Vandersteens, PSB or something else?

I actually think with a room that size, and considering home theatre application, you’re better of going with speakers that are more "filling" and have wider dispersion. Ohm speakers should sound great in that room or a brand with di-pole design with plenty of room behind it should work well too. Magnepans give a real nice and deep soundstage but have a very narrow sweet spot.

I'm a Maggie lover so that is my recommendation.  You will love them and become addicted to their sound.  I would get a used pair or new ($2,000),of the 1.7i's not a lot of $ and you can see if you like them.  I use mine for HT as well. I have the 1.7i's up front , with the CC3 center, MMG's as side surrounds and MC1's as rear surrounds. It sounds incredible without direction from any one speaker, just surrounded by the sound. You need a nice amp with power for these puppies, which sounds like you already have that Ayre amp. I power the 1.7is with the Bryston 6bsst. Or you can purchase The MMGs for up front which will give you the Maggie sound for only $650 from Magnepan with a 30 or 60 day return policy. You cant beat that! go to their web site. You could use them as side surrounds or return them and buy the 1.7i's or 3.7is, if u have the cash. you wont be disappointed!!!

OP, are you near any dealers?
Bob

Don 1,

I hate to break it to you, but as a professional theater designer, nobody uses panels of any kind in a real theater or a system designed to actually function as one.

The best real theaters all use direct radiating loudspeakers with some kind of horn loading usually for the tweeter, with compression drivers and dsp.

Look at Dts spin off Procella, or Paul Hales company PHC and you will see. The issue is dynamic range, and dispersion control and efficiency.

A planar radiates sound out of phase with the front wave this is called diapole cancillation, and according to Newtons law an equil and opposite reaction cancels out, what this means to sound is there is no air spring effect and your bass is not good, a dynamic loudspeaker has much greater spl, and can launch a sound wave with much greater force.

As an ex Maggie owner, 3.6’s these speakers have mondo issues, One the image is way too large, two the bass is weak, three the dynamics are constricted and four they are very inefficent, five they don’t play loud.

If this gentleman has a large room and loves rock, speakers he should be considering are ATC and Legacy to name a few.

As per PSB the T3 are excellent. loudspeakers, they sound very good, Paul Barton, is a very respected designer, and his designs for years have been highly rated. The T3 is going to have a ton more of resolution then an old Straus so you may not care for listening to a much more modern design with a Titanium tweeter vs a much more recessed sounding tweeter sound which you are used to. I don’t know of any dealer who carries speakers that they know are bad, it is not good business to do so.

For all you Vandy guys out there, a pair of Vandy whatever plus their subs will not a theater make. The Vandy subs are not real subs compared to the world of subs like JL Audio or SVS. A JL audio Fathom 113 uses a long throw nearly 15 inch driver with a 3,000 watt amplifier 3 smaller woofers although they sound like they can move more air actually fail to move as much air due to the efficiency of coupling air to the size of the diaphram, not to mention a 300 watt amplifier is not enough power to really move three eight inch drivers.

Vandersteen are nice speakers for music but the company is much more in the 2 channel camp then they are in the Home Theater world even their best center channel loudspeaker doesn’t use identical drivers to their higher end CT series drivers and as noted an 85db efficeint speaker with a somewhat limited power handling.

Now lets look at a Legacy Focus Signature a $7k speaker which actually sounds a lot like a bigger version of a Quattro CT at half that speakers price or for  a bit more money the larger Focus at around $11k

The Legacy is 92db efficient Sig 95db for the Focus
has high power handling 300 watts Signature 750 watt 
has very low bass 22hz Sig 18hz Focus
is tall enough to throw a big soundstage
has a series of matching center channels
uses Heil amt tweeters and a heil AMT midrange for a smooth top end with good detail
PLAYS loud!


The only issue is the somewhat limited amount of Legacy dealers,

We have the Legacy Focus Signatures in our small theater and they sound fantastic.

Other great music and theater speakers KEF Reference who we use in our large theater and they also play loud and are 90db efficient depending on model and they have high power handling.

You should go to your local dealer and try to listen to a bunch of good speakers and focus on those traits as I have listed above.

Here is the movie theater we built for Rev Run of Rev Runs Rennovation
and featured on TV:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/58319891@N08/albums/72157650233548529

Here are the construction shots note KEF THX in walls with JL Audio Subs:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/58319891@N08/albums/72157650239108910

If we can be of assistance to you please feel free to contact us:

Audio Doctor NJ

Thanks all for taking the time to provide me with input on the speakers.  There are a few dealers in the area.  For me, it is really a lack of time to properly check them all out on the right electronics.  Hence, my post to get a few ideas and perhaps shorten the journey.  I'll see if I can make some time to do proper auditions.  I'd say I want my system to be excellent an the audio / stereo side and if I had to sacrifice, I suppose it could be on the home theater side.  But I do enough movie watching that I'd like the 5.1 to be really good overall with a proper center channel.