klh007,
Thanks for your clarification on the Alsyvox. So the complete planar magnetic design is then inferior to the top Maggies and the GT Audio. What a ripoff. My friend in LI who has the GT, posted under his ID, faxer, I recall, but if I am wrong, his business is Sound Insight, in Massapequa, NY. It is better than any Maggie, especially when toed in. It is tall and skinny, similar to the Wisdom Audio ribbon speakers. The GT and Wisdom are of comparable quality in sound, and both illustrate the superiority of design that I advocate.
I have heard Roger Sanders hybrid stats. At shows they sounded lousy with veiling, rolled off highs, etc. Could have been the small dead room or the DSP not set up properly. I made a trip from NYC to Maryland to hear the top model in a private home. They sounded much better than at the shows, but still not quite as good as the ML CLX, and nowhere as good as my Audiostatic 240. You have to understand my perspective with the unique Audiostatic, which makes my comments about nearly all speakers at variance with the enthusiasm others have for whatever speakers are available today. But everyone should read Sanders' white paper (website Sanders Sound Systems) on why curved panels are not optimal. Originally, he designed curved panels but realized his mistake and switched to flat panels. To get the total purest sound, you just have to accept the need to sit in the sweet spot with the panels toed in to your nose, ears. I agree with his writings, and go further with my analysis of the multipath and dispersion effects that create HF smearing. I have not heard the smaller narrower model of Sanders, but I predict it will have more precision although less output than the larger wider model, for the reasons I have discussed.
Actually, THE best commercially available stats are from King Sound, in Hong Kong. But distribution and availability have been lousy. They are flat panels, with a wide panel for freq below 1200 Hz, and a 3 inch narrow panel for freq above that. The narrower the panel, the more dispersion, without any HF rolloff. I have heard the King and Prince models and can say that 2-3 people can enjoy the total sound. The original King model was great, better than the CLX, but not as good as my Audiostatic. There is a guy from Norwalk, Conn on USAudioMart selling these for less than $3000, a steal if you can accept the risk of no company backup. The next best thing is the KS 17 that maplegrovemusic mentioned. The only problem with the design is that it is very tall, so the height creates some vertical time smear from multipath effects. The narrow width is a plus, however. Recall that I found the tall Stat F83 (2 stacked F81's) to be inferior to the F81 in precision and HF balance.
So the best commercially available speaker is the ML CLX, because the mid/HF panel is narrow and the whole speaker is not tall. The design resembles the King stats, which are still better because of all the flat panels.
Apologizes to those who don't find all this relevant to their needs, but I hope others find it useful.
WC, I know my quest may not correspond to your present approach with resale considerations, but I just mention products that have real excellence and value by being cheap enough that financially you will come out ahead. You can just get the CLX-REL and be done with the speaker quest and save a lot of money.
Thanks for your clarification on the Alsyvox. So the complete planar magnetic design is then inferior to the top Maggies and the GT Audio. What a ripoff. My friend in LI who has the GT, posted under his ID, faxer, I recall, but if I am wrong, his business is Sound Insight, in Massapequa, NY. It is better than any Maggie, especially when toed in. It is tall and skinny, similar to the Wisdom Audio ribbon speakers. The GT and Wisdom are of comparable quality in sound, and both illustrate the superiority of design that I advocate.
I have heard Roger Sanders hybrid stats. At shows they sounded lousy with veiling, rolled off highs, etc. Could have been the small dead room or the DSP not set up properly. I made a trip from NYC to Maryland to hear the top model in a private home. They sounded much better than at the shows, but still not quite as good as the ML CLX, and nowhere as good as my Audiostatic 240. You have to understand my perspective with the unique Audiostatic, which makes my comments about nearly all speakers at variance with the enthusiasm others have for whatever speakers are available today. But everyone should read Sanders' white paper (website Sanders Sound Systems) on why curved panels are not optimal. Originally, he designed curved panels but realized his mistake and switched to flat panels. To get the total purest sound, you just have to accept the need to sit in the sweet spot with the panels toed in to your nose, ears. I agree with his writings, and go further with my analysis of the multipath and dispersion effects that create HF smearing. I have not heard the smaller narrower model of Sanders, but I predict it will have more precision although less output than the larger wider model, for the reasons I have discussed.
Actually, THE best commercially available stats are from King Sound, in Hong Kong. But distribution and availability have been lousy. They are flat panels, with a wide panel for freq below 1200 Hz, and a 3 inch narrow panel for freq above that. The narrower the panel, the more dispersion, without any HF rolloff. I have heard the King and Prince models and can say that 2-3 people can enjoy the total sound. The original King model was great, better than the CLX, but not as good as my Audiostatic. There is a guy from Norwalk, Conn on USAudioMart selling these for less than $3000, a steal if you can accept the risk of no company backup. The next best thing is the KS 17 that maplegrovemusic mentioned. The only problem with the design is that it is very tall, so the height creates some vertical time smear from multipath effects. The narrow width is a plus, however. Recall that I found the tall Stat F83 (2 stacked F81's) to be inferior to the F81 in precision and HF balance.
So the best commercially available speaker is the ML CLX, because the mid/HF panel is narrow and the whole speaker is not tall. The design resembles the King stats, which are still better because of all the flat panels.
Apologizes to those who don't find all this relevant to their needs, but I hope others find it useful.
WC, I know my quest may not correspond to your present approach with resale considerations, but I just mention products that have real excellence and value by being cheap enough that financially you will come out ahead. You can just get the CLX-REL and be done with the speaker quest and save a lot of money.