An audiophile dilemma

Mlsstl, I agree. I tried to touch on the point when I compared the $10,000 Quads to $100,000 behemoths. There are some things the Quads can do that a big pair of Wilsons can't, and vice-versa. I don't think anything will beat the Quads for acoustical music at moderate levels, and that makes them great speakers -- but not for people who want to rock out. And if you do need high SPL's, do you go with the more colored sound of a Wilson (you aren't alone in your observation) or the accuracy of a Magico? Or do you sacrifice a bit of that level and go for the even better accuracy and imaging of a huge electrostatic like the Sound Labs?

At every level, the speaker to get is the one that best fits our needs, and these may occupy very different price points, because some attributes that some people need -- loud deep accurate bass, say -- are costlier to provide than others.

From my limited experience with pro-monitors, they put you inside the recording studio not in row C or H. That means they collapse the soundstage and don't float images in a 3D holographic way as most audiophile speakers do. Maybe mid-field monitors like the JBL-LSR6332 do a better job of creating a 3D soundstage illusion? When I demoed the ATC-SCM 11 soundstaging was their major weakness even though they excelled in many other ways.

Douglas_schroeder,
I could not agree more with your comments about investing in "the hobby".

To Rfleff: hi, in my opinion the JBL's do nothing seriously wrong. Of course the Soundlab give a sense of height with regard to soundstage because they are quite tall.
In my case, I have tried to mimic some of the characteristics of PA speaker systems, like the JBL's by adding two open baffle woofer towers fitted with three 15 inch woofers/channel.
I use a Marchand crossover to be able to drive the Soundlabs and the woofer towers in full active mode.
And yes, I can now get some of the dynamics of a real PA system, which is obvious when listening to Michael Jackson's Liberian Girl or Smooth Criminal on the Bad CD.
One last remark: nowadays high quality PA systems don't sound aggressive any longer, unlike many of yesteryear's PA systems being used in disco clubs.

Chris

Dayglo, I've noticed the same thing. Some of that has to do with how they're mounted in the studio, and with the very dry acoustics up front. Some I think has to do with the limited dispersion of the typical pro monitor. JBL's may be an exception that last, the Harman research favors good power response, which they found correlates very well with subjective quality.