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Does this speaker exist?

Looking for ideas. Here's the wishlist:

- Small footprint, either standmount or small floorstander (<40”)
- For listening at normal distances (not nearfield, or not only nearfield)
- Comes alive at low volume (let's say that at least it doesn’t need to be cranked to come alive)
- Musically versatile
- State of the art tonality, truth of timber
- Superb treble
- Gobs of refinement (think 1080p or 4K vs. 420, or very high thread count egyptian cotton vs. Ramada Inn)
- Not important: large soundstage, disappearing act, bottom octave, fill the room
- I actually prefer a small soundstage -- a small but open widow to the performance
drubin
drubin OP
3,285 posts
 
Bombaywalla -- thank you for giving this so much thought and for providing some technical foundation to my request. I have always appreciated your comments on Audiogon but rarely see you posting these days.

I will give more thought to what i mean by "refinement." It's not detail, or it's not only detail. I owned GMA Europas for a while and felt, ultimately, that they did not have enough refinement. Whatever that is, as you say.

One comment about planars is that in general they do not have the small soundstage I prefer. The giant vocals and 6 foot tall pianos can be a problem. I've been tempted to try some, but worry about my cats. :-)

More later ...
bombaywalla's avatar
bombaywalla
1,958 posts
 
I will give more thought to what i mean by "refinement." It's not detail, or it's not only detail. I owned GMA Europas for a while and felt, ultimately, that they did not have enough refinement.
thanks for your kind words, Drubin.
I did hear the designer admit that these speakers were made to a certain price point hence the various compromises.
when you have a tweeter & mid/woofer in 1 cabinet, there is going to be some interference between the 2. If you popped the grill you would have found acoustic felt around the tweeter to minimize this. in the end, physics will rule & the 2 drivers will talk. This will detract from the listening pleasure. It's much reduced in GMA speakers compared to other brands.
Another thing I read was that the x-over component quality could be upgraded for better sound. Same for the internal hook-up wire.
All these are fully expected for a speaker sold factory-direct for a affordable price.
The designer has some other improvements in his design for his new series of speakers Rio & Chroma. The issue is resolved if the customer pays more for the Eos which has a out-of-the-same-box tweeter. Plus, the new series of speakers come in a HD version that gives you the best for that model. It might be time again to re-sample GMA?....
audiokinesis
2,765 posts
 
Musicfile wrote: "Duke you have some great speakers as well"

Thank you very much, but I don't have anything that meets the "small footprint" requirement. I tend to use prosound drivers which inherently do some things well, but delivering good bass extension in a small box isn't one of them. Tradeoffs, always tradeoffs.

Duke
dealer/manufacturer
maineiac
649 posts
 
I would test drive some devore fidelity gibbon 88 or orangutan. The soundstage should be good but not exaggerative.
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