Big speakers, are they really the best way to get great sound?

@phusis what you stated about your listening and sound preferences is very helpful. Thank you. It gives us an idea as to where you are coming from as to what your system expectations are. I think all of us could benefit from having this discussion, as it is pretty accurate to say that most of us listen for different things in our systems…and what we hope to achieve with these systems.

Personally, I am trying to get as close to what I hear from an acoustic instrument or instruments in the settings that I have experienced.As such, I occasionally use my Taylor acoustic guitar to listen as a guide to what the system can portray of this type of instrument. I have an excellent memory of what this instrument sounds like in various settings. If a system can produce the sound of an acoustic guitar in my room, with a close to representative of this sound, I believe I am on the right track.What I truly like about Franco Serblin’s work, was that I believe he had a similar goal.The speakers he produced were attempting to sound as close as possible to a real instrument, not in the sense of being a playable instrument, but in the sense of what said instrument sounded like in a live and acoustic environment.

Yes …. I have a 7.5x5x3.6m room 

tannoy Arden with tulip waveguide 15inch cones the treble fires through the middle of bass cone (like a horn sort of) in the 5 years I’ve had them I have never felt I am missing anything. The thing about big speakers is they move air so even at low volumes it sounds great. Smaller speakers always seemed to need to be louder. Also great with all music. I used to have some ls3/5a monitors in other room - great near field and nearly holographic with singer songwriter stuff. 
as dr boop said maybe this with subs would hit that balance point too. For me large fit and forget speakers, a nice fire, good whisky and a nice class a amp is all I need in life and maybe the whole combo was $20k

Interesting discussion. It makes sense that a music listener who enjoys non amplified acoustic recordings is looking for a different set of attributes in their speakers than those who enjoy hearing performances on amplified instruments.

Having been on stage watching Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeshi’s road crew set up I found it fascinating that there is significant effort put into having the musicians hear each other’s performances as “point sources” rather than depending entirely on stage mixed monitor sound. Even though much of the music came from Fender Twin Reverbs and B-3 Leslie type speakers, their stadium volume performance had wide dynamic range…during their show, hanging on stage rail outdoors at DelFest I remember being impressed how they could play so loud softly at times :)

A properly designed large loudspeaker will not cause perspective distortion i.e. a string quartet will sound smaller than a full orchestra.

However, if the frame of reference is habitual nearfield listening in a small room then there will be quite an adjustment if listening to a large speaker in a large room.

However, also, in the case of the OP's experience there may well be the bombast factor involved, where the demonstrator plays everything too loud - which is guaranteed to make one want to run out of the room!

@phusis 

Darn, I like your philosophy. I also like your system. Please explain what you mean by, "actively configured"?  The only thing I do not like is running the 15" woofer up to 600 Hz. I assume this is because of the horn's low frequency cut off. I would use a very high order cross. Minimizing room interaction by limiting dispersion is a very important concept. Omni Directionality is a problematic attribute as it maximizes room interaction. You "hear" the room which destroys the impression that you are in a large space. It is also much harder to achieve controlled directionality and not overdo it and limit reasonable listening positions. Horns are really good at limiting dispersion without overdoing it.

You have a full frequency, limited dispersion point source system. I have a full frequency, limited dispersion line source system. I also configure everything "actively", by which I mean all crossovers and processing are done digitally and each driver or transformer has its own amplifier. I would love to be able to compare the two systems.