Q. on shootout between time/phase coherent speaker

My JM Lab Electras are extremely good. One of the few disadvantages of this type of speaker is the limited sweet spot. If you sit too far off to the side, the imaging moves. On the upside though, you get less room interaction and superb imaging when you are in the sweet spot. Another thing too is that speaker placement has to be more exact but after the effort, you get rewarded in a big way. The 926s are in your price range and I recommend them very highly. They are more like Thiel than Vandersteen in terms of sound type if that helps you at all. Good luck! Arthur

I echo what Arthur has said. Phase/Time coherent speakers are typically tricky to set up. Minute adjustments can yield dramatic results. It can be maddening, but once dialed in they reproduce a clarity hard to ignore. In addition, P/T speakers are typically hard to drive. Due to their crossover demands P/T speakers typically demand high power amplifiers. Only Very large Tube amps or high powered SS designs will drive these speakers optimally.

This is an old thread, but that is nonsense. 1st-order crossovers are the simplest and such speakers can be made *very* easy to drive - GMA's sure are.

If 1st Order xovers are easy to drive why are Thiel and Vandersteen not easy to drive. They are both fairly inefficient with dips in impedance down to 4ohms or less - not the defintion of easy to drive. I'm no engineer, so I don't know anything about the design parameters - theoretical or implemented, both these two manafactuers make good speakers, but easy to drive is not one of their attributes. GMA, may be a different thing altogether, but I'm not familar with them.

My Reference 3A Dulcet mini-monitors are time and phase aligned. The only cross-over in them is one capacitor. They are very efficient and my 70W VAC monoblocks drive them to very realistic volumes.

http://iar-80.com/page65.html

Amp/speaker matching is very critical in achieving good sound. There are a lot of threads on time and phase in speaker alignment. Do a search for more info.