I haven't heard all the competing speakers that are about the same size as the Pulsar but it's very hard to beat the bass on the Seas 5.5in magnesium woofer. I could think a couple of drivers from ScanSpeak such as either the 5.5in Revelator or the Illuminator or the Accuton ceramic, but other than that, I can't think of any. But even then, they would be very close in term of bass output.
My only beef with the Pulsars is that, given all the praises, after reading the Stereophile review of the Pulsars, the designer advertised that he uses something called "Asymmetrical Infinite Slope circuit" for his xover. OK, there is no such thing. There is no "Infinite slope". Cross over technology has been around since Edison invented the light bulb. There is nothing new. There is no need for the designer to resort to these type of marketing sleight of hand. It cheapens his credibility. It probably comes down to the woofer uses 2nd order and the tweeter using 3rd order to align the phase of both drivers hence the term "asymmetric" vs. "symmetric" in which the order of both the woofer and tweeter have the same filter order. Using Asymmetric technique is actually a compromised approach since in order to use "Symmetric", the designer will need to rework the baffle geometry.
And with all due respect to the designer, the woofer and tweeter on the Pulsars are probably top ten drivers in the world. So 80% of the goodness in the sound probably comes from the drivers by themselves. He then just slapped on the xover and claimed all the credits :-)
