Best speaker brands for transient response

@drbay 

Be careful with Borresen, they are impressive first and very fast, but they sound very digital and mechanical, they do not give a natural sound. 

Not sure how a speaker can sound "digital and mechanical"? Please enlighten me.

My cousin owns a pair of Z3, and they are quite neutral, very good transient response, never fatiguing, produce a huge, deep soundstage. 

He's owned them since they came out, and he is not looking to get rid of them. 

@terry9 My experience of slew rates is different. I am driving ESL's, and my amps sound good with 30V/us output transistors, better with 40V/us, and better yet with 50 V/us; that is, better transient response.

Interesting. Reading up on slew rates, it seems a higher slew rate results in more power capacity at higher frequencies. So you may be hearing extended linear      high frequency response, and that definitely is a type of transient response. My hearing doesn't extend up as high as it used to. I think I stop somewhere around 15kHz.

@mbmi and @simonmoon thank you for your comments on the Borresens.

I've done the measurements in my room vs the recommended spacing from the back wall and spacing between speakers and I think I can make them work. They have a dealer just north of me. Based on reviews and youtube videos they have the exact sound signature I'm looking for. Just need to see if it translates to the room.

I was worried they looked too modern but it's a look I can get used to ;)

The Spendor D7.2 are still very much in the running but they lack outrigger feet, and with two dogs and a cat that's actually an important consideration. I do realize I can buy outriggers for them.

Something new to me about slew rate and horns - higher efficiency speakers can do what a lower efficiency speaker would require a higher slew rate from the amplifier to do. So low efficiency combined with a desire to play loud creates a requirement for a higher slew rate, assuming you don't want the high frequencies to roll off. Also, I learned that a high slew rate if not implemented carefully can come with overshoot and ringing that can also make for a "faster" sort of sound, but generally not thought to be in a good way.

I’m not a JBL fan as is (kinda was in my early youth though), certainly not of their wider range of domestic offerings, but they’re one of the few originally pro manufacturers to still provide a home line of speakers where their pro origins can "bleed" into, and for that I find they deserve some credit.

@phusis Agreed.

My take: cost isn’t the real issue here, but rather the extent to which one is willing to go to materialize a potential from a specific, fitting design path. Vanity, dogma and/or conjecture are other issues; many won’t wade into the pro arena with functional looking (and sometimes cheaper) products in addition to, as mentioned earlier, large size.

It’s about the optics, prestige, brand name snobbery and what not (other bizarre stuff)...or they heard 300 dollar plastic trash PA at the bar and made up their minds. Play anything full tilt and all their "prestigious" audiophile goober stuff just falls to dust. But, somehow, these guys are constantly talking about the real thing, live, 3D etc (boggles my mind).

I came to my senses a bit after i heard the Daniel Hertz M1, kills everything high end for my musical tastes...but, literally a Pro speaker with the ’audiophile approved’ pricing, i.e., only a measly 200k. Other seriously engineered core pro stuff is never heard of.

My eventual goal is to build a separate sound shed on my property (to prevent high SPL related divorce) and...possibly setup a atmos rig around Meyer Sound’s higher end stuff and a stereo rig around just Pioneer or Yamaha. The cabinets will get their pristine looking wood stain/finish whatever and things should start to look just fine. It really isn’t that hard or labor intensive to spruce up some baltic birch. Funny thing...Wilson, Avantgarde, etc looked "just fine" somehow (hell no!) in this neck of the woods.