Soundstage and explosive dynamics?

+1 @phusis   

I have heard many, many speakers with multiple small woofers and some can have very good dynamics. However, they do not get to the level of horns. None, zip, zero, nil, nada. Doggedly denying that fact does not make it any less valid. High efficiency and displacement are the way to explosive dynamics as has been stated several times here already. 

Johnk is right, for extreme dynamics you need horns period

however there are dynamic speakers that do it better than others and they don't have multiple small woofers period. 

Kosst the the reason they don't make them like that is because they don't have to.  It's much more expensive and complicated . They had limited power with tubes so they had to use horns to get the sound levels. Then came the transistor and ruined everything.  They figured that power was cheap so they could make inefficient smaller speakers and get the sound levels with the power.   But in the trade-off we lost the dynamics.  

 To sum it up it's not that we have progressed beyond and made a better mouse trap it's just that the way they do it now is cheaper. 

I kind of hate to bring this up, but explosive dynamics requires recordings with high dynamic range. Unfortunately many CDs, LPs and SACDs, not to mention hi res downloads are being excessively compressed dynamic range wise. No worries. At least you can listen to them loud. 😳

I would agree that, for overall sound quality, it’s hard to beat Legacy Audio at various price points. At $10k, the Focus SE, with its ribbon tweeter and prodigious bass, gets you imaging, soundstage, and the ability to reproduce music on a large scale, as well as having fairly high sensitivity.