If cost and availability is no problem, what's your dream speaker(s) and "why" do you want it?
I'll start. My dream speaker is the Magico M3. After auditioning the best speakers I could find through dealers and audio shows, the speaker sound that rather consistently connected with me emotionally were the YG and Magico. The Magico M6/M9 are great for larger spaces, but the M3 is perfect for my use.
I haven't quite nailed down the speaker for my 2nd system yet which will be driven by flea watt amps. Horns for bass are larger than my space can accommodate so must determine compromises I'm willing to settle for.
I really wanted to try a pair... I heard them at CES in 2010 or 11? The live recording session and then playback through his speakers.. It was something.. It WAS really something.. He Brian C. was a pretty good player of music to begin with, and he could tune his speakers like no one I’ve EVER herd.. He was part of the "band" so to speak, at his own show.. RIP, shame..
If I had to buy, the Sonus Faber Stradivari Homage.
It has the best of all worlds. The wide baffle ignores a lot of room acoustics, and makes your room sound a lot more transparent than it has any right to. The dynamic drivers handle more output with less distortion and more neutrality than any panel speaker I know of. Also, gorgeous.
It would be something like an Ulfberht, only with a crossover like mine, Townshend F1 wiring, and a cabinet shaped like an Avalon of composites like a Wilson. Eric hasn't built it yet.
Being a man of modest tastes and means, I could gladly live the rest of my life with a pair of (white) Revel f228be, Paradigm Persona f3, or Monitor Audio Gold 300 (5g).
russ69, I've heard the Genesis Forte. I had forgot about that speaker. I was surely impressed. A home in Aspen. I saw more fancy systems in that town than any other town I've been in.
Genesis. I said there is nothing that I would currently buy, I take that back, If I was going to spend someone else's money.. Genesis would be one. Custom made too, depends. What I have will outlast my kids.
If you half way take care of a speaker, 50 to who knows how many years they will last..
I'm pretty happy with my system now, but will say the one system I've heard recently that got (and held) my attention had Magico S5 MkII speakers with the most recent Convergent amps and preamp driving them.
I'd like to audition top-of-the-line Alysvox and Kharma speakers.
You're jumping ahead a bit. After this thread runs for awhile I plan to start a new post on which speakers you'd love to "demo" (I've got a long list including monster sized speakers). This thread is what dream speaker you'd like to "own" money no object.
My dream speaker is an altec lansing a1x theatre horn along with the warehouse building i would need to listen to it in lol. That would be a life changing experience for me i am sure.
Another pair of KLH Nine electrostats to place side-by-side with my present pair - in use since 1992! To be driven with my pair of Futterman H3aa OTL 60 watt tube amps!
Alsyvox Botticelli…. Heard them at RMAF in 2019 and for me they were the best in show. They were in a massive room with no subs. It’s like a top of the line Maggie but with bass and slamming dynamics.. pretty too!!
I'm lucky, I have my dream speakers. Altec 288/515 drivers. Come up with a radical concept, built from the ground up (based on how loudspeakers, music instruments, and the human hearing works), the design took 20 years to develop. It's operating mode is unlike anything on the market, so it cannot be classified into any category (bass reflex, horn, etc...), and it's basically omnidirectional. It has been a dream for two decades, and it turned out to be even better than I expected in my wildest dreams. I wish that for everyone. Go for your dreams! And don't be afraid to create it, and go the extra mile (or extra decades!) to get there.
If price were no object and my listening space were large enough, my first choice of everything I’ve heard is the YG Acoustics Sonja 2i. I’veonly briefly auditioned them--mainly for S&Gs. But I found them to be the best imaging speakers I’ve ever heard. I also love that the speaker cabinets and drivers are precision machined from aluminum billets. The extremely low tolerances and lack of driver breakup afforded by YG’s manufacturing methods would account for the speakers’ extended high frequency response (to 40 KHz); and that would account for their outstanding imaging.
I’ll be checking with my local YG dealer to see if he’ll accept my soul in payment for a pair of those awesome speakers. Then I’ll wait for housing prices to drop so I can buy a large enough home to take full advantage of the Sonjas’ size.
