I have been building and designing subwoofers for 40 years. I think it is also pretty obvious that I am very talented cabinetmaker with enough equipment to open a commercial shop. I am building what I think will be the worlds finest subwoofer. You could at least wish me good luck.

@lewm , transmission lines are arguably the hardest type of enclosure to design. Yes, you can effectively double the size/efficiency of the driver at some frequencies. The problem is that the front and rear waves are only exactly in phase at certain frequencies. Then there is the problem of the construct. The enclosure is composed of a number of dividers and pathways. It becomes much harder to control all the panel resonances that develop and to make sure every panel is locked down solid. Subwoofers, by nature shake the hell out of everything. It is what they do for a living. I lean towards small enclosures because it is much easier to make them stiff and solid (the soap bubble rule). The lower efficiency is now easily covered by the powerful amps we have and amplitude errors can be corrected in room digitally. Setting them up as a line array and placing them directly against a wall then minimizes room interaction.

@rauliruegas , Is less distortion in the woofer's frequency range going to make the rest of the loudspeaker sound better? Since the loudspeaker as a whole will sound better I suppose you could say that is true. It will in no any way effect the actual performance of the higher frequency drivers. 

Raul, do you live in a bomb shelter? Put on a 20 Hz test tone, crank it to 90 dB and I absolutely guarantee you that your house will become a symphony of rattles. 

When are the final versions of the subwoofers going to be ready? About two months after my wife stops handing me stuff to do. The prototype has been made and it works as advertised but it is nothing special to look at. It is used more or less to develop construction methods and procedures that will work and minimize waste.  

@rauliruegas , sorry if I F-ed that up. I don't always read things right. Your a little more difficult for me to understand sometimes.  You are one of a few that I have some confidence in their hearing and technological shrewdness. I know for a fact you have not heard 8 foot ESLs at their best just because our opinions do not line up. It may not be your Absolute Sound but you should understand how they could easily be a contender for some people. 

@dogberry , Do you remember what the Absolute Sound looked like in the beginning?  It was a cheesy little digest book without advertising . I loved it that way. Some how it had more importance back then. Harry Pearson was the first journalist that understood us. It was that search for the ultimate performance based on the sonic presentation of a system. Harry knew what he wanted to hear even if he had difficulty describing it like the rest of us. More difficult is, how do you get there?  This is the eternal curse of the audiophile and the source of much argument. The problem is, our experience varies so much based on what we have heard, that our opinions are skewed. If we all had the same experience of the very best systems in the very best rooms our opinion would probably be very much the same. This might make life boring. 

@lewm , I was not trying to give you a lesson on TL design, Just my opinion. I have heard some excellent TLs from Celestion back in the day and more currently Sanders also under an ESLs!   MDf is OK for a woofer, but not for a subwoofer actually plywood used intelligently is stiffer just a lot more expensive. My balanced force subs use 1.5 inch cabinet grade maple plywood.  IMHO it takes an entirely different approach designing a speaker that can punch out the appropriate energy from 18 Hz to 125 Hz. It is not my opinion that speakers that can do so will get your entire house shaking. This is a matter of fact. Turn it up to 90 dB and and play pure sine wave test tones from 20 to 40 Hz and walk outside and you will hear, at many frequencies, your house rattle and buzz. I have a brick house with some Hardy Plank siding in the rear and it rattles and buzzes, not to mention everything in the house like plates and wine glasses. It took me a month of playing around to stop all the sonic anomalies coming from a Stewart theater screen and they reputedly make some of the best. I had to silicone all the air vents in the house to get then to stop. At least in my media room I can not hear any of the symphony the subs are making in the rest of the house with the volume up. I think this is the best one can expect with subs that have that kind of energy. Balanced force subs may not shake themselves but this says nothing of the rest of the house and it's contents. My only possible thoughts in situations where someone is telling me their environment does not rattle are, the person has no idea what they are listening to, the person is very clever and managed to control their environment via various techniques and finally, their system does not produce realistic sub bass. The specifications of the vast majority of speakers means absolutely nothing. The speaker's ability to make sub bass at one meter says absolutely nothing in regards to the speaker's capability to make realistic levels in a normally sized room. It is the main reason we resort to subwoofers. The problem for most manufacturers is that making an ultra high performance subwoofer requires a level of construction insanity and equipment support that the sub becomes very uncompetitive from a cost and complexity standpoint. They want to sell subs to as many people as they can. Us truly discriminating audiophiles are not a very large target audience. As I have said in other posts, the only sub I have heard make great sub bass in a normal room environment  is the smaller Magico Q sub and for some reason they do not make it any more. I also think their Q sub were not the absolute sound. I still think the basic design can be better, even less cost effective but better.