The best "imaging" speakers?

Tex,

I'd be interested in your assessment of the OHMs versus the Gallo's.

When I was shopping, I auditioned the Gallo's, which I liked but were then bested by the top of the line Quad stats for 4-5 times the cost.

I think the OHMs compete with the Quads and have better dynamics and impact than the QUADs for sure but at almost half the cost or less.

Strange coincidence.

I've heard the Gallo 3.X refs on any number of ocasions, but today I happened to hear the new Gallo towers for the first time. They were very, very good sounding speakers, but off a severey limited audition they seemed like very good, but not great imagers. (Just a quick impression, more time would be needed for more confident commentary). I'd say the same of the 3s, very good, not great.

I know that the Gallo 3s have a 300+ degree dispersion tweeter that crosses in quite low, so I'd suspect that the overall radiation pattern looks a bit like the smaller MBL floorstanders. However, they've never struck me as imaging like omnis. The 3s are wonderful, small, pretty much full range, seamless, reasonably priced speakers, but their imaging capabilities never seemed remarkable to me.

Marty

BTW The big MBLs switch from radial drivers to conventional drivers at app 100ish hz. In this respect, they may be more appropriately compared to Ohm Sat 5000 w/Ohm subwoofer. OTOH, they aren't biamped, so neither comparison is strictly apples to apples.

SINGLE DRIVERS

Cashmal,
I believe your comment is impossible to fault with a finely built and matched pair; however I could not really be happy
w/o more full range presentation.

For full range, multiple drivers configured to approximate a point or short line source might image almost as well as a single driver can because the geometry of how the sound propagates is similar.

There are some omni designs that do this trick with inherently wider dispersion in 3-d. Morrisons, Wolcotts, and OHM Walshes are good examples.

Small monitors and some floorstanding Totems like the Arros are other examples in a more conventional box design.

I like these designs for good imaging best, especially for more nearfield listening. For listening from a distance in some larger rooms, taller line source or floorstander designs with multiple drivers can work better as well.