New speakers for my system

I’m a great believer in less is more, because you can focus more on quality. If you like Dipole speakers and that wall of sound, and have plenty of power bi-amping, you could get into a pair of Maggie 20.7’s for under $10k used. They’re better value than used ML CLX’s and i’d argue sound better dollar for dollar than used Apogees.

Thank you for your suggestion. I am a bit apprehensive about using ribbon drivers for several reason:
Firstly, my listening room is asymmetrical with one side with a partial corner thus being likely problematic;
Secondly, the size of the Magnepans will be difficult to deal with;
Thirdly, I’ve used ribbons in the past and found them to be somewhat difficult loads to deal with. They tend to be rather inefficient and must therefore handle very high currents since their actual impedance is very low on the ribbon side of the transformer.
I think I’d like to stick with more traditional drivers.
What are your thought regarding Vandersteen 3a signatures?

Fair enough. The larger Maggies do need a good size room, and even front wall for the dipole radiation. When you mentioned you bi-amp, I thought you (may) have enough power to drive them properly, hence the mention.

I haven’t heard Vandersteen speakers, so I couldn’t comment on their sound. Though the consensus is they are good value speakers at their price point.

Fyi PS Audio are working on some new hybrid speakers, including a 2nd top range model <$10k which will have active sub & mid-bass drivers and an array of planar magnetic drivers. Paul M has been talking them up, so they should be good. With the active bass drivers, they should be relatively easy to drive also. Here is video Paul posted fyi - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xa8nqlLs3wQ

Another interesting possibility!

I would wait for the gen 2, I am not sold on first run products.

It sounds like you want to combine a digital x-over to a subwoofer with a minimalist signal path. You might consider any loudspeaker using this full range driver

http://www.ejjordan.co.uk/products/testimonials/

@joey_v I generally agree with you, though Arnie and Paul already did a lot of work on PS Audio’s new speakers before he passed, even producing a one-off reference shown in that video. And Paul has said he will only release a new speaker when it is ready & meets all the goals Arnie and he talked about. Also, are you aware of PS Audio’s “Trade Up program”? - https://www.psaudio.com/buying-options/trade-ups/

That said, I’ve got no bone in this. There are a lot of good speakers under $10k, incl: Magico A3’s. However I mentioned the PS speakers as they may better meet the OP’s requirements.

Dave

I can see the positives of having Arnie produce the one-off.

That said, I take everything McGowan says with a grain of salt.  I have had subpar experiences with a few of PS Audios products.  To me, more hype than not.

But that is just me.

@joey_v I respect you as an audiophile, so I take your point. On a personal level I think McGowan is a tool. I (used) to be FB friends with him until he took serious offence to a humorous photo I posted of a guy chomping a giant Denny’s burger. Seems Mr McGowan is a rather sensitive Vegetarian. I actually later sent him a new friend request & apologized for causing him any offence, but he was apparently inconsolable and deleted my request.

That said, with Arnie having produced a full working reference speaker; the “IRS killer”, co-developed plans for replacement planar magnetic midrange drivers for the now out of production Böhlender-Graebener panels, and with all their history at Genesis Advanced Technologies, McGowan would have to be a complete jackass to screw up Arnie’s legacy.

The Jordans look like an excellent solution. They may solve my rooms asymmetricality issue and will likely mate well with my T-lines. 
Thanks for the suggestion!

with all due respect Infinity did enough to screw up that legacy.....the V are a reference speker, certainly there are others....but I get his daily email, and I await the fruits of all the work.....and talk....

OP I owned a set of Vandersteen 3a signatures for a few years....midrange from the 5,ditto on the tweeter, time and phase correct. Do reward detailed setup
not sure how they would integrate w your digital filter and subs...they play pretty low by themselves....see the acoustic coupler..

