New Joseph Audio Pulsar Graphene 2

I've also never liked a narrow sweet spot.  And it's not only about allowing more than one listener to experience good sound.  I find if a sweet spot is really narrow it's just bothersome in of itself.

It's why, when plasma and LCD TVs were duking it out years ago I much preferred plasma, which looked essentially the same from all angles, where the LCD technology shifted tonal/colour/contrast balance when you moved even a bit off axis.  Something about the sheer finickiness and unsteadiness of that effect irked me.

Similarly I dislike head-in-a-vice speakers, Martin Logan stats being a perfect example (I've heard the majority of ML models and my pal has ML hybrid stat speakers).   The "illusion" is just so easily collapsed with even mild movement of the head.

So pretty much all speakers I have bought over the years have maintained similar soundquality/imaging over a relatively wide sweet spot.  (Audio Physic, Thiel CS 3.7/2.7, Waveform, Hales, MBL and many others).

Though I still harbor background thoughts of Devore speakers some day, one sticking point was the more directional high frequencies for those speakers (due to the beaming of the woofer and waveguided tweeter).

The Joseph speakers are a good match for my circumstances as I have some pretty limited set up possibilities in terms of distance to the listener (between 6 1/2 to 7 1/2 feet or so).  The Josephs are flexible and don't need much distance at all to sound coherent.

One of the reasons I love the Pulsars is the horizontal off-axis response ... almost any position is a sweet spot. I had the original B&W N804s for many years, and the horizontal off-axis response was awful ... move a millimeter in any direction and everything collapsed. The Pulsars are in a completely different league.

I waited 3 years until I decided to purchase a new TV, a 75" Sony 940C over the LG OLED, both top of the line.  The Sony gives me at least 30 degree excellent picture quality and combined with the size, five people can easily have a great picture 12' away.  (The LG had issues with brightness limitations and judder).  Prior to that, I purchased plasmas over LCDs for my parents because the LCDs looked worse and had limited viewing angles.

I really hated the head in a vise ML Quests and only slightly better larger Monolith IIIs.  I should audition the Joseph Pearl 3s if they also have a wide listening area, good imaging and depth.  Although they are low in sensitivity, they have an easy impedance.  I would use my 130 W tube monoblocks with ample current to drive them.  I just hope that they have a wide dynamic range and that I could enjoy listening at quiet levels as well as loud levels (like I do with 98db efficient Legacy Focus).

fleschler,

Honestly I wouldn't be expecting the Joseph speakers to have the same kind of low-level-listening performance as something like a 98db efficient speaker.  In fact if anything I found the Joseph speakers could use some volume to get them to open up dynamically. 


Mark reports more satisfactory performance at low listening levels for the "2" version, so that sounds promising.  I'd certainly welcome that.

@fleschler I second prof's comment above. The Pearl 3s really shine when they get juice (your 130W tube monos is plenty of power) but they need the volume up somewhat--it doesn't need to be outlandish but you've probably been spoiled on low-level listening with your highly efficient speakers. Everything else (wide listening area, imaging and depth) is positive.