Mirage,Ohm,Vandy,Maggies:Spacious Sound/Bass

I tired of a small sweet spot very quickly from Acoustat's 2+2's. I now have had Ohm speakers for 26 years, have bought three pair in this time period. Never realy looked for anything else because i am satisfied with them. There was one time i took a small trip to listen to Von Schweikert VR-4 GEN lll because of all the reviews and talk about them, but they did not win me over. Ohm speakers are seldom mentioned on this forum and i don't know why, but if you go to consumer reviews .com and read what consumers have to say about there Ohm speakers, you will get a sense of why i like these speakers as much as i do.

I second Duke's Shahinian recomendation. Listening to them is very much like listening to live music. If your on the left side of the room, it sounds like your on the left side of the stage. Moving forward and back sounds like approaching or retreating from the stage. There is no focused sweetspot outside of which the listening enjoyment diminishes. You're just hearing the musicians from different locations in the room. And if you like bass, you'll love the Shahinians.

LOL... Looks like we are in search of the same criteria. You being a GMA man I'm surprised you aren't considering the C-3. I imagine your concern is the same as mine... narrow sweet spot. You may want to also throw in Anthony Gallow's Ref. III's. It's suppose to have a huge sweet spot, with good dynamics, transparent imaging and very musical.

I'm not sure what your budget is, but here is an excerpt from Wilson Audio's Alexandria X-2, which sounds like it would meet your criteria:

"Alexandria is the fruition of a blank-slate approach to creating a new flagship loudspeaker for the real world. It introduces radically new technologies, such as Aspherical Group Delay™, and capitalizes on the synergistic application of technologies perfected in the decade since the X-1 platform was introduced. The design goal was to extend the musical beauty achieved by MAXX®, WATT/Puppy® System , and Sophia™ into a system of unprecedented dynamic impact and resolution.

Alexandria's revolutionary Aspherical Group Delay employs upper frequency driver modules that adjust linearly to optimize time alignment. Additionally, each module also rotates on its polar axis in order to achieve optimal driver dispersion for nearly any size room and for multiple listening positions. Alexandria is the only speaker on the planet capable of this refinement."

Extremely spacious/wide sweet spot designs include models from Shahinian, Duevel, Wolcott, Sound Lab, Beveridge, MBL, Mirage, Ohm, and probably a few others. (Disclaimer - I sell Sound Lab wide-pattern electrostats.) The Maggies do give a very spacious presentation, but the sweet spot isn't all that wide. The others I mentioned soundstage best up and down the centerline, but still give you a pretty decent soundstage along with uniform tonal balance from well off-center.

My personal priorities run along the same lines as yours - I'd rather have a rich, lush, spacious presentation than have pinpoint holographic imaging. The thing is, you can still get great depth of soundstage with a very wide-pattern loudspeaker. Such a speaker is more likely to generate a tonally correct reverberant field, which is an important contributor to natural timbre that few loudspeakers get right.