Dual duty and LOUD

As you say, you have lots of amplification, so that is not as issue. In the price range you mention IMHO, the Vandersteins are wonderful! I love the 3A's but even any of the 2's are fine also. The VCC would give you a center channel for not much more money, and, I think that would make you a happy camper! The Maggie's are faster, more immediacy, and, Lord knows, you've got the amps for them. But, they are physically larger, and, unless you get huge ones, would likely benefit from your subwoofer. A friend of mine has several pairs and they all sound really good, too. I've never heard the Von Schweikirt's, as you already know, they have a good reputation. For the money, though, I vote for the Vandy's.

Coman61, I have quite a bit of experience with various planar speakers and unfortunately I don't think that's the answer for you.

I think your requirements might be best served by loudspeakers that use high quality prosound drivers.

One of the challenges that can arise with conventional speakers is differing power compression characteristics among the drivers. Briefly, different drivers don't all get louder at the same rate as the input power is increased (theoretically it's 3 dB for each doubling of input power, but in practice this is rare outside of prosound drivers). This phenomenon is called "power compression", or sometimes "thermal compression", and there's a correlation between low power compression and high efficiency. Usually tweeters are padded down to match woofers, and usually tweeters have less power compression than woofers. So what happens is the designer picks a loudness range in which the speaker will sound balanced. At much lower volume levels, the woofer is louder than the tweeter so the speaker sounds dull. And then at very high volume levels, the tweeter is louder than the woofer so the speaker sounds bright. You may have noticed this with some speakers.

One of the advantages of single-driver speakers is that the tonal balance doesn't change with loudness level. But single-driver speakers lose articulation at high volume levels because the voice coil travels beyond its linear limits on loud bass passages.

Prosound drivers are not immune - they do suffer from power compression at high power levels, but typically we're talking about levels that would produce in excess of 115 dB. So it's essentially a non-issue at SPL's likely in a home environment. If you want a speaker that really holds it together at very low to very high volume levels, high quality prosound drivers make a lot of sense.

I've e-mailed you about a speaker I sell that uses high quality prosound drivers. Other contenders would be Klipsch Heritage series and Pi Speakers. Going well north of your price range, Classic Audio Reproductions, eXemplar, Avantgarde, and Edgarhorn come to mind.

Best of luck in your quest!

Duke

I don't think many people would consider the Vandy's as a good rock speaker. I listen to rock & blues exclusively, I owned the Vandy 2Ci sigs, they were nice but too polite for rock. I also heated the cones up so bad one night the warning lights came on, not the best for a "rock" speaker. When I called Richard the next day he said I must have been listening at "drinking levels", which I was. I have used that term ever since & he was 100% correct. I loved the sound of the Vandy's & would own another pair but didn't find it to be the best match for my listening tastes.

I now have a pair of VSA VR4jr's & my friend has a pair of VR4's, they are definitely a dynamic speaker with some slam. They are nuetral & fast, they can reproduce the thunder of a live show or the delicacy of a single wind instrument if called for. Most of the time people recommend "lower end" speakers when people are looking to rock but I think it's a cop out. There are plenty of high end speakers with dynamics & slam, you just have to poke around.