Which speaker has the biggest sound stage?

Lithojoe,

I was too harsh--but to say categorically, 'You will...' left no wiggle room.
I'm CERTAIN some have failed, I've personally never seen it--sevicing customers who owned them for YEARS.
I'll apologize again for being abrupt. Elizabeth seems to know her stuff, as best I can tell and I'd never want to cross swords with anyone on Audiogon...nothing on here is important enough to make anyone angry.

Good listening,
Larry

Just took delivery today of a pair of Eminent Technology LFT-8b -- thanks, Bruce -- and holy smokes! that's a soundstage. Big, palpable instruments. Not much past the speakers, but such height and depth inbetween, and the scale is undeniable. Everything has SIZE, instead of pinpoints in space.

As I told Mr. Thigpen on the phone, my previous experiences with planar speakers were not nearly as exciting. Granted, both were budget models (ML Aerius-i, Magnepan MMG), but for the money, I just don't see how you can top the LFT-8b. I've spent 3X as much and had much worse, that's for sure.

For dynamic cone driver coherant type speakers, Wilson W/P's put off the biggest stage I have heard. No experience with MP or MBL's. Just by design, I would expect the omni-directional Radialstrahler's to be king in this dept.

My Ohm Walsh 2000s do a wonderful job of both producing a large soundstage and providing pinpoint imaging. Depth is fair, but I think my room and electronics play a role there. Great height, too. Not to forward, but very wide. Of course, the actual soundstage dimensions depend on the recording, the room, and to a lesser degree, associated gear.

In a large enough room with enough open space behind, larger mbls, 111 or 101 have the biggest that is also very accurately defined as well that I have heard recently.

Omnidirectional speakers in general are capable of delivering the biggest sound stage that is also very well defined, but only when placed properly in suitably large rooms.

OHM Walsh speakers are pseudo-omni and physically attenuated in the wall facing directions by design in order to allow them to function better in most people's rooms. That limits soundstage depth somewhat but works out better in the end for most.

You can custom order them to be fully omni, at least up to 8Kzh or so, the range of the Walsh style driver used. I would expect this to deepen the soundstage potential if set up suitably in a suitable room, but have never tried this.

Bipolar speakers like Maggies also emit a lot of sound to the rear of the speaker. In a suitable setup in the right room, these also can have a very large and deep soundstage.