Xiekitchen: Most electrostatic speakers lack the dynamic output to sustain high spl's, let alone the bass that is needed to "drive" the music. On top of that, the way that most people build systems that are E-stat based may have something to do with this.
Having said that, i can assure you that a well designed E-stat based system CAN rock. Only problem is, these are very few and far between as most commercially built E-stat's are quite compromised by design. Most of this is due to marketing restraints.
I listen to mostly very hard & heavy music and my main system uses a line array of E-stat tweeters, a line array of E-stat mid-woofers and four dynamic sub-woofers per channel. While it is physically huge and i have six stereo amps configured as actively crossed monoblocks driving it, i can assure you that it DOES "rock" quite well. With over 2400 wpc available, it should : )
What most of these systems lack are surface area, headroom and low frequency content. By removing those factors from the equation, you can have all of the speed and dynamics that a system is capable of while retaining the proper amount of "bass weight" that is required to rock.
Next on your list was AR speakers. My HT system is AR based, centering around what used to be their top of the line models. Granted, these speakers are VERY far from stock now, but even in stock form, they would "rock". They just needed GOBS of power to do so. With a factory rating of 6400 watts rms, this system isn't hurting in that area either : )
As far as low powered tube amps go, you might be surprised what they can do with high efficiency speakers. I've heard some amps that were well below 10 wpc jam quite well. Maybe not as loudly or cleanly as i would like, but then again, i like things louder than most. Once again though, this comes down to system building and the goals / desires of the end user.
Other than that, i agree with your comments about the Spica's, Rogers, etc... when used by themselves as the mains of a system. These speakers simply don't want to play loudly and lack the low frequency weight to get the job done. Trying to force them to do so would only push them further out of their element, making them sound worse rather than better.
With that in mind, actively crossing them over and removing the low frequency content from the mix that they are fed can do wonders in this regards. You get all of the benefits of the focus and clarity that these designs are capable of while relying on a sub-woofer ( actually, more of a "woofer" in most cases ) to deliver the bottom end weight. In doing so, the smaller speakers can not only play louder, but also cleaner due to the reduced excursion requirements. Once again though, this comes down to system building and the goals of the end user.
In case you were wondering, my bedroom system is built much like this i.e. two small stand mounted time aligned monitors that are actively crossed over to dual subs : )
As a side note, have any of you ever noticed that certain changes that you made to your system have caused you to make changes to your listening habits? That is, substituting a piece of gear made you want to listen to more "softer" music rather than what you would normally listen to? I've seen this happen quite a bit with many folks / systems.
What happens here is that the system no longer gives you what you want out of it with harder music, so you shift to listening to music that it can deal with more easily. Psychologically, we don't want to listen to music / a system that doesn't make us happy, so listening to music that doesn't highlight the problems of such a system is what we do. This is more of a subconscious decision more than anything else.
I think that many audiophiles end up listening to Patricia Barber / Diana Krall simply because their system no longer "rocks" like it should. This is not to say that either PB or DK are bad performers, as i listen to them too, but that our musical tastes change with our system capacities.
The end result is that we end up losing the joys of much of the music that we loved in the past, simply because our system sounds too "hi-fi" or "clinical" rather than "musical". There's a fine line between what we call "accuracy" and "musicality". Finding a way to straddle that line can be quite costly, time consuming and difficult to say the least, but it can also be quite rewarding when one achieves the results that they were looking for.
After all, if music that you thought sounded "good" now sounds "bad" on your system, chances are, it's not the "good" music that went "bad". It's probably your system robbing the "life" out of the recordings. This doesn't mean that there aren't such things as "bad sounding" recordings, but that you should still be able to enjoy music that you previously enjoyed, regardless of the type of system that it is played on. Sean
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