Speaker Recommendations for Soundstage and Imaging

If you want sounstage & imaging you CANT beat a Magnepan 1.6 for under 2k. Nothing's close in that ball park. The 1.6's will make you think the center & rears are on, and I am NOT exaggerating one bit. You would however have to accept its large, yet extremely thin size, and not to use a sub is a HUGE mistake with any speaker, including the 1.6's. If you can do this, you will have exactly what your looking for in a speaker times 10 fold. 3 ft from the front wall isnt hard considering the speakers are under 2 inches thick. I find 34-40 inches to be perfect, not 10ft like some people. They also excell in small rooms, and sound great at nearfield listening. James Tanner (Bryston president) also stated this himself. Dont be affraid to use the high tonal controll on your prepro, and bump it down a db or 2. It does wonders. You can also use a resistor, but in the end I chose to roll them off -2db.

Thanks for all the suggestions so far. I've started researching some of them. As for the Maggies, I've long been interested in them, but they fail the WAF test in my household.The listening room for this rig is about 19 x 15. HOWEVER, the speakers will be up pretty close against the wall on the 15 foot side and about 8 feet apart. Listening chair will be about 8-9 feet from the speakers, about halfway into the room. My amp will be an Ayre AX7e.

PERFECT room for the 1.6's! 3ft from the front wall(same as most speakers & these are only 2 inches thick making it easy). Sitting 8-9ft is ideal. And leaves you a few feet behind you if you wish to pull your chair out for critical listening, so you can avoid rear wall reflections/bass spikes. It also leaves the side walls far away from the speakers(assuming there along the long wall), so they wont cause blur effects to the detail & imaging. Magnepan use the front wall for its required delayed reflections.

After owning top end speakers for years, I had to move to under a 2k speaker myself a few months back. The 1.6's were the only thing I could live with. Everything else sounded small,compact,etc. I still recommend a sub, they can be hid directly behind the speakers, as its just dead space up to 19" or so anyway(where the panel starts).

"and not to use a sub is a HUGE mistake with any speaker, including the 1.6's".

Aw, cmon. Maybe using Maggies without a sub is a mistake, but not using subs with "any speaker"? I don't know why I bother to comment about this. I am sure it is obvious to 99% of us that your statement is simply incorrect.

and not to use a sub is a HUGE mistake with any speaker, including the 1.6's".Aw, cmon. Maybe using Maggies without a sub is a mistake, but not using subs with "any speaker"? I don't know why I bother to comment about this. I am sure it is obvious to 99% of us that your statement is simply incorrect. Fsonicsmith  (Answers

Id love to know what speakers wouldnt benifit from a great sub. Id also love to hear what amp you would buy to power them. The cheapest TRUE full range speaker I know of is the Legacy Focus at $6k. I owned these speakers, and guess what? Adding a sub greatly improved them.

Have to agree with Fsonicsmith, in many cases adding a sub doesn't improve the performance of the system - though it may give you more bottom end sound.

It is very difficult to successfully combine/integrate a sub with many speakers, there is a lot more to it than just adding a completely seperated octave or 3.

There are a lot of bad subs on the market for true high performance two channel listening, though there are a ton for HT performance (that suck in 2-channel).

Integrating a sub to a pair of speakers is extremely difficult and the comment that just putting a sub in a pre-determined "dead" space conveys the lack of understanding of what it takes to properly implement subs.

I say this from experience owning several different subs and brands (REL, B&W, Velo, Wilson, Totem, etc. . .) and many different speakers (Wilson 3 models, VonS, Totem 3 models, Thiel, MLogan 2 models, B&W 3 models . . .).

While I am not saying subs are a bad idea, I am saying that they are not and should not be an automatic. When they are used, expect to pay easily the price the OP has listed for his pair of speakers and plan to spend many hard listening days, lots of moving the sub, lots of adjustment to gets things to be as good as possible/right.