Gammaman, everybody blows drivers. The article I read said the Dead gave up on the wall of sound because it was a PITA to set up and move and "it was too expensive to keep replacing broken McIntosh amplifiers."
With glass panels and meters Macs are not built for commercial use regardless of their performance in residential systems.
Now, how do large ESLs reproduce a cymbal? Simple. Everyone knows that a driver that is larger than the wavelength of the sound it is reproducing will begin beaming and it will start beaming in it's largest dimension. Thus a 1/4" ribbon 5 feet tall will disperse beautifully to the side but above and below you get nothing. An ESL that is 8 feet tall and 36 inches wide will beam down to about 450 Hz laterally An down to 150 Hz vertically. So as far as frequencies above 450Hz are concerned you are only listening to that very small part of the diaphragm directly in front and at the level of your ear. The lower the frequency the more of the diaphragm you are listening to. So, a large ESL will reproduce pinpoint high frequency sounds and a huge kettle drum. Now since the entire 3 X 8 foot diaphragm weights less than the voice coil of your loudspeaker's tweeter, has almost the same acoustic impedance as air, is controlled by the electrical signal down to the level of the molecule and has distortion levels more than a magnitude lower than any dynamic drive, not to mention that it is a full range driver and there is no crossover in the midrange or treble means that what you hear is far closer to reality than any dynamic speaker. Not to mention that if Mac amps are so hot why are you so chasing down a pair of JC 1+'s?
