A few years back, I had speakers that disappeared. I came home one night to find that the speakers, the amp, the pre-amp and the CD player all disappeared.
Speakers that disappear
I have been listening once again to mbl 101-Es last weekend and have been very impressed by the great illusion they create just by "disappearing", i.e. I could not localize the speakers with closed eyes.
Listening to these speakers got me interested again in speakers that create a large 3-dimensional image, "disappear" and do not sound "boxy" in the low frequencies (with boxy I mean that the base somehow sounds constrained by the loudspeaker enclosure, especially the massive drivers in the B&Ws and Kefs gave me that feeling, the very low frequencies had a slightly "wooden" sound to it - I listend to Richard Wagners Valkyrie amongst others and drum strikes suffered in particular).
[I am obviously aware that there are many other characteristics that are required to make a great speaker, i.e. transparency, etc. but i would like to focus on the above in this thread.]
The only two speaker brands I have listened to that did the trick in this respect for me are:
- mbl (the 101-Es, dont know if this applies for their smaller speakers)
- Wilson Benesch (ACT and Chimera, not as strong as mbl but still pretty good - unfortunately a bit too week below 40hz, even the Chimera)
In comparison listening to Sonus Fabers, Kef References, B&W 800Ds, Ayon all of them sounded "boxed in" in the low frequencies and the sweet spot was much smaller and perfect toe-in was far too important for getting a decent image and illusion. (I know these speakers do some other things very well so no need to mention)
Now there are a lot of other great speakers that I could not listen to yet. Therefore I would love to hear some opinions about the ability of some other speakers to create an illusion by disappearing and not sounding "boxed in".
One type of speakers that do a good job in the above seem to be planar speakers but I have listend to both Martin Logans (dont remember which one as they all look so similar) and Magnepans (1.6 if I remember correctly) but somehow they did not do the trick for me and while they disappeared the soundstage sounded a bit flat and lifeless to me. (Both were driven by McIntosh Pre and Monos).
Particular speakers I would be interested in are:
- Magico
- Wisdom Audio Sage Series
- Rockport
At this point I prefer soft dome and paper/carbon type drivers and have not been a fan of ceramic drivers, beryllium, diamond or aluminium tweeter (in those implementations that I heard). Nevertheless there may be great implementations that do the above very well, so I would also be interested in opinions about:
- Kharma
- Focal Utopia Series
- Revel Ultima
Also are there any mid-price speakers that do this well?
Listening to these speakers got me interested again in speakers that create a large 3-dimensional image, "disappear" and do not sound "boxy" in the low frequencies (with boxy I mean that the base somehow sounds constrained by the loudspeaker enclosure, especially the massive drivers in the B&Ws and Kefs gave me that feeling, the very low frequencies had a slightly "wooden" sound to it - I listend to Richard Wagners Valkyrie amongst others and drum strikes suffered in particular).
[I am obviously aware that there are many other characteristics that are required to make a great speaker, i.e. transparency, etc. but i would like to focus on the above in this thread.]
The only two speaker brands I have listened to that did the trick in this respect for me are:
- mbl (the 101-Es, dont know if this applies for their smaller speakers)
- Wilson Benesch (ACT and Chimera, not as strong as mbl but still pretty good - unfortunately a bit too week below 40hz, even the Chimera)
In comparison listening to Sonus Fabers, Kef References, B&W 800Ds, Ayon all of them sounded "boxed in" in the low frequencies and the sweet spot was much smaller and perfect toe-in was far too important for getting a decent image and illusion. (I know these speakers do some other things very well so no need to mention)
Now there are a lot of other great speakers that I could not listen to yet. Therefore I would love to hear some opinions about the ability of some other speakers to create an illusion by disappearing and not sounding "boxed in".
One type of speakers that do a good job in the above seem to be planar speakers but I have listend to both Martin Logans (dont remember which one as they all look so similar) and Magnepans (1.6 if I remember correctly) but somehow they did not do the trick for me and while they disappeared the soundstage sounded a bit flat and lifeless to me. (Both were driven by McIntosh Pre and Monos).
Particular speakers I would be interested in are:
- Magico
- Wisdom Audio Sage Series
- Rockport
At this point I prefer soft dome and paper/carbon type drivers and have not been a fan of ceramic drivers, beryllium, diamond or aluminium tweeter (in those implementations that I heard). Nevertheless there may be great implementations that do the above very well, so I would also be interested in opinions about:
- Kharma
- Focal Utopia Series
- Revel Ultima
Also are there any mid-price speakers that do this well?
- ...
- 34 posts total
Thanks for the initial comments and the interesting speaker mentioned. Some of the speaker brands I have not even heard before. So I have some reading to do. Some of the brands are a bit too small and given that I am based in Europe I will probably never even be able to hear a Linkwitz Orion, Morrison Audio or OHM speaker. Also I am not sure if those speakers looks would be able to make it into my living room... I will check out the Verity Audio and German Physiks though. The amplifier comment is interesting. Indeed the mbls i listened to were driven by Pass X600.5 monoblocks and the Wilson Benesch by Gryphon Mono blocks. I read before that Magnepans need a lot of power but when I listened to them they were driven by McIntosh 500w Mono blocks, which should be enough i would hope. With regards to the size I found that I only got big orchestra sound from a big speaker. With monitors io had great experiences with acoustic music etc but found big orchestral classical music less convincing. |
"With regards to the size I found that I only got big orchestra sound from a big speaker." Generally that is true OHM has a German distributor. See the link on the OHM website http://www.ohmspeakers.com/ |
Hi mapman, Checked out the german website of Ohm, thank you for the link I will try and demo the 5000 model. Have you compared the ohm to mbl or Wilson Beneschs? Also checked out Audio Pysiks but those guys are jsut sinfully expensive (the bigger models that is) They are so much cheaper that I am really curious about their sound. I find their design a bit ugly but let's see once i see them in person |
- 34 posts total