Rja so sorry you feel that way, you said a lot of things directed against us that were not true, we never bashed Salk speakers just the times when we heard them and weren’t impressed by them and we didn’t say they were bad, on the contrary,j ust that we weren’t blown away by them.
We also mentioned several times that there are Salk models with the active woofers would do the job far better than their passive models, we also mentioned Tekton both of these lines we do not sell.
We also mentioned that there were many speakers at that show that didn’t impress us either and these were expensive well respected brands.
Look our experience is very different, we have done shows with 30 foot by 20 rooms, and we have heard systems that did not accheive room lock in a giant room where the bass did not fill the room and the sound was okay and not exceptional.
One notable example is the $1 million dollar plus Von Schweikert Vac systems as shown in Axpona and Cap, giant rooms with loudspeakers that just couldn’t fill them. When you accheive room lock you will feel the bass when the note is there. This system in a room half or one third the giant ballrooms size and the sound would have been fantastic.
Gndrbob, the Vandy 7 with the dual subs in the giant room they were in at Axpona were also poor, these might be superb speakers but there is no substitute for displacement and they just didn't fill the room.
The big Magicos with the dual giant subs and a lot of power did fill a large open space at a norminal listenng distance.
Many of the loudspeakers mentioned here are good loudspeakers that will not work optimally in a giant room. Same speakers in a smaller room will sound excellent.
It is our belief that the world’s top loudspeaker companies do produce their own drivers and spend millions on research and developement.
Seas and Scanspeak are tiny companies with revenues in the millions not in the hundreds of millions, both of these companies produce excellent drivers, but there is a clarity in drivers such as the Acuton diamond tweeter and midrange that just arent available in more conventional cone materials, yes Acuton is a small driver manufacturer but nobody other than them have figured out a way to make a pure Diamond midrange, and the reason nobody uses these drivers is cost.
Kef is one of the most throughly engineered companies out there, so is B&W and Focal and Paradigm. We tend to favor the bigger companies for one reason which is not price but ultimate performance tends to be with these companies, which have the raw engineering talent and budget to push the boundaries of sound.
And yes if Bose wanted to invest in beating the best high end audio companies they could spend $30 million dollars in a heartbeat, it is fortunate for our beloved high end brands that Bose doesn’t desire to do so.
We would be happy to contest facts with facts, the truth of what we say in terms of loudspeakers in large rooms is not our opinions it is established facts.
Look at the sound systems in a concert, you will see stacks of compression horn tweeters and midrange drivers coupled to stacks of large 15 inch bass bins with thousands of watts of power.
The reason is spf falls off depending on distance, total bass response in room is the output of the speaker coupled with room gain which is the effect that the room will bring on reinforcing the bass.
Most of this discussion would be simple is the OP has a more normal sized room with a lower ceiling.
Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ
