Yes Larry and if you undertstand acoustics you will understand that most loudspeakers will not fill up a room that big, you must look at total square footage, and if the room is open to another room then you have an even larger amount of air to fill add in more requirements in power handling and bass if the listener likes to play loud.
Salk does use excellent drivers, however, because you sell direct doesn’t mean that much, their are economies of scale that enable large manufacturers to design all their own drivers that are often far superior to the collection of parts that JIm Salk and many home brew guys use.
Also Larry just because in your opinion that a pair of $6k Salks sounded better to you than a $60k speaker means nothing, first the $60k speaker could have been shoe horned into a tiny room or may have been setup like crap. Horse for courses.
It is interesting that we heard the Salks at both Axpona and at CAP, as we do listen to products that compete with ours, and neither Salk at either show was blowing us away, nor were the uber expensive Von Schweikerts, nor were the Magicos, our favorites at Axpona were Wilson, Focal, Vimberg, Golden Ear and the Alta Audio, and the T+A speakers were the best at the show.
Back to the matter at hand, Giant room 20 by 40 with 12 foot ceilings means a speaker that can play loud with prodigious bass, high power handling and great efficiency.
We brought in Legacy for a client who wanted to DJ and had a 300 watt per channel amplifier, the Focus can handle 500 watts, is 95db and has bass to 18hz and they will fill up a large room with ease!
Please show me a conventional high end loudpeaker that can do that.
Salk makes only one loudspeaker that will do the job with the exception of not knowing how much power the speaker can hold and that is the $13k Salk powered Exotica 3, which is 3db less efficient, and has bass to 25hz vs the Legacy’s 18hz bass.
The other speaker line that will do that is the Tektons, we have heard the Tektons and were not blown away by their treble, and their cabinetry is ugly, but they will also do the job and they are a great deal for the money.
A pair of Focus XD come with self amplified bass and you can add a Wavelet room correction processor to help tame the awful acoustics that will invariably be a part of a large room with high ceilings.
Yes you can add a set of subwoofers, and providing you can roll off the bass going to the main speakrs that can also work but then you have the added cost and space constrains and look of having four boxes in the room rather than two.
Hey what do we know 30 years professional sound system design, trained in Theater design by Russ Hershelman, acoustics courses by Tony Grimmani of Lucas sound.
You must factor in all of these factors just because you use exotic drivers like a Raal ribon doesn’t account for much when you blow up your tweeter or launch a midrange driver because your speakers are not designed to fill up the space.
And you can roll your eyes as well, as Legacy uses a custom German made Heil AMT tweeter and midrange, coupled to an Italian made silk and graphite midrange driver, so Bill’s drivers aren’t too shabby either.
The best thing is for this gentleman to visit a few dealers or go to a good regional show and find out for himself.
Good luck OP.
Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Legacy dealers
