A true electrostatic subwoofer is basically impossible to make/power. The panels would be something like 20 feet wide. I'd love to see something that wacky pulled off, but I'm not sure how the hell they'd be driven.
Quote from: raif on January 20, 2013, 05:31:59 PMAre you against going "pro?"Personally I would advocate for a pair of nice studio monitors.The new KH 310A look really promising.http://www.neumann-kh-line.com/neumann-kh/home_en.nsf/root/prof-monitoring_studio-monitors_nearfield-monitors_KH310AATC has an audiophile-esq advocacy in the studio world but unless you are dropping 15k you probably won't get the extension you want.EDIT: well crappola, I didn't read that as carefully as I should. Short story, I actually agree almost 100% with your priorities which is why I went into recommendation mode as this is the direction I ended up going. I see now though you weren't looking for recommendations. Sorry. Nothing against pro speakers Funny, but ATC are at the very top of my list to be auditioned. I became interested in them when I saw several UK studios using them as well as Doug Sax. I have a couple of people telling me they are bright, so that is concerning.
Are you against going "pro?"Personally I would advocate for a pair of nice studio monitors.The new KH 310A look really promising.http://www.neumann-kh-line.com/neumann-kh/home_en.nsf/root/prof-monitoring_studio-monitors_nearfield-monitors_KH310AATC has an audiophile-esq advocacy in the studio world but unless you are dropping 15k you probably won't get the extension you want.EDIT: well crappola, I didn't read that as carefully as I should. Short story, I actually agree almost 100% with your priorities which is why I went into recommendation mode as this is the direction I ended up going. I see now though you weren't looking for recommendations. Sorry.
Quote from: omegakitty on January 20, 2013, 05:43:35 PMQuote from: raif on January 20, 2013, 05:31:59 PMAre you against going "pro?"Personally I would advocate for a pair of nice studio monitors.The new KH 310A look really promising.http://www.neumann-kh-line.com/neumann-kh/home_en.nsf/root/prof-monitoring_studio-monitors_nearfield-monitors_KH310AATC has an audiophile-esq advocacy in the studio world but unless you are dropping 15k you probably won't get the extension you want.EDIT: well crappola, I didn't read that as carefully as I should. Short story, I actually agree almost 100% with your priorities which is why I went into recommendation mode as this is the direction I ended up going. I see now though you weren't looking for recommendations. Sorry. Nothing against pro speakers Funny, but ATC are at the very top of my list to be auditioned. I became interested in them when I saw several UK studios using them as well as Doug Sax. I have a couple of people telling me they are bright, so that is concerning.Would any of those people happen to be Bruce from Puget Sound? He's got something against them, not sure whats going on there. I'd try to audition them either way though, I have heard the term "sterile" thrown around.higherfi often has atc demo units at ~40-50% off but they won't let you have demo periods with them.
There are a lot of different ways to make a great loudspeaker. Pro monitors definitely have their benefits, but also often have drawbacks as well. Many are designed as tools, not to be enjoyable in the listening room. What you get from these types of monitors is a rather matter of fact presentation designed to avoid surface reflections and give the mixing or mastering engineer as clear as possible of a response so that they can hear their mistakes and fix them. I do not enjoy listening to these types of monitors, they typically have terrible soundstaging (that's not the point) and are often rather boring. Another type I generally avoid are those with undamped cabinets (Zu) or speakers designed to use their cabinets as part of their output (Harbeth, DeVore). Cabinets aren't drivers and they shouldn't act as such. These speakers often have devoted fan bases (so do Grados), but I'm not among them. All most all ribbon tweeters completely suck. Anything with a Fountek or LCY in it should be avoided. The Illuminator AirCirc kicks the crap out of all of them. ScanSpeak's Be tweeter is very good, many of them are not. Accuton ceramics depend on who designed the speaker. They can be absolutely phenomenal in the right hands (Tidal, Estelon) or sound brittle and sterile in the wrong hands. I've often found ESLs to be total failures at the "disappearing act". Many of my experiences with ESLs have been that the sound is literally painted on the panel, combine that with limited dynamic ability and I'm bored within minutes. Generally a narrow baffle combined with a small cabinet gives you the best chance to have the speaker disappear as a source, this is why most of the better 2-way monitors usually excel at it. The trouble with a 2-way is bass extension, which you can get around either by way of side firing woofers ala Audio Physic, or two-piece cabinets like Verity. Short of the megabuck stuff, IMO this guy nails it better than any other. There isn't that much below 40Hz, but everything above that is stellar, the OBX-RW just nails it at everything far better than even very good speakers like the Merlin VSM. The Joseph Perspective and the Dynaudio Confidence C2 are also extremely good, but I think the Living Voice is the best on the market below about $18K or so.