@tomic601 Infinity Systems certainly changed direction in terms of their speaker designs following Arnie Nudell’s departure in 1989, no longer producing boxless dipole speakers. The rights to the EMI drivers were also split between Harmon and Arnie, with Arnie keeping the Emit-R tweeter which formed the basis of Genesis Advanced Technologies’ tweeter. From there, Harmon tightened the screws leading to the departure of Company President Cary Christie in 1995, who continued on only as a consulting designer for another 3 years. A factory fire then destroyed much of the tooling for the remaining EMI drivers, hastening the end of the era of classic Infiniity speakers. Harmon were only really interested in milking Infinity to develop it’s own line of speakers. There used to be a photo on the internet of Harmon/Revel voicing a pair of Revel Ultima Gem’s with Infinity IRS-Omega speakers, but that photo mysteriously disappeared after I mentioned it in an Infinity thread a few years ago. So it was really Harmon who screwed up Arnie’s legacy, hastened by bad luck.

@melbguyone so true, your facts ring very true but I was deeply involved working at dealer which carried most everything but IRS from 1980 -1986, poly Cell was junk...my point is the high end stuff could provide a reference but had many issues... getting cohesive sound out of four big towers always a challenge, chasing your tail with micro movements only to hear something entirely new but now missing something else...
i do have a ton of respect for Arnie
hopefully his great legacy will live and indeed flourish 

@areed622

Couple yrs ago I’ve briefly heard a pair of higher end model Vandersteen speakers (couldn’t remember which model), the ones that cost around $30k/pair, paired with all Audio Research gears and they sounded fabulous together. Very smooth very musical with very good stereo imaging. Not sure how the Vandersteen that you’re interested in will sound and perform driven by your Classe amps in bi-amp configuration. Btw, which Classe stereo amps do you have? And what are the rest of your setup gears?

What’s your budget for the speakers? Are you willing to look for a used pair?
If you have newer Classe amps such as the Classe Delta CA-2300 stereo amp or even the Classe Sigma Amp2 amp, you should consider the newer B&W 800 series D3 speakers eg the 803 D3 or the 802 D3 or even the 804 D3 speakers. These newer B&W 800 series D3 speakers will sound really good driven by the latest generation of Classe Delta series amps such as the CA-2300, CAM-300, CAM-600 amps. The newer B&W 800 series D3 speakers voiced and tuned using these Classe amps. They were designed around these Classe amplifications and are meant to be paired together. They have great sonic synergy together.
But I don’t know which Classe stereo amps you have.

However, Vandersteen makes excellent sounding speakers when paired with the right amplifications and electronics.
Again, it depends on personal tastes and musical tastes when it comes to speaker choices. I also believe in system synergy as a whole.

Focal, Harbeth, Spendor, Sonus Faber, Magico, Wilson Audio Vienna Acoustics, Devore Fidelity, etc make awesome speakers.

In regards to the Maggies, they are difficult to drive and are power hungry and require large spacious room to sound their best. But I would think the big Classe amps such as the CA-2300 stereo amp, the CAM-300 monoblocks, the CAM-600 monoblocks will have no problem driving the big Maggies at all. They will drive them with ease. But again I don’t know which Classe amps you have and plus your room size and shape makes it impossible for the big Maggies.

IMO the Vandersteen 3a is very great speaker with a self-effacing personality that makes it easy to live with.

Vandersteen's dedicated subs use a 1st order crossover, which you can simulate digitally if that's what works the best in your setup.  Sounds like your TLs dig deeper than theirs do.

"I haven’t heard Vandersteen speakers, so I couldn’t comment on their sound. Though the consensus is they are good value speakers at their price point."

If you want Vandersteens just toss towels over decent speakers. Vandersteens are for folks who want to mellow out everything so it sounds smooth, often they confuse detail with brightness.

