Speakers for leading edge, transients, speed and big sound

Mike, that old Lansing Heritage paper is a very good and very approachable analysis of woofer design, with the caveat of course that it is limited to JBL products (naturally).

That other article is just one man’s opinionated screed. While I’ll be the last to dismiss the importance of a seamless and harmonious woofer-midrange integration (why so many planars fail), it isn’t the be-all and end-all and woofer quality does matter.

Since we’re on the subject of "fast" bass I just want t point out that it is generally understood as not just how fast a woofer can accelerate to, say, 30 Hz (a low bar for sure), but perhaps more importantly how fast it stops.

Hence the servo systems developed by Arnie Nudell and others that employed piezo accelerometers mounted on individual woofers to feed acceleration data to circuitry that controlled cone excursion in real time.

@larryi I completely get your point. I guess it’s like tubes and vinyl in a way; despite the mess of stunted frequency responses, low channel separation and massive distortion they sound delightful. I get that the same goes for woofers.

I strongly suspect that I couldn’t live happily with speakers that are down 6 dB at 55 Hz (JBL’s spec), but I respect those who see beyond that. An additional caveat is that I have not auditioned the K2, and I am open to the possibility that their sound somehow transcends their underwhelming spec. Wouldn’t be the first time such a thing happens 🙂

I like the sound of the K2's but, this being a matter of personal taste, I don't think they are the best sounding horn-based systems.  The overall tonal balance is, for me too light in upper bass/lower midrange such that it is a touch thin sounding as far as my ideal speaker is concerned.  But, it certainly is a worthy candidate for consideration and might more completely fit someone else's taste preference.  

I'm kind of curious about the JBL M2 though. On paper, they look more like my cup of tea.

OP didn't say why he got rid of his, did he?

"If the woofer can reproduce 40Hz with low distortion, how fast the woofer starts is almost irrelevant (within reason of course). It only needs to accelerate fast enough to match the rise time of 40Hz at the fastest point along a 40Hz sine wave. If the woofer can do that, it is going as fast as it needs to in order to be as fast as fast can be -- at 40Hz."

This may be fine if you are just listening to sine waves.  But what about a square wave or sawtooth wave where the woofer has to pop out to its maximum travel instantaneously?  And please don’t say there are no square waves used in music.

In fact, there is not a sine wave anywhere to be found on a MiniMoog.

I’ll second the Legacy speakers. I had the original Focus and now have the Aeris with the Wavelet processor. The speakers are biamped, each with a 700-watt built-in woofer/subwoofer amp. They are not horn-loaded, but they do use custom-designed dual air motion tweeters and super tweeters. The Wavelet II is an electronic crossover, DAC, equalizer/processor, and preamp.  It’s a phenomenal sounding system—dynamic, with an amazing soundstage, and has some of the tightest, best bass (in my opinion) I’ve heard in any home speaker system. It’s also incredibly efficient. Bill Dudleston is an amazing speaker-designer. You could buy the Aeris speakers with the Wavelet II processor new and stay within your budget.