Speaker Preferences?

The Sophias are among my favorite speakers, but the Vantage would be a close second for most things. I would say that they need to be positioned right and run with the proper upstreams to get them to sound good (the ML moreso).

Dull would not be the word I would describe them. Unlike other speakers I have heard (Cremona, BW 802D, Wilsons), I feel that the current ML Xstat ESL series speakers (Summits mostly) are less "showy" the first time you hear them. They do not have a truly audible signature to the sound, no "wow" factor aside from the disappearing act. This may be the reason some all it dull.

However, position it right... by that I mean toe them in and get your ears at the right seated height, get some tubes in the system and a good source - wallah... supremely coherent and very musical.

My 2 cents.

BTW, most of the MLs I've heard at dealers sound nothing like their potential... in fact, I wont hide the fact that I find dealers' ML setups sound like crap. Meaning - don't judge them based on hearing them at a dealer.... especially Magnolia/Best Buy. Imagine if you heard the Wilsons at a BestBuy running on an $800 receiver.

BTW, most of the MLs I've heard at dealers sound nothing like their potential... in fact, I wont hide the fact that I find dealers' ML setups sound like crap. Meaning - don't judge them based on hearing them at a dealer.... especially Magnolia/Best Buy. Imagine if you heard the Wilsons at a BestBuy running on an $800 receiver.

So basically you are saying, we shouldn't ever trust hearing them set up by any dealer if we don't like how they sound? So what do we have to do to hear them correctly, buy a pair and have a ML representative come to our homes and set them up for us (we can't have the dealer do it, since you are telling us that most of them don't know how to set them up either and if they can't do it correctly as people that do it for a living, where does that leave us customers...)? Aren't dealers ML trained representatives? Those seem like even greater reasons to stay away from that speaker line to me...

BTW, Magnolia doesn't use the same gear as BestBuy proper, and my Wilsons wouldn't sound bad on a low value receiver (unless it was malfunctioning or too underpowered), I just wouldn't get that extra 3-5% that an all high quality product system would give (assuming the products are high quality and not just overpriced junk)..

dealer's demonstrations are problematical. the best suggestion is to visit several dealers and listen to a spekaer on your short list. if you observe some consistent sonic patterns, maybe you can trust the demonstrations.

if the "sound" varies significantly, you may need to get a home trial. if this is not feasible, you are facing the risk of not liking the speaker when you buy it.

J,

You're meaning to tell me that Tweeter knows how to setup the Summit better than a Summit owner who has spent the last year tweaking the system?

You're telling me that Magnolia is better at setting up MLs when all they do is pile them against the wall along with 5 other speaker pairs?

Come on now, MLs arent sold like your Wilsons where the dealer gets a huge amount of setup training. ML dealers do not go to the buyer's house to set up the speakers, unlike Wilson speakers so that's out of the question.

Bottomline, you can't reliably measure the performance of ML speakers from a dealer's demonstration... they are very finicky, right down to the last component. They can sound utterly dull.. or amazingly superb.

"Those seem like even greater reasons to stay away from that speaker line to me..."

Why? Because of the setup? Set it up right and they sound fantastic, to me atleast. Set them up wrong and they sound lackluster. You of all people should know that by now, imagine how much you spent in your room and the effort that goes into "voicing" your WP8s in your room by the dealer and by you. You didn't just plop them there did you?

Much like the Wilsons or any other hi-end brand. If you set it up wrong, there goes the stage, there goes the timbre, there goes the imaging....

If a speaker's finicky positioning scares you, then don't get it. There's a lot of other brands out there.