speakers for classical music

Have any on the Mahler owners listened in their own room to a CAR or Avantgarde Trio speaker...with full orchestra of course?

Can we get a direct comparison from someone?

hi,

Classical music has a large dynamic range ( 20 db or more) and the problem with some of the speakers listed is that they are inefficent and on the peaks of orchestral sound will send many amps into clipping. Tube amps have an advantage here with softer 2ed harmonic clipping characteriics

When listening at a average level of 85 db a 4 meteres with an inefficeint speaker, say 85 db/1watt/meter 8 watts is needed to reach 85 db at the listener psoition. To reach 105 db peaks will reaquir about 500 watts per channel. Now we are talking mega buck amps.

A simpler solution IMHO is to use more efficient speakers.

good listening

Larry

Larry510 said:

"Tube amps have an advantage here with softer 2ed harmonic clipping characteriics..."

I think it's a mistake to plan on clipping, even if it's mostly 2d harmonic. An amp that's clipping a your listening levels likely has very high distortion, particularly in the bass and highs. This should be avoided if you want accurate musical presentation.

Dave

I think it's a mistake to plan on clipping, even if it's mostly 2d harmonic. An amp that's clipping a your listening levels likely has very high distortion, particularly in the bass and highs. This should be avoided if you want accurate musical presentation.

I agree with you Dave...but one has to respect that many people don't want an accurate presentation - they prefer even order harmonic distortion from soft clipping. I think of the excellent Sonic Frontiers manual about "A taste of Tubes"....that is what it is about....adding your own seasoning to your favorite tracks. Judicious use of the volume control allows a user to control the amount of soft clipping to achieve a desired effect....it is a form of audio compression similar to what is done in studios.

Putting on my "green" hat:

Hey, we're starting to be forced to move away from gas guzzling cars, maybe we should be moving away from inefficient speakers and power guzzling amps as well?

I say this being a very proud and happy owner of some fairly inefficient yet great sounding speaks (the Ohm Walsh 5's) and an amp (MF A3CR) capable of driving them very nicely to reasonable SPLs in my listening room, yet I know that a bigger, beefier amp could up the SPL ante further if desired!

Class D amps seem to be a step in the "green" direction ie higher efficiency and lower power consumption to power our gas, I mean watt guzzling speaks, like my Hummer-like Ohms!