Speakers for Classical and Rock in large space.

Hello Bill. Dejavu! A very tall order to accomplish within your budget,to be sure,however with a little searching, and a lot of homework,It can be done.Your room dimensions are very similiar to mine except your ceiling is 5 ft higher.The Duke's [out of room] analogy is very astute, great advice and definately not to be taken lightly.Many so called high-end speakers that may work very well in the typical sound room found in todays homes... will fall flat on their face and well short of your expectations.Voicing any given speaker to a smaller room is a much easier exercise to accomplish with any success.... Rooms as large as yours are a whole different animal.Within your budget, I would also second the recommendation for the larger Klipshorn[corner horns]...although with a few not so minor reservations.K-horns have some distinct major advantages as well as few potential liabiities that need to be addressed.It is imperative they be placed in the corners of a room.If they do not have a corner placement that is symmetrical with your listening seat,it will be next to impossible to achive a coherent tonal balance and proper stage, and will almost certainly give you that proverbial hole in the middle stereo effect.That said.....Their advantages far outweigh their liabilities in massive rooms, as they are incredibly efficient[107 db at 1 watt]and can assimilate the illusion of a live event at the equivalent sound pressure levels thereof, and with very little[if any] compression.They will "pressurize" the room [even yours] with almost any amplifier, small or large,tube or solid scrape.Most quality high powered amplifiers are typically very expensive- whether tube or solid state.It has been my experience over the years...that the lower powered amplifiers will typically outperform higher powered amps regardless of design [read tube or solid state] and will obviously give you much more lattitude and many more choices when choosing such.There are also many many outstanding 10 to 30 watt tube amps [as well as solid scrape stuff] out there that can knock your socks off for very little money [at least by high end standards] With higher powered amps, the choices become a whole lot smaller proportionately.K-horns will ROCK with the best of them with only 10 watts of power.While I do not use the K-horn in my room.. it was definitively one of only a handful... that would fit the bill.In my room[ read... 36ftx 27ftx 16 1/2ft ceiling]I experimented with the proac response 3's and 4's,avalon eidilons, highly modified acoustat 2+2's, modified Klipsch lascalas,sound lab A-1's,altec a-7's,and the huge Tannoy Westminster.None of the planars could pressurize the room and all of them required huge amplifiers to energize them to simulate a full scale symphony or any straight ahead blues/rock event.The incredible sound lab A-1 came the closest... however- that was with a pair of $27,000[yikes!] otl tube amps! The K-horns were a reasonable facsimile even with a cheap 35 watt/channel tube amp of not so high end pretensions!To Qualify myself: I have never really been much of a horn enthusiast,so it was to my surprise...Discovering that the loaded horn types could[in a musical way] outperform large planars and highly touted coil types in very large rooms.Mind you...I could not get the Altec a-7 to disappear like any of the others and sounded rather honky and hollow with a somewhat coloured upper midrange...not my cup of tea however their dynamic range top to bottom were incredible, never sounded forced and were always clear and effortless sounding,mind you they will not reproduce the bottom octave with any authority.As the Duke correctly stated: the bottom octave is, without doubt the most expensive and difficult area of sound reproduction to get right in any sound system.The K-horn will get you somewhat closer.. but still starts to roll off at around 35 hz and very quickly below that frequency."AND" it will only get you there when placed in a corner! If you do not have a proper corner[per speaker]they should not even be a consideration. Try to get the "tonal balance" as close to ideal as you can, first and formost,and with a little work most of the rest will fall into place . To my surprise,and actually my second choice overall[bang for the buck wise] was the lowly acoustat 2+2 electrostatic.With a high powered amp.. these things do way to many things right to disregard.They are very easy to place in a large room to get the best out of what they do well.They have a very small footprint,can play very loud with decent bass power and slam as well as throw a huge sound stage to boot. However: They do need a high powered and stable amplifier that can drive a low impedence load. They will sound decent with some of the better solid scrape amps however,that said...like most electrostatics designs, they love tubes.Just make sure the tube amp of choice will like to "see" the reactive load these speakers will present to the output of the amp.The old dedicated servo-OTL mono tube amp that was introduced with the original acoustat X speaker system way back in the late 70's and then discontinued for the step up transformer is the "ultimate " amplifier choice for any of the later transformer based acoustat speakers, such as the 2+2's. Caveat-The amps must be highly modded and updated to outperform some of todays better designs.These amps when fully modded and updated with better modern passive parts actually "outperformed" the $27,000 Atma-spere Research mono tube amps in my system! NOTE... This comparison was hardly a fair comparison. Not really a true head to head A+B comparison as the atma-sphere's had to be used with the step up transformer supplied with the speaker, whereby the servo amps do not need this transformer coupling.These original servos x amps were designed to supply the exact 5000volts bias that the acoustat panels require.That said... They certainly must be heard to be believed as they have very little if any of the later acoustat's inherent liabilties and colourations that are so blatantly obvious on the factory stock 2+2's with their stock interface transformer.The 2+2's can be found out there for typically $1000 to 1500 in excellent condition.I have seen the rarer acoustat x with the servo amps for even less.There are a few companies out there that will do various levels of mods to these servo-amps that elevate their performance to some of the world's finest amplifiers regardless of price.I would think if you can be a little patient....You should be able to acquire a pair of 2+2's and a pair of servo amps, AND have them modded for under $4000.Hell- most of today's top shelf amps will cost you the better part of that and then some! Some food for thought.Another speaker well worth consideraion is the older dual concentric horn loaded Tannoy's. These older concentric tannoys are a true "point source" as the tweet is located in the middle of the bass driver.They are "tonally" correct and very coherent top to bottom with none of the phase shift or honk so typical in of most of the older loaded horn types. Set up correctly, they truly dissappear in the room with little or none of the boxy colourations found in the K-horn or the Altec A-7.They are without doubt, the imaging kings of any of the horn types and can float an image comparable to that of a mimi-monitor or planar.As a matter of fact:The resolution of the Westminsters is very stat-like and the closest sounding speaker to a good electrostatic that I have ever heard!Most of the Tannoy Dual concentrics are very efficient and very tube friendly as well.Many older Tannoy owners use low powered single ended tube amps with great success[myself included] I have never heard the Tannoy Victory,however it is probably well over your budget anyway.Tannoy does currently market the D-700 and D-500 in their pro-series line that may be well worth looking into.There are more than a few members here on the GON that are using these.Hopefully...some will chime in.Just some unbiased food for thought. All the best with your endevour! Cheers David