That’s the problem with speakers though, everyone has different goals and taste. I LOVE detail, BUT that always has my system on the razor’s edge, if a recording was recorded brightly, your ears will be bleeding on my stereo, on Vandersteens you may finally hear a little detail. I once bypassed THREE capacitors IN SERIES on a pair of Vandersteens with V-Caps, the tweeter was unlistenable. They used 3 capacitors in series to dumb down the signal. If the driver sounds like crap out of the box, why would anyone use it? Ask Vandersteen, I sure don’t get it!


I have gone full range. Ditch the crossovers and then the B.S. about "XYZ was in the room" becomes true with the right electronics. Call Don Sachs, he’ll set you strait, but he has a long lead time for building amps and preamps, but they are worth the wait. He uses Roy Mottram designed electronics. Roy sells the same gear, but Don limits out Roy’s designs. If 90% will suffice, you can save time and money buying from Roy. If you want to tweak, go with Roy, either way you’ll have amazing gear for reasonable prices, but Don will be able talk speakers with you. He’ll refer you to David, and you’ll swear that David is full of it, but he has a 30 day return policy, so if he is, take advantage of it.


I have had, and tweaked a lot of speakers many would consider to be great, but they never came close to Quad 57’s in realism, my full range drivers smoke Quads. NOTHING else that I have ever heard made me think that Quads were not the best mids I have heard! You can get into some inexpensively with Mark Audio Alpair 10.3’s. Madisound has them on sale for $88 a driver, all you need to do is find a cabinet maker. I’d go MFD, if you don’t like them you not out much, if you love them, they can veneer them in about any flavor of wood you prefer. Don would recommend Audio Nirvana Classic 15 ALNICOs ($1199/pr). That’s what I went with. Don does live music all the time and has a great ear.


Don’t forget, that advice is worth every penny you paid for it!

I’ve been real busy with work so this is the first time I’ve had to catch up on this thread. Thank you all for your suggestions. Update:
Just repositioned my mid-highs to more closely align with both the vertical and time axis of the TLs. WAY BIG improvement very largely affected my raising the altitude of the HF drivers so they’re slightly above ear level.
I need to remeasure the system. This time instead of relying on FFT and impulse exclusively I will look at both pulse and triangle waveforms as well which should help reveal transient response issues when differentially viewed on a scope.
Re-examining the current filtration reveals a suspicious boost applied around the digital x-over point, most likely a phase issue since Fourier addition should require a cut there and not a boost.
Next I plan to re-EQ the system so all filtration happens below 400Hz and there is no time delay applied. If that further improves things I’ll design a 2 or 3 way that will be time aligned with the TLs and will work from 150 or 200 Hz on up.
Currently looking at SEAS MCA15RCY (to be rolled off below 150 or 200Hz and up to 2k or so) to couple with Dynaudio D28 up to 4.5k then use either my 3/4 Ti or Vifa tweeters on up. The Markaudios would likely get smoked pretty quickly due to low power handling (30w) coupled with fairly low efficiency (~88dB spl @ 1w.)
I plan to try to keep the passive filtration to 1st order BW and non-inductive resistors as needed to eliminate x-over induced phase error.
All digital filtration will be on the low-end exclusively so as to completely eliminate any digital delay blurring of the image.
Another more expensive option would be use the TLs from 25 to 200 Hz, the SEAS from 200 to 4k (angled at 20°,) and Eton 26HD3s on up.

If you like the D’Appolito type of speaker, check out  Usher speakers. IMO they blow away the 20.7’s or even the 30.7’s that I just heard. Check out the x-towers, BE-10, or BE-20’s. If you have a medium size room, look at the Mini Dancer II’s. I use the latest Classe monoblock amps with the Usher Mini Dancer II’s and with the newer Usher x-towers, fantastic sq 

Keep it small?  

A pair of Audience 1+1's and a REL sub (or a pair) ....  Can't get more phase coherent and detailed....  I listen to 1+1's on my desktop (sans REL)  and know they reveal music in an excellent way. REL has the speed to match the Audience speakers in a happy way.