Ilumnia Magister MKII : the best speaker ,I ever heard ! Sounds like in the studio : very open , 3-D, nice placement, matches the sound of the recording ,detailfull …information can be found at : Ilumnia.be
Wow, such varied tastes. I guess this is why there are so many speaker manufacturers.
I'm with jc4659. Sound Labs ESLs are it for me specifically the 8 and 9 foot ones. After a decade of drooling I finally positioned life to sneak a pair by my wife. These are my very last loudspeakers. Jasonbourne52, I understand your fondness for the 9's but you really have to try a pair of these. They have all of the great qualities and none of the vices.
Birdfan, you have to trust me on this. I know they are addicting but you really have to stay away from large ribbon loudspeakers (other than tweeters). They are extremely fragile. Aluminum ribbons are nothing but tinfoil laminated to Saran Wrap. Think about it. Voice of experience, I owned Apogee Divas.
@russ69 , they look impressive, go very loud and have a lot of power down low. But, line arrays of multiple midrange drivers have never done well. I do not know why but for some reason they just do not image well. The Near Field Pipe Dreams, another sonically impressive speaker of the same ilk could not image either. They will give you two dimensions but the third has gone AWOL. It is either some kind of interference between the drivers or the complexity of the cross over. If you like the presentation of a line source (my very favorite type of loudspeaker) You want to go for a Magneplanar 20.7 or Sound Labs 8 or 9 footer with subwoofers. These speakers have the benefit of being much less expensive. Go Figure! A note about the third dimension. This is not the ability to sense the size of the venue the recording was made in as many people think. They refer to it as a "deep" sound stage. Many systems will relay this sense but few will give you the third dimension. Instead of instruments and voices on a wall, the sonic version of a theater screen, it is instruments floating in space with "air" around them. Listen to a live guitar in the room with you. You know that guitar is right there. You can hear around it. The very best imagers can fool you into believing an instrument/voice is in the room with you and not on just special recordings, on many recordings. You can hear around the instruments. Microphones like your ears can capture that information. Unfortunately, relaying that information is difficult. It seems that it is the most fragile part of recordings. In my lifetime I have heard exactly three systems image like this based on a 4 way dynamic speaker, a ribbon speaker and an ESL.
Raidho D 3.1. To my ears, Raidho's do it all. Of course Borresen is the genius behind it. Haven't had a chance to hear his new line, so maybe the Borresen 03. At $66K, unfortunately can't go there!
The WAMM is amazing… but actually not my idea of a speaker I would want to listen to every day . that holographic imaging is amazing, but not my cup of tea.I would think it would be somewhat like owning for your every day car a McLaren, for grocery shopping and trips to Costco.
Funny you should ask, my dream speaker appeared to me in a dream last night! It was the most beautiful looking and sounding thing imaginable! Jennifer Warnes was there, she was singing a cappella no mic even and then when they played the speaker no one could hear the difference! Everyone was there, all the big reviewers, all the big Audiogon haters and trolls, they were all ga-ga over these speakers. They looked so familiar, I got up to go for a closer look.
That's like asking your wife what her dream purse would be. She'd tell you and then let you know about the shoes and dress she'd need to complete her outfit. If someone gave me my "Dream Speakers" free of charge, that would cause me more problems than providing sonic benefits. I would have to go out and buy dream electronics to drive them along with dream cabling and a dream turntable, arm, and cartridge. And then there’s the dream house to put them in. The dream speakers would turn out to be nightmare speakers. I like the speakers I already own. They work very well in my system and room. Speakers are not a sound system, they are a small part of one.
1. DeVore O Reference (simply extrapolating from what I’ve heard from the O/96)
2. MBL 101E
3. Joseph Audio Pearl graphene
4. Perhaps some flavour of horn speaker. I find myself ever more persuing a sense of density and aliveness, which horns are known for. But I have little experience with Horns aside from hearing something occasionally at an Audio show. (Though I’ve been enjoying listening to the Klipsch La Scalas at a friends place)
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