Soundlab speakers

Big Perreaux and tubed Wolcott's, both of which I owned worked well. The speakers were, I believe A3 or M3 (I'm a gear hound and get confused by the alphabet soup we audio folks live in) and had the PX upgrades.

They were as Albert described. I used mine with the old isobaric loaded Talon subs and they were awesome. In spite of the Wolcott raves you may find, I preferred mine with the quite pricy and hard to find Perreaux monos.

HOWEVER, make sure your environment is well controlled humidity wise. The same as a Ferrari, etc., I guess...high performance does make some demands. When the bias is set right, it can change as the speaker warms up and if/as your humidity varies during the day/week/season. Sometimes, I would walk into my listening room and the stink of ozone and snapping would remind me that I forgot to dial back the bias last session.

I live at the beach, so the constant tweaking and dialing in the sweet spot frustrated me to the point where I got rid of mine.

I should have spent the money to upgrade my room and HVAC: yeah, they were that good.

I don't know where the OP has been, but they are spoken of on a regular basis.

Sound Lab showed the speaker with a new back panel at the 2013 CES (THE Show actually) that made the speaker a *lot* easier to drive, and also sounding better (likely because it does not work the amps as hard).

Our 140-watt MA-1 drives it really well! In the past, you needed a set of MA-2s to do the same job. (FWIW, about 70% of our MA-2 production since the amp was introduced in 1990 has been on Sound Labs)

Since the introduction of the PX panel I have also heard good things about reliability from our customers. I think it very safe to say the Sound Lab is a state of the art speaker, certainly the best ESL out there, capable of real dynamic range and good well into the bottom octave- you can shake the walls with this one!

By December the U-1PXs here which incorporate all of the current technology will be on demonstration in the new large state of the art demo room being built, driven by MA-1s.

Sound Lab and Atma-Sphere dealer, Chicago area.

I've owned early versions of A3's,1's and Pristines. The Prognosis was great the execution left a lot to be desired- the fizzed popped and went AWOL on efficiency. When working they could deliver -but the trials and tribulations of ESLs
are not for the faint hearted. These were no exception and replacement panels
were the norm.

I've heard the later Panels at TheShow with Ralph's Amps and while the shoebox room did them no favors they did seem to show great sonics -and not fail

at least when I was there.

If you are in a Humid climate /etc I'd think twice.

Des