help buying irs beta

How big is your listening room?  These speakers need a LOT of room to sound their best. 

I formerly owned the similar RS-1b, and unless you’re a masochist I would instead get a pair of Eminent Technology LFT-8b, which employs similar but superior drivers to the EMIM and EMIT in the Infinitys.

The later High Energy Emit and Emim drivers used in the Infinity IRS speakers such as the IRS Sigma and Epsilon were quite a bit better than the previous generation, as were the IMG bass drivers vs the old polypro bass drivers. Even the Infinity Renaissance 90’s were better sounding in many respects than the old RS-1b. I can’t speak for the Eminent Technology speakers, though I note from the TAS review they are very insensitive and not completely coherent.

The ET's are rather insensitive (but not as much so as the other magnetic-planar, Magneplanars), but coherency is one of it's strong points; a single driver covering 180Hz to 10kHz! The incoherence Robert Greene talked about in his TAS review was between the ET's m-p midrange driver and it's dynamic woofer. He found switching the polarity of the woofer eliminated that lack of coherency between the two, making for an extremely coherent speaker. The woofers polarity is easily switchable by the owner, the driver leads being on the outside of the bass enclosure.

The ET speakers might be a good value option, though I would take a pair of mint Infinity IRS Omega's over the ET's 5 times out of 5, but then again I am an Infinity lover. The IRS Omegas were the last Infinity IRS speakers released in Infinity's heyday in 1998 & were heavily upgraded with new Auricaps, coils, DH Labs cables etc, but are very rare in the US as they were only sold in Europe and Japan.