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Speakers that disappear

I have been listening once again to mbl 101-Es last weekend and have been very impressed by the great illusion they create just by "disappearing", i.e. I could not localize the speakers with closed eyes.

Listening to these speakers got me interested again in speakers that create a large 3-dimensional image, "disappear" and do not sound "boxy" in the low frequencies (with boxy I mean that the base somehow sounds constrained by the loudspeaker enclosure, especially the massive drivers in the B&Ws and Kefs gave me that feeling, the very low frequencies had a slightly "wooden" sound to it - I listend to Richard Wagners Valkyrie amongst others and drum strikes suffered in particular).

[I am obviously aware that there are many other characteristics that are required to make a great speaker, i.e. transparency, etc. but i would like to focus on the above in this thread.]

The only two speaker brands I have listened to that did the trick in this respect for me are:
- mbl (the 101-Es, dont know if this applies for their smaller speakers)
- Wilson Benesch (ACT and Chimera, not as strong as mbl but still pretty good - unfortunately a bit too week below 40hz, even the Chimera)

In comparison listening to Sonus Fabers, Kef References, B&W 800Ds, Ayon all of them sounded "boxed in" in the low frequencies and the sweet spot was much smaller and perfect toe-in was far too important for getting a decent image and illusion. (I know these speakers do some other things very well so no need to mention)

Now there are a lot of other great speakers that I could not listen to yet. Therefore I would love to hear some opinions about the ability of some other speakers to create an illusion by disappearing and not sounding "boxed in".

One type of speakers that do a good job in the above seem to be planar speakers but I have listend to both Martin Logans (dont remember which one as they all look so similar) and Magnepans (1.6 if I remember correctly) but somehow they did not do the trick for me and while they disappeared the soundstage sounded a bit flat and lifeless to me. (Both were driven by McIntosh Pre and Monos).

Particular speakers I would be interested in are:
- Magico
- Wisdom Audio Sage Series
- Rockport

At this point I prefer soft dome and paper/carbon type drivers and have not been a fan of ceramic drivers, beryllium, diamond or aluminium tweeter (in those implementations that I heard). Nevertheless there may be great implementations that do the above very well, so I would also be interested in opinions about:
- Kharma
- Focal Utopia Series
- Revel Ultima

Also are there any mid-price speakers that do this well?
kaifupaddy

Showing 4 responses by kaifupaddy

kaifupaddy OP
10 posts
 
Thanks for the initial comments and the interesting speaker mentioned. Some of the speaker brands I have not even heard before. So I have some reading to do.

Some of the brands are a bit too small and given that I am based in Europe I will probably never even be able to hear a Linkwitz Orion, Morrison Audio or OHM speaker. Also I am not sure if those speakers looks would be able to make it into my living room...
I will check out the Verity Audio and German Physiks though.

The amplifier comment is interesting. Indeed the mbls i listened to were driven by Pass X600.5 monoblocks and the Wilson Benesch by Gryphon Mono blocks.
I read before that Magnepans need a lot of power but when I listened to them they were driven by McIntosh 500w Mono blocks, which should be enough i would hope.

With regards to the size I found that I only got big orchestra sound from a big speaker. With monitors io had great experiences with acoustic music etc but found big orchestral classical music less convincing.
kaifupaddy OP
10 posts
 
Hi mapman,

Checked out the german website of Ohm, thank you for the link I will try and demo the 5000 model.

Have you compared the ohm to mbl or Wilson Beneschs?

Also checked out Audio Pysiks but those guys are jsut sinfully expensive (the bigger models that is)

They are so much cheaper that I am really curious about their sound. I find their design a bit ugly but let's see once i see them in person
kaifupaddy OP
10 posts
 
I meant Germany Physisks not Audio..
kaifupaddy OP
10 posts
 
Wow, lots of different speaker suggestions here!

All electrostatic and ribbon speakers have so far disappointed me. Even with high powered electronics and lots of room fiddling they always sounded a bit flat to me and had small sweet spots.

Hansen I have read about but they are difficult to audition. Wilson I really need to demo sometimes as they seem to cause a large amount of split views from different people just reading on these forums!

Quite a few brands above are very US specific and pretty much not available here in Europe so those drop out quickly for me.

ATC and PMC I find interesting as I seem to prefer their types of driver and soft domes to all those berylliums, ribbons, etc.

Thanks for all those inputs
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