Dear Rosstaman: Here is the text of a comment I posted the other day for a person seeking to spend $3,500 for speakers which, although geared toward another person's specific question, I believe addresses your query : "'ve read with interest all of the above entries and have a STRONG recommendation. Listen (I didn't say "buy") to the Dunlavy SC-3. Addressing the first potential problem, your girlfriend's sense of aesthetics, the big Dunlavys (SC4 to SC-6) are BIG to GARGANTUAN, but the SC-2 and SC-3 have a very small footprint and are merely tall and skinny -- I steered two colleagues toward the 2's and 3's, both having finicky Upper East Side wives, and they both bought the speakers, their wives finding them to be pretty. Of course, this is an individual thing. Second, price. The SC-3's in light oak retail for $4,000. You will get 10% off, and if you buy from an out-of-state dealer, there's no sales tax and they're yours for $3,700 (Dunlavy's Des Moines, Iowa, dealer ("Audio/Video Logic"?) ships Dunlavys for free). Third. Sweet spot. Dunlavys are a very special speaker that are very inexactly, but descriptively, described as a "beam" design. All of the drivers in the speaker focus on a defined listening area, creating a small sweet spot. That said, they do not sound awful off-axis like electrostatics can, just merely good. But if you are in or near the sweet spot and you have a decent recording and reasonably good electronics behind them, they are damn close to live music and I challenge you to find a better-sounding speaker at ANY PRICE (other than a bigger Dunlavy). Fourth. Cabinet finish. Very good, but not wood art (but you'll have to sacrifice sound for wood art at this price point). Five. They MUST be set up at least 11' apart with the listener at least 8' away to sound their best (some Dunlavy dealers don’t seem to get this). Which brings me to their strengths. They just sound better than anything else out there. Suppose I should stop there, but I add that they (really) are 91 db. efficient, and each speaker features five drivers (two smallish woofers, two mids, and a tweeter in each speaker), so they go loud as hell with not much juice (they would be VERY dynamic with a 200 watt Rotel). Unless you have them in a gigantic room, they have great (and very accurate) bass down to about 40 Hz and are still kicking below 30 Hz. The SC-3 has the same 6.5" drivers as the Dunlavy SC-5 (a $16,000 list speaker which also features two 12" woofers per speaker), and has the same tweeter and 5" midrange drivers featured in Dunlavy's flagship SC-6. If you're wondering about the Dunlavy SC-2, they list for $2,500 in light oak, but will be somewhat bass-shy in many average-sized rooms (and having three drivers as opposed to five, don’t go as loud). I have heard the B&W805's, 804's, and 803's, every speaker Sonus Faber makes (maybe not their center-channel), the new WattPuppy 6's, the Thiel 2.6 and 3.6, the Aeriel Acoustics 6 through top-of-the-line 10T, the big Revel Salon, the big Naim’s, JM Labs Grand Utopia (and not as big Utopias), Audio Physic Virgo’s, Hales 2's and 3's, and speakers I cannot remember. Some of these speakers feature individual areas of performance that exceed the SC-3's performance in those areas, but overall, to me, the SC-3 sounds better than any of them, period. The only thing I have heard that compares is the Meadowlark Heron and Shearwater (note that both Dunlavy and Meadowlark speakers are time-coherent designs). Give the Meadowlarks a spin too (they will definitely pass the girlfriend test). As for why a $4,000 SC-3 sounds better to some people than $20,000 WattPuppy 6's or Sonus Faber Amati Homages or $70,000 Grant Utopias, it seems to come down to Dunlavy simply having a superior overall design. Dunlavy partisans tend to be nearly obnoxious in their enthusiasm for the product [ : ) ], but it is rare to hear a criticism of the Dunlavy sound. Yes, I have owned a pair of SC-3's for over five years. I run them with a VAC Ren. 70/70 Mark 3 amp, CAT Mark 3 pre-amp, VPI Aries table with 10.5 arm and Grado, and CAL Delta/Sigma II CD. I am not the only person to prefer the sound of Dunlavy’s -- I have helped six friends buy stereos in the last two years, and every last one of them ended up buying Dunlavys. This is a really long e-mail that you may not even end up reading, so why did I do it? I love music and I assume that you do to, and it’s just amazing what a really good speaker decision can do for a music lover. So give them a listen. P.S. After speakers, your next move is to put the Rotel pre-amp in a second system and buy a demo tube pre-amp. Then you'll have a serious system (that Rotel amp you have is ridiculously good for the money). P.S.S. CSA Audio in Upper Montclair, New Jersey, and ProMusica in Chicago are good Dunlavy dealers."
