Audio Physic Scorpio - How does it rate?


I've looked up opinions on the forums. Some like the older Virgo II or III better, and say the Scorpio's drivers are the same as the Tempo. No ring radiator.

Yet, Michael Fremer had high praise for this speaker. How does it sound, and how does it compare to other Audio Physics? Is it a value at $7,000 new?
saxo
Find a pair for Virgo IIs for about $2000. Save alot of money and have a better speaker.
Yeah. You're the guy loving the Virgo IIs. They seem to have their followers, as do the IIIs. I know the original designer left, and the newer stuff is a different designer, though some really like his Caldera (?) My only concern would be that Virgos don't have the bass capabilitiy, with 2 - 6" instead of the 4 -71/2" the Scorpio has. A subwoofer might be an answer - but that requires quite a bit of tweaking to sound right.
Sub woofer or more woofers that is the question.
The Virgo is a speaker for those who are pleased by excellent mids and even better treble. Great treble energy with great extension and detail and seemless, smooth, musical delivery.
The bass disappears in my ears on these however. If you must have prominent bass this will be a difficult proposition at best.
I don't know the Scorpio but I have had much experience with a speaker with 4 woofers. This doesn't mean the usual 2 woofer set up can'tmake satisfying bass but if youare comparing essentialy the same drivers. Engineered with a similiar approach to x-overs. More is more not better but more.
I thought I was going to be bassed to small bits by my JM Electras with the 2 8 inch woofers a piece and a well damped but large front firing port.The specs say no lower than 28 cycles but you wouldn't know it. This after years of listening to speakers that really don't make much bass below 50 cycles by spec and confirmed with test recordings to drop off steeply around 100. WellI didn't get bassed apart and now have an aquired taste for it.
Recently I picked up a monitor speaker on a whim. The Merlin TSM (model unsure.) I thought man! how sweet this midrange is and what beautiful treble! Which tweeters are these (Morel MDT 330 ?). Once again perfection is elusive. To say they have recessed bass, is an overstatement.
I undertook to remedy this problem by having an experienced speaker designer build a fast and highly musical sub woofer that would integrate seemlessly into the music and flesh out the TSM bass.
It turns out is very hard to get it to sound as integrated or generally as a good as aspeaker designed to deliver a sonic style/philosophy from the ground up is no mean feat.

Obviously there are many variables to try to account for the most obvious is the quality of the driver/s. Also the question of running it out of your pre. The typical sub is active with an amp wich is not the same as the one you are using for the rest of the drivers. The reason is obvious subs pull a lot energy out of you regular amps.The answer is to vertically bi amp with your best choice generally pretty costly or do what most do. Use pro-style solid state self amplication.
Again IMHO it just doesn't yield the quality of a whole.
Given this experience, I strongly favor coherence and argue against trying to bolster bass with a separate sub. Get the speaker that sounds the best to you at the start trying to add a patch to fix a perceived deficit is frought with problems you created by compromising at the start.
Therefore buy the Scorpios if you already know the bass is not what you want in the Virgo.
Mechans, good advice on the subwoofer. Good in theory, hard in execution. Plus takes up space. If others disagree, please give your opinion.

Correction - I think the Avanti is the speaker liked, but, with our continually falling dollar (thanks Bush & your Global sellout!), it's now up to $15 Grand. Sorry, no buying here.
You should be able to find a used pair of Avanti IIIs for around $7000. It is a great speaker and, in my opinion, better than the Virgo II. The original Avanti, like the original Caldera and the Libra, were not anything special
and kind of boring. I have not heard the new Avanti so I can't comment.