Deciding on the right huge speaker

My room is 14x18x7.5 and would clearly not be appropriate for any of the speakers I (or anyone else) has mentioned. Again, I'm asking out of curiousity for the process, not because I'm going to go do this right now.

Phantom1 - you're absolutely right that you should start with looking for what you like, not by deciding how much to spend. You raise an interesting variable which is how would you evaluate a really big, vintage speaker. All of the excellent advice about visiting shows and travelling (even by plane) to dealers wouldn't work if you were trying to buy a 300lb. vintage speaker (obviously) used. -Kirk

Kirk -

Thanks for your kind words above! I appreciate your taking the time to post them. You really made my day!

Should the time arrive that you embark on that quest for your last pair of speakers, you'll run into a sobering reality - even at price ranges as high as 30 grand ballpark, you'll still have to make tradeoffs! The thing to do is figure out what qualities matter the most to you, and what you're willing to trade off to get them. As far as I know there is no speaker that really "does it all", but some speakers to some things extremely well.

As far as your present room size goes, several of the speakers mentioned would work well in your room, assuming you could position them properly. I know the big Maggies and Sound Labs would work well in that size room, and more than likely the Audio Artistry Beethovens would as well. Note that these all use dipole bass loading, which significantly minimizes the room's influence on the bottom end. Disclaimer - I peddle Sound Labs.

There are probably four general types of loudspeakers one might consider: High efficiency systems; full-range dipole systems; omnidirectional or polydirectional systems; and conventional systems. Each has its advantages and disadvantages, and would be worth experiencing if you haven't already done so.

Best wishes to you.

To answer your first question only. Based on my reading the reviews only on the speakers you mention, I would select the Dynaudio Temptations. Not to mention that the Temptation's sonic characteristics are about 90% of the Masters which sell for $80k.

All the others (not sure about the Wisdoms) appear to have 1 or more serious shortcomings when compared to the Temptations.

The Temptation is the best looking of the bunch also.

I agree with Stehno. I have heard the Temptations and they are awesome, they really are about %90 of the performance of the Masters at less then half the price. IMHO they are way more natural then the Krell LAT1 or the Wilson Maxx.

I'm a Dynaudio fan through and through - if I were truly going to purchase speakers in this caliber, I'd have to be convinced to buy something other than the Temptations.

I recently heard the LAT2's ($10K monitors) - they weren't very impressive sounding. I also don't much care for that look, though I can see why some may like it a lot. Again, I'm a Dynaudio fan, but I thought the Contour 1.3SE's that I listened to directly after the LAT2's were much more enjoyable for 1/3 of the price. -Kirk