Recommend a forward speaker

Dennis, Re horn speakers - AGon's resident 'expert' on horns and other speakers which might have a more forward speaker imaging plane, NOT just increased volume in certain frequencies which often is nothing more than selective brightness to inhance the appearance of greater detail, etc, is Duke, a dealer who has much experience with panels, horns and cones. He is honest and direct. He also just happens to be starting up his own speaker business. He posts here under Audiokinesis. If he doesn't pick up and respond fire him off an e-mail. I'm sure he will be happy to be helpful without sales pressure.

great suggestion newbee, i agree, duke is da' bomb. i'll look him up...

Newbee, thanks for the vote of confidence but I'm really not all that. Heck, I'm not even a real duke... but then you're not a real newbee, are you??

My preference is in the opposite direction of what Dennis is looking for - in general I prefer the illusion that the performers are far away, maybe because that's what I'm more used to hearing at a live performance. So I don't know that I can really take Dennis in the direction he wants to go.

Let's say that at one end of the spectrum there's a presentation that sounds like you're sitting at the front table in a jazz club. At the other extreme, you're sitting near the back of a large concert hall (in the cheap section, next to me).

Comparing these two, the reverberant sound will be a relatively weak up front in the jazz club, but it will be very powerful and envelope you in the back of the concert hall. Also, the spectral balance will have much more treble energy up front at the jazz club because less treble will have been absorbed by the room (and even the air in the room) by the time the energy gets to you.

So if I was shooting for an "up front" sound, I'd want speakers with a pretty much flat on-axis frequency response (no dips and no downward-tilt, but also no peaks in the 3-4 kHz region or else you can expect listening fatigue). I'd want either a fairly narrow radiation pattern (like a horn system), or I'd want to sit very close to the speakers, like within 5 feet of them ("near-field") so that the direct sound dominates over the reverberant sound. No dipoles, bipoles, or omnis. If you plan to sit close, make sure the drivers integrate well at close range - that would be a topic for another thread.

Now you know what's gonna happen? You'll spend a fortune on nice new speakers and set up your nearfield listening position and then you put on your favorite disc - and dammit now the singer sounds farther away than ever! What's happening is, that's the way the recording engineers miked and mixed her to sound. The setup I have described will help minimized your system's adding more ambience and sense of depth than what is on the recording, but it will also unmask the image depth on the recording that might have been previously obscured.

So like I said, in the end I'm not sure my suggestions will take you in the direction you want to go.

Duke
dealer/manufacturer

edit - on the other hand, maybe Peterb is right. Maybe Dennis the Menace would feel right at home with Mr. Wilson's speakers!

I would look at room treatments to solve this problem.

thanks duke. appreciate the thoughts. you're right, how the music is miked makes a huge impact. it's just that the parsifals present everything with a recessed midrange.

i know folks recommended the wilsons. i hate how they look, and they're wicked pricey for an ugly box. not sure i could get over that.

i've tried tilting the parsifals up, and out some, and altho that helped some presenting the midrange in a more upfront manner, the soundstage collapsed.

i had a pair of martin logan aerius i a long time ago, and altho they had many flaws, the one thing they had that i loved was a nice forward presence region. i loved it and lived w/ those speakers for 5 years before trying something else, and have yet to find an upgrade that i've been able to live with since then. i dont want to go back, my room isn't right for them anymore, and i'm sure i couldn't live w/ their relatively mediocre integration of electrostat panel + dynamic driver, but it's strange that i've spent so much more and found myself not satisfied.

the flavor of a speaker is so key, and there really are distinct flavors out there. not right, not wrong, but the preferences can make or break a system.