I'd like to thank everyone for their kind responses; this is very helpful since I am new to higher end audio.

When I started looking, I figured right off that my space would be a problem. What I didn't bargain for, is that speakers good with classical might not handle pop/rock/electronic well. I figured nothing would be more difficult to reproduce than classical so any speaker that could do symphony vaguely right would be fantastic with "easier" music. Live and learn...

Back to my accoustic problems, I live in a loft, so the space would better be described as a living/working/listening space. While its seems improbable to me that any set up within my budget would fill the whole space, its my hope that with some good choices, a corner of it could be made to sound right
.
I don't know for sure if that is indeed possible or if the laws of physics rule even that out. If it is possible, I wonder whether it would necessitate partitioning off a section with acoustic barriers as Plato suggests or if I could possibly get away without it.

In answer to Drubin's question, I have not come to any conclustions yet. I can say that I've enjoyed one thing or another about all the speakers I've auditioned, (except for a pair of planars that I didn't mention in my post and that seemed to really suffer in the bass and excitement departments). I am still very much at a stage where I am educating myself on how to listen and what to listen for- thanks for the l.i.a.r. advice, Duke.

I have auditioned the Vandy 2cesig, and while they seem to have an interesting sound in many ways, they seemed to choke a little when the orchestra goes nuts, as in the last movement of Symphonie Fantastique. Also,they were disapointing to me with pop music. Even something relatively mellow like Tricky's Maximquay lacked the fun and dynamic excietement that I know is in there somewhere. I briefly listened to the 3Asigs, and they seemed to have a bit more of the fun factor, with better bass, but I'm not convinced yet and need to listen again.

I also plan to have a second listen to the Snell XA60's, and just out of curiosity I'd like to listen to the
XA75's, but I have yet to find a dealer that stocks them.
But in both cases, I'm a bit hesitant, in part because of the almost complete radio silence about the Snells.
Has anyone seen a review or heard these? I'm curious to know what specific problems Rtn1 felt they had with classical music.

I'm probably going to have a second listen to the Dynaudios,
(I think the model was Audience S80 or s82 ?).

I have auditioned a pair of Thiels, (the model escapes me and I don't have my notes in front of me), but I remember one of my concerns being that they may have been slightly bright. (I think they were also a little out of my price range at about 4000.00/pair.)

In all of these cases, I'm considering the need for subwoofer(s) to get really full range, but I'm concerned about what kind of complications subs cause in set-up as far as coherence goes.

As for Revel, Onix, and Aci speakers, I have yet to see a dealer that stocks those brands in my area, (Los Angeles), but I'll keep looking- thanks for the suggestions. And one of the reasons that I'd like to steer away from used equipment is that even in the face of an apparant bargain, I dont feel comfortable purchasing something I havn't heard first.

Thanks again for the help everyone, and if anyone has any other thoughts, they would be much appreciated.

If I had half that room I would definatly own Magnapans. But i don't.

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ambrosia in bel-air carries Revel...i have some onix speakers...contact me if u're interested in hearing them...