a 3 way design speaker with the ESS Heil type sound


I have tried Klipsch RF-7 lll, ADS 780,880, 1290 ll, 1590 ll, ESS 3 ways with HEIL, and Daedalus Speakers. I still own all of these. Is there a speaker with the bass slam and dynamics of Klipsch RF-7 lll, and the midrange and tweeter sound of ESS HEIL, that is as beautiful, efficient, and easy to drive as Daedalus Speakers??

I have VPI prime. AT 760 SLC mm, and Sumiko Blackbird HOMC. Phono preamp is Ayre P-5xe. I run balanced out. I also have a Graham Slee Accession.

I use my Line Magnetic LM-515 CD player with balanced outputs. I like the sound. Great bass and extension. No fatigue with tube buffer output.
I have a Marantz SACD 30n for streaming, and SACD use. The Marantz is definitely a weak link.
I have Simaudio 740P balance into Simaudio 760A.
kinda dry sounding. Thinking this magic unicorn speaker (if existed) would solve my problem.
or do I need a good tube preamp??

looking for advice

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Showing 3 responses by larryi

I like the PureAudioProject Trio with the Heil tweeter a lot, as well as the Duo speaker which has only one woofer.  Both speakers are, however, two-way speakers.  I don't know why three-way was specified.  The Heil driver is capable of covering a quite large range of frequencies and is most often employed in two-way designs.  The Heil driver and the woofers are used in open baffle configuration so that all drivers act as dipole drivers--the rear going sound is in opposite phase to the sound projected forward.

Cinnamon Audio offers a three way with the Heil tweeter, also in open baffle configuration.  Their speakers are very good sounding but are considerably more expensive than the PureAudioProject speakers.

The Ellipticum Cinnamon Audio speaker I heard at  the 2024 Capital AudioFest sounded really nice.  It has a DSP-controlled active woofer, the rest of the speaker is powered by an amplifier supplied by the buyer.  I thought it delivered one of the best sound I heard at the show.  

While I have voiced enthusiasm for open baffle speakers, this does come with the warning that dipole speakers often do not go very deep in bass response because the opposite phase front and back waves tend to cancel each other at progressively increasing amount as frequency goes down.  This is true of dipole panel speakers as well.  I am not a bass freak so this is not as big a deal to me as it might be to others.
The original Heil AMT speaker had a dipole AMT driver but the bass was delivered by a more conventional woofer that was not used in dipole configuration.  That speaker had serious problems with the two drivers not integrsting well.  That problem persisted with the new iteration that is out now.  But, other builders have been successful matching heil drivers with conventional drivers so it can be done.