System that sounds so real it is easy to mistaken it is not live

We wholeheartedly agree that there is nothing that compares to a live performance, whether it’s on a street corner or in a concert hall. All of the attributes ultra high-end systems seek to replicate are experienced in these live venues. Many advances have been made in modern high-end audio equipment to optimize impulse response.

Traditional systems, especially the speakers, distort the phase on a frequency by frequency basis. This muddies the impulse response and takes away the depth, layering and imaging of sound that comes from being in the same space with the musicians.

We work extensively with Dirac Live in audio systems, and it has brought us closer to the goal of recreating the feeling and texture of a live performance.

@atmasphere , come on Ralph you just squish them in there. Hold that thought:-)

@lewm , the 6 ohm MC Diamond has more gain in voltage mode, about 3 dB. It definitely sounds better in transimpedance mode. Bass drums have more punch and the bass has more definition. I spent 30 minutes going back and forth on a number of different records. You can't hear the background noise until the tonearm lifts but then there is a hiss you can hear clear across the room and you know how tall ESLs are when it comes to projecting noise. This is at 95 dB or minus 6 dB FS. The Seta L 20 is 12 dB quieter, an awfully expensive solution. 

Is is not that a system should sound exactly like a specific live performance. It is that a system should be able to convince you that you are sitting in front of a live one and supply a similar amount of sonic satisfaction. The experience will never be the same without the visual aspects. A BluRay player and a large screen can take care of that. May not be quite the same but then you do not have to fight the crowds or the traffic. 

@rauliruegas , thanx a bunch Raul. I sit 4 meters away. You have to remember That my system is line source. It's volume does not fade with distance like a point source system will. Yes, each main speaker has two transformers. They are nothing near as complicated as the crossovers in most modern high performance speakers. I also take the bass below 100 Hz out of them with 48 dB/oct digital filters which increases their headroom rather dramatically. 105 dB peaks is not a problem at all. Each one has a 350 watt amp on it and each subwoofer has 1800 watts on it, all 4 of them. 

Your Soundlabs has a sensitivity of 89db SPL at i meter

@rauliruegas Being that the Sound Lab is a large curved panel, you have to add 6dB to the rating to find out the effective sensitivity when you are back about 10 feet. The reason is that at 1 meter most of the output of the speaker is not picked up by the microphone. Roger's sensitivity numbers on his website doesn't tell the whole story, since sensitivity is a voltage measurement and so impedance is pretty important. The Sound Lab is 30 Ohms in the bass (the sensitivity is stated for 8 Ohms), meaning its efficiency is actually higher by a good 3-6dB in the region where most of the power exists.

The speaker isn't hard to drive for any other reason than impedance. If you have amps that can drive the impedance the numbers @mijostyn provided are entirely realistic in many rooms.

Much of the energy used to drive the Sound Lab is soaked up by the passive crossover, because SL (for other compelling reasons) chose to use a resistance in the RC network that comprises the high pass filter that is much lower than the natural impedance of the panel itself, sans RC network. Thus the amplifier is expending more energy to drive the resistor than to drive the panel. With RC network removed, the big SLs are remarkably efficient and present an impedance in the 20 to 25 ohm range (never below 20 ohms) from about 100Hz to 5kHz. Impedance goes up below 100Hz and down between 5kHz and 20kHz. This gets rid of the midrange impedance issue that Ralph alludes to. And of course it’s favorable for an OTL tube amp. I daresay that a 50W amplifier is sufficient; my Atma-sphere amps with about 100W are coasting. Of course, you also have to replace the treble audio trans with a suitable full range audio trans. They’re not easy to find.