Topjetboy wrote: "I am looking for a bigger sweet spot (soundstage?), more presence to fill the room a little better without losing the clarity, the realism and the quick response (articulate?) of the maggies."
Interesting challenge!
My background includes owning five or six pairs of Maggies (depending on how you count ’em) and being a SoundLab dealer since 1999. I have been a speaker manufacturer for the past fifteen years.
In case you haven’t already, you might open the curtains as much as you can. One-half of the sound the Maggies put out -- the backwave - is destined for the reverberant field, and by aggressively absorbing the reflections you are taking some of the life out of the Maggies. I don’t expect this to make enough of a difference, but you might as well try it for the sake of gathering more data for your quest.
Much as I love SoundLabs, the smaller ones which fall within your price range are not going to "fill the space" significantly better than the Maggies, though the 90-degree-pattern versions will give you a wider sweet spot.
There is a little-known but effective technique for getting a wide sweet spot which may be applicable to your situation. First a bit of background:
The ear localizes sound sources by two mechanisms: Arrival time and intensity. When you are seated in the central sweet spot, arrival time and intensity is the same from both speakers, so you have a nice soundstage. When you listen from off to one side, the near speaker of course "wins" arrival time, but it also "wins" intensity, largely because you are now more on-axis of the near speaker and more off-axis of the far speaker. So the center vocalist actually shifts towards the near speaker even farther than you have!
If only there was some way to make the far speaker louder than the near speaker...
Well, there is. We start out with speakers that have a fairly narrow (perhaps 90 degrees) and very well-controlled radiation pattern, and toe them in severely (perhaps 45 degrees) such that their axes criss-cross in front of the central sweet spot. Here is what happens: For the off-centerline listener, the near speaker inevitably "wins" arrival time, but the far speaker "wins" intensity! These two localization mechanisms approximately balance out and you still get a good soundstage from well off to the side. Not as good as up and down the centerline of course, but still enjoyable.
At audio shows whenever possible I set up one chair along a side wall, to the outside of the nearest speaker. Sometimes when the room is full somebody will sit in that chair. When the song ends, I ask them if they could still hear a decent soundstage. They always say they can, and that the music was surprisingly enjoyable from that location.
Here is the secret: The output of the near speaker must fall off smoothly and rapidly as we move off-axis, at least in the upper midrange and treble regions where we get most of our localization cues. Most speakers can’t do this well because most speakers not only have wide radiation patterns, but those patterns are seldom smooth off-axis.
High-quality prosound drivers can give the desired radiation pattern characteristics for a wide sweet spot (assuming proper setup), with the added benefits of good clarity and good dynamic contrast. In my opinion it is even possible to preserve that sense of immersion you get when your Maggies are about five feet out into the room, but without taking up as much real estate as your Maggies require (the details of how to do this get into specifics which might be out of place here). Unfortunately most people have a negative impression of "prosound drivers" due to exposure to harsh PA systems which maximize decibels per dollar. The JBL M2 would be an example of a prosound-driver system which maximizes sound quality.
Topjetboy, I think there are solutions to your situation which may or may not involve something unorthodox. In an "orthodox" solution, the Revel Salon 2’s you mentioned are competitive. But imo there are other approaches which do a better job in some of the areas you mentioned.
Best of luck in your quest.
Duke
