What drivers doTalon Khorus use

There's quite a bit of info available at Talon's website (www.talonaudio.com). You can direct specific questions to them at: info@talonaudio.com. The following is taken from their website: "The Khorus represents our current reference in our technology. The Khorus utilizes a 10" driver configured with our patented group phase technology. Group phase allows the 10" driver start and stop effortlessly by exhausting the back wave pressure from the rear of the driver. Our compound tweeter uses a 1-1/2" cloth dome tweeter from 2200 Hz - 13kHz. The tweeter naturally rolls off at 13 kHz. We then roll in our 1" titanium super tweeter which goes up to 35 kHz. The compound tweeter simply works less giving effortless high frequency extension. We refer to the Khorus as a 2.5 way because there is no low-pass on the dome mid/tweeter." I read through their entire site one day, and I'm pretty sure they do not use the Esotar tweeter (maybe you were thinking of the Merlin VSM-SE which does). Their drivers are made of paper, but that's all I can remember right now. Good luck.

Our cloth dome tweeter is sourced from Scanspeak and our 1" titanium tweeter is sourced from Audax. We do not use the Esotar from Dynaudio due to it high moving mass and its waterfall measurements. We are familiar with the Esotar and keep them in stock for R&D. The compound tweeter arangement we use gives us the best results with our Khorus design for keeping up with our 10" driver. In looking for a company to design our 10" woofer we sought for power transfer characteristics in order to convey the emotion of dynamic gradations. We thus proudly chose Eminence for this reason along with the ability to have a driver that is 7dB more linear than any other driver of its type. To meet our request, Eminence outsourced our voice coil, our dust cap, the cone treatment, and the spider mounting assembly. This driver has the characteristics of a midrange driver with a woofer suspension. Unless it is used with our Group Phase loading, its low frequency response would not reach below 50Hz. Most woofers are designed to have lossy suspensions with large voice coils and small motor structure trying to lower the resonant frequency. This is why we had to have our own design built by a company that has sturdy surrounds, large motor structures, etc. This enables us to have a driver that will effortlessly handle the demands of a driver with extension from 19-2200Hz allowing 1-1/2" peak-to-peak excursions, with a rise and settling time of 46 microseconds. We are very pleased with the results and have found Eminence to be very professional in their lab testing and assembly of our drivers. We have less than a 1% rejection rate and have never blown one of these woofers. I am still amazed! Thank you for your inquiry. Michael Farnsworth

The esotar's waterfall! Check with Merlin on these--the Khorus' motive here is pure profit...the esotar limits the number they make every year (ask them) They cost a fortune and cannot be used except in the most expensive speakers--or those who limit their profits. How Merlin can afford them? Dunno...perhaps, as noted in all the reviews, the designer's background includes materials engineering and he has been able to make stiff (ever knock your knuckes on a Merlin? You'll break your hand) enclosures without expensive woods. (Though I love the look of their painted ones--they cost a lot more) I had three speakers with esotars, and loved them, and have always stayed away from titanium tweeters since my Totems, a very good speaker with a reputation for sweet sounding titaniums...BUT still metallic sound compared to
ANY silk, cloth tweeters. BTW, my top two speakers I've owned include the Guarneris and Merlins. Each blows away my dealers Khorus'--in fact, the dealer explicitly told me that when I said I liked the Khorus' but not as much as Merlins by a good margin "Of course, they don't sound as good as the Merlins." The dealer is a friend and often tells me things he wouldn't tell all customers, but cannot get the franchise for Merlin because there is another dealer selling them 25 miles away. George Cardas...ask him about esotar tweeters. He uses them in his studio! In his Merlins, of course.

Since you mentioned George Cardas, it's true that George uses Merlins and our RM7si's in his recording setup.
However, he also owns a pair of Magneplanar MG20's for his main system(modified with an Infinite Slope x-over) and a pair of
Hales revelation 3's. (And god knows what else !) Plus Colleen has original Avalon's (designed by Charlie Hansen).

Room here for a thread on the speakers that the industry heavyweights prefer.