The best speaker you ever heard?

Tvad, my system sends live orchestral music recordings to hair raising dynamic range, yet will do far less justice with amplified rock music. There, the live music is going to be blared out to the stadium audience in massive horn loaded speakers systems with truck sized woofers.

Actually, for the sake of my ears, I stopped going to concerts decades ago.

tvad your observation is correct on many levels . take for example the famous live recording of martha argerich and the berlin orchestra performing rachmaninof's third piano concerto . it is passionate bombastic and thrilling and contains within its score a wide range of soft and loud passages . yet when played on a very good speaker system with convention cone shaped drivers the detail and definition that makes a grand piano sound like a grand piano is ever so slightly obscured . that is not to say that it is not clearly rendered or distinct from the surrounding orchestra - it just sounds more like a bell . with a well designed full range electrostat the concert piano is much more realistic - its timbre is fully characteristic of the actual tone of a felt hammer striking a seven foot long metallic wire strung across a nine foot soundboard . the martin logan clx with two martin logan descent i subwoofers covers the full dynamic range of any acoustic instrument used in solo or orchestral recordings . the timbrel accuracy which only a full range electrostat can deliver produces a far greater sense of acoustic authenticity than is possible from even the finest speaker systems which are based on conventional cone drivers . though the dynamic range of some orchestral compositions may be far wider than many rock and roll recordings there is normally an emphasis on constant rhythm peaks throughout a rock tune that demands the room filling projection best handled by cone shaped transducers . so its a bit of a trade off . when playing a beethoven piano trio on a speaker system like the clx / descent i the realistic nature of a grand piano and violin and cello from the very softest passage to the loudest is rendered more authentically than can be displayed by any cone driver technology . but only a great cabinet design with multiple cones will project the relentless rhythm peaks contained on a majority of rock and jazz albums - though such systems ultimately lack delicate detail required for true acoustic timbrel authenticity .

Doggrell, which amp drives your MLs? Thanx

fla -
at present the clx's are driven by a borrowed pair of jolida music envoys in black which are 200 watts per channel monoblocks . the jolidas are great tube amps for their modest price of $2690 a pair but large electrostats need more power and refinement . ( isn't that always the case ? ) i will hopefully soon replace the music envoys with with two vac phi 300.1a's operating as bridged monoblocks which are three hundred watts of tube power per channel . unfortunately two vac phi 300.1a's retail for thirteen times the price of the jolida black music envoys . this is surely a perfect example of the law of diminishing returns .

on the subject of stratospheric prices for high end speakers and amps -- i checked out the new stereo shelf at the dynamic contrasts site : http://www.dynamic-contrasts.com/
the manufacturer makes some of the most over the top claims about his component rack ( called the rts ) in the history of high end hype . has anyone here tried this product ? according to the designer the $12,000 ( !! ) rts stereo shelf will transform the sound of any component to ultra high performance . i do admire this guy's confidence . i sent him a quick email :
" twelve thousand bucks for a stereo shelf ? ! ! ! have you gone completely insane ? ! ! "
and he sends an email right back :
" Well, you can certainly purchase a pair of $100k speakers, a $60k cdp, a $50k amp, or a pair of $30k speaker cables, or all four items and still only obtain a mere fraction of the RTS' performance when coupled with perhaps any well-thought-out system.
I ask you, which is more insane? In fact, if per chance my performance claims were only half true or even just one-quarter true the RTS would still be insanely cheap in comparison, don't you think? Relatively speaking of course. "

you have to love the hutzpah .