Change to Horns or stay Dynamic

Exlibris,

Yes we are in the same boat. I was curious if there were others. It is nice not be alone. I feel a few others have gone this way as well.

Horns are very complex to understand and the horn world has so many options. Also how to integrate bass is going to be a problem. Have you seen the massive 20 feet long bass horns some use. Others use a folded horn or a back loaded horn. I have to hear more implementations to know what is my direction.

I also think you can do it for less. I have been told by a few people a compression driver and field coil come very close. I prefer to do without the hassle of a field coil but love what I heard. The TAD drivers are great and the Cessaros might be an option due to their turn-key installation & adjustability. But there are also fabulous US products around. I just spoke w. one designer who was incredibly informative and modest. There is a lot to learn.

The truth is I think horns have come a long way but also have thier limits. I don't want to throw in a ton of money only to find I made a mistake. While I can sell a Maxx II or you can sell your 101es, most horns will be impossible to sell unless they are Avantgardes or the like which we both don't want.

I also want to hear the Sunny speaker. I think it is a back loaded bass horn with front loaded highs & mids. Have you heard any you liked. The Cessaros blew my mind from the mids on up. I would have turned down the highs a notch but the crossover easily allows for that. Total clarity and no distortion. Something special. You feel you need to pay for admission the sound is so good. Especially the wonderful air pressure in the room from listening to a 12 string guitar as if it is in front of you. You are left with a giant smile like the first time you heard a great system.

"You can listen at 100db and not even know you are listening so loud. No distortion etc. And everything remains stable in space with a transparency that is hard to believe."

ATC, PMC will do it and so will some horns and several other high end designs but you are basically getting into the realms of professional main studio monitors (Westlake, Meyer, custom Augspergers with Tad drivers - take your pick). If you sit 4 meters back (large room like I do) then you are talking 112 db SPL capability at 1 meter continuous to get your 100 db spl at the listening position (and remember that headroom up to 122 db SPL may be required to be handle this cleanly on some music).

Very few speakers can do this that are not specifically designed for this task....and they only sell handfuls of these kind of speakers - not tens of thousands like B&W's. Most people don't want or need this kind of eye watering capability - but it can be incredibly fun and exhilerating.

"The -only- reservation I have about my MBL 101Es is that they too get congested at loud volumes during complex passages. They lose detail and smear and the soundstage becomes confused."

I'll bet any speakers with a sensitivity of 81dB/2.83V/m powered by 40watt tube amps(no offence to current owners intended), will sound congested if you try and push them past 93db in a big room.

Solution: Spectron Musician III SE Mk. 2 monoblock amplifiers.

Kana813,

You missed, or simply ignored, the part in my post where I said "This is true with any of the many amplifiers I have used with them."
Two of them were monobocks, each worth over $30,000 a pair. One of these delivered 640 watts into 4 ohms and the other 220 watts into 4 ohms. Believe me, I've tried throwing high-quality watts at the tops (105Hz and up) of these speakers.

I only hooked the SETs up to the speakers as joke when I was between amplifiers; it turned out the joke was on me!

My 40 watt SET amps distort after 93db but MBLs get congested at loud volumes during complex passages no matter what amps you put on them and no matter how many watts you throw at them. The upper drivers simply reach their excursion limits.

The Spectron Musician III SE Mk. 2 monoblock amplifiers; the top MBL amplifiers; the CAT JL-3 Signatures; the top Boulders monoblocks, none of these is the solution because the problem isn't amplification, its the drivers.

I'm pretty sure I'll never find amps that sound better (to me) under 93dB so that's why I have the 40 watt SETs. If you heard my speakers without seeing my amps you'd swear the amps were putting out over 250 watts (not that I have to justify my decision to you or anybody else).