Speakers with Depth Layering abilities

I tend to lean towards most planars--as did HP--for depth. These always seem to have more in terms of imaging and soundstage to me than their dynamic counterparts. I also find that tubes tend to have more depth and layering (until you get into the very expensive solid state--then I'm not so sure tubes have an edge).

What's interesting about my response is that both the planars and the tubes by definition have greater distortion. The tubes have harmonic distortion caused by the tubes themselves. The planars have phase distortion caused by their interation with the room (large amounts of energy on the back wave). I believe it is these distortions that give the perception of depth. As a side note: the Genesis 201 are dipolar as well--so they too have this distortion--and I'll bet they sound great with tubes!

Others may disagree with what I've found--it's odd in a way that inherently greater distortion yields better layering and depth of sound field. I do think the distortion being correlated distortion (not random noise) and thus is the reason for this added depth, but beyond that I don't have a very good explaination.

Just as a side note: all of my systems are dipolar (either ribon or electrostatic), one system is tube based.

My newform research play depth layering quite well on both vinyl and cd. That may be the ribbons as the system is solid state. Years ago I heard a pair of the original Snell J [2-way monitors] that were designed to play with tubes. The source was the rotel855, the intergrated tube amp was the sonic frontiers [50watts], the cd was Nanci Griffith,"One Fair Summer Evening", and the soundstage seemed to come from the sidewak in throught the basement wall into where we listened. What incredible depth.....that was special, and showed me what depth could be.....was it the tubes and the distortion? Well, it was big......and we loved it.

Jmlab Electra 926 driven with a quality amplifier has a nice layering.

Reynaud Trentes

I owned Maggie 1.6s for a few years and the Trentes are clearly better at revealing subtle audio cues in very fine gradations front to back, they go deeper with finer precision.

Spica's do nice depth, at a low cost, good driver two ways do depth, 3 ways are harder to do, due to baffle width.

Amp/speaker combo is the big difference, layers and such come out with system tuning and tweaks. Your into the short and curly's now.

jeff