Bondmanp, Omni directional speakers are a love hate thing, honestly most people don't like them, if they did everyone would be making such designs at last count I think there are four such designs: MBL, Ohm, German Physics a Walsh clone, and the Candian Electrostatic product.
The issue with omni directional speakers is the image is very large and very unfocused, also the sound may be bouncing all over the place due to reflections, over the years have heard most of these designs, give us a direct radiating loudspeaker which is tunable anyday.
Soix so far heard the Carvers at several shows and they just didn't sound right to us at all, where did you hear a pair sound good, most of the show reports haven't been flatering.
Salk does make some very interesting designs with very good drivers, howerver, if detail is your thing, a pair of Paradigm Personas offer a pure Beryillium midrange driver and tweeter so the sound if very coherent and the Paraigms are quite dynamic and image extraoridinairly well.
The Salks use a ceramic midrange driver with a Raal ribbon two very good but different sounding drivers, have heard ceramic midrange drivers over the years they all sound slightly hard in the midrange, although they have great detail, hence Kharma moved away from ceramic for this very reason.
The other issue with a company like Salk is actually hearing a pair because they are factory direct means no dealers and hence difficult to audition.
Drive or fly to a big city and you most likely can hear Kef, Paradigm, B&W, Magico Rockport, Wilson. etc.
Kji if it is possible take an audio vaction to NYC and you can hear almost every conceivable reference speaker you would want.
Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