How do these Jazz modules perform slightly off axis? Not an easy job integrating a 1 incher with a tenner. I'm not a speaker designer, but I've read about potential issues with mating a dynamic tweeter with anything larger than a six incher.

Very well actually. With traditional driver configurations you would be right (and there are also problems with mounting something like a 1" dome on a baffle wide enough to support a 10" driver) but horns change that whole equation.

"The most obvious is the constant-directivity horn or waveguide. The idea is to funnel the output of the compression driver into a constant angle, and to do so while imparting as little disturbance (coloration) as possible. The angular coverage of this device establishes the radiation pattern we want the woofer to have at the crossover frequency, so if we have a 90-degree horn or waveguide, we want to cross over where the woofer’s pattern has narrowed to 90 degrees. There’s a limit on how low the horn or waveguide can maintain pattern coverage, so we don’t want to cross over any lower than that limit. From these two considerations we come up with a maximum woofer size, which will be the diameter that gives us 90 degrees at the minimum practical crossover frequency. With a smaller woofer, we would cross over higher up."

"Briefly, my general approach calls for fairly large woofers that operate well up into the midrange region, and the only suitable woofers are fairly high efficiency models, which means that a large box is called for in order to get adequate bass extension. I’m not necessarily a high-efficiency aficionado; that’s just where my radiation pattern priorities send me."

"My monoples are adaptable to a wide variety of positions within the room. The bass tuning can be adjusted by changing the length of the port, to take into account variation in boundary reinforcement. It is even feasible to tune each speaker independently, depending on its location relative to room boundaries. When set up as recommended, toed-in by 45 degrees, the relatively well-controlled radiation patterns reduce the room-to-room variability of the early reflections. Combined with the pattern control, that 45-degree toe-in results in a very wide sweet spot. Let me explain.

The ear localizes sound sources by two mechanisms: Arrival time and intensity. The well-controlled radiation pattern of my speakers means that the intensity falls off smoothly and fairly rapidly as we move off-axis. So visualize a setup with the speakers toed in by 45 degrees or so, such that their axes criss-cross in front of the normal center listening position. As we move off to one side, the near speaker “wins” arrival time but the far speaker “wins” intensity because we are more on-axis of that speaker but well off-axis of the near speaker. The fairly rapid and smooth falloff of the near speaker as we move off-axis is the key to this. Now it’s not perfect, and some off-center locations will be better than others, but soundstaging for off-center listeners holds up better than it does with either conventional speakers or omnis."

You can read the full interview with the designer at Audio Kinesis here: http://www.stereotimes.com/comm081710.shtml

- Are there any more affordable Wilsons that are worth consideration ($5-10k), or would be comparable to the Duntechs? There's a local WATT Puppy 6 for asking $7k.

- What kind of sound do horn speakers have?

Wilsons are poor value. I think they are fairly accurate, but tend to sound kind of boring. They do image like mad if you sit the sweet spot and don't move your head. The WATT / Puppy are totally out of date. Skip those for sure. Consider Von schweikert before Wilson.

You coming down to the LA meet? I'll have an Altec VOTT compression driver / horn + 15" woofer system setup. Different kinds of horns will have different colorations. I like grabbing the horn, pointing them to my wife kids, and talking into them (actually the other way around) to get a sense how the horn will sound.

Horns will need some eq work in the crossover or elsewhere to sound natural. The positives a fast punchy sounding, clean clean clean low distortion, extremely crazy efficient, and extremely dynamic. Negatives are the horn coloration and harsh rough treble if asked to extend too much.

Horns don't necessarily sound bad. Movie theatres use horn speakers, and if you've heard a top notch setup such as Dolby Atmos (Atmos setups are more than "super surround sound" - the typical Atmos setups are tweaked by Dolby or probably have a certification process like THX - at least here in West El Lay), you'll know how great horns can sound. The thing is... who can you trust. I build my own speakers and there's a reason for that.

Just got an email newsletter from Underwood saying that he's selling the LSA-1 for $449/pair. Is that a good deal? Audiogon forums say that the LSA-1 has great bang for buck for the $1300 MSRP. Wondering if these would be great bang-for-buck as a starter speaker?

That said, I think I would need to buy stands for these and have no idea how expensive decent speaker stands are.

Also, the LSA-2s are $849/pr ($2800 MSRP), if that's a really good deal, and are floorstanding.

The LSA-1s are not a bad little speaker for the money, but that "$1300 MSRP" thing is a bit of a stretch. I'm not sure who is supposed to be selling them for that, maybe there are some dealers that do if LSA has a dealer network. You've been able to get them from Underwood for $599 since pretty much forever though, and more recently $499 for the black version.

The LSA-1 comes in three versions: standard, signature, statement. There are some differences in the crossover network components used and internal materials, but the main difference is the tweeter. The $899 signature replaces the standard dome with a Vifa ring radiator, while the $1499 statement uses an Aurum Cantus ribbon.

Your not really getting "$850 off" on the LSA-1, but $450 really isn't a bad deal, they can definitely take the fight to similarly priced speakers from companies like Wharfedale and Monitor Audio. The more expensive versions are much less compelling though, particularly the statement which has to go up against the Vapor Sound Breeze and Ascend Sierra 2, both of which are packing much better drivers. KEF's LS50 also sells for that price, and whatever Klaus has cooked up for the Odyssey Epiphony IV.

Omega's new Super 7 FR monitor is also around $1500.

For higher-end monitors that don't have custom matching stands I would recommend Skylans, which range from $250-650 or so for a pair. For $449 monitors though obviously that's overkill, there's loads of stuff online in the $100-200 range that's decent enough and can be mass loaded with sand or shot.

Anyone here have any experience with Tyler Acoustics? I was looking at their H3 - http://www.tyleracoustics.com/Highland.html at 8.5k. Looks like it has the ScanSpeak beryllium 6640, and a pair each of the Revelator mids and woofers, WMTMW, with two oddly huge ports on the back.

Yes, with Ty's Decade line and some of the ones before those, but not the newest Highland series. I didn't like the Decades, very forward, analytical, "hi-fi" sounding. Aside from that, I've never found the value to really be there with Tyler speakers as opposed to say Odyssey, Fritz, Vapor Sound, Ascend, Philharmonic or even Daedalus.

I liked the earlier speakers I heard better than the Decades, but they were still beaten by speakers sold through dealer networks for similar money (Joseph, Egglestonworks, etc).

What's the rest of the chain, Anetode? My LS50s run very smooth, yet retain that imaging accuracy. I'd never call them grating or offensive. I run them from a Stello DA100 Siggy -> Sony TA-FA730ES (overbiased 2W into Class-A). The Sony ES line has some infamy for sounding aggressive, yet there's none of that.

As for accuracy, nothing trumps bookshelves for soundstaging.