Vandersteen 3A Sigs vs Klipsch Forte III

Heardthat...

I had a pair of Vandy 2-somethings a pretty good while ago so I was relatively sure these would be at least as good.  The Bluebook average is around $2200 and I paid $1500 for these - a good deal overall.  They’re replacing my Maggie 1.7i’s which I absolutely love, but once again the sheer physicality of these great speakers proves bothersome to me. 

The price and local pickup clinched the deal for me. Original owner, all the good stuff buyers look for on this site. I emailed Vandersteen to see if I could replace the socks and within a day I got a response.  I know they can still service them if need be, but I think they ceased production a while ago. 

I read with interest here the comment about deadening the tweeters on the Klipsch with damping material, but I wasn’t as into the audiophilia thing then as deep as I am now. Had I known...I might have kept the Epics. 

As my fave speaker brands may tell you, Thiel, Maggie, Klipsch, I prefer mid and treble resolution above bass.  My finickynesa with bass is BAD bass, too many speakers new and old are colored and false which sucks the life out of the music imho.  

Have you or roxy even heard the Forte III

Yes I owned them for 4 mts got them cheap, as they were a good turnaround to make money on. A friend owned the older version, bass wasn’t as good/low on them.

Cheers George

Since the spatial info is encoded in the signal, somebody walk me thru the physics of how a big baffle improves the image ?
you do get the bounce off the panel and the back wall is 100% distortion....
but have at it, math gets extra credit
the same applies to focusing energy with a horn, ain’t nothing free.....
remember, I own horns, listen to them every day, I can assure you depth of image is not on my list of things they do well....

i will I’ll accept the homework assignment to go in and put a constrained layer damping treatment on the horn body, 

tomic601"Since the spatial info is encoded in the signal, somebody walk me thru the physics of how a big baffle improves the image ?
you do get the bounce off the panel and the back wall is 100% distortion...."

No it is not 100% distortion because recordings are made, mixed and mastered to be played over a loudspeaker in some kind of room except lousy recordings that are made to be played in a car although I am not sure that is common practice in the industry today.

Someone mentioned somewhere, that they put a dampening substance inside the horn throat to reduce coloration or resonance. I highly recommend against that. It should all be from the exterior of the horn.