@hilde45 Thank-you. You got it, and no disrespect to the many wonderful designers of old and today. They are dedicated, hard-working people trying their best (for the most part) to produce superb products that are both accurate and able to be sold to customers who own infinite configurations of hardware in infinite rooms, so a tough job, obviously. An anechoic chamber is a nice place to check your product, but no one has one in their home.
My preference for Magnepan products comes from owning a shop and having the unique opportunity to listen to pretty much every popular speaker for extended periods of time (years) with pretty much every high-end product available to drive them. Given this opportunity, I was AMAZED at how bad my judgement was at the time. Even though I played in bands, I was not aware of the sound of the band to the audience (this was before cordless instrument electronics so I could not wander out 30 feet from the band and listen to the noise!).
Once we brought instruments--electric, brass, percussion, etc.--into the shop and played them live while/before/after listening to the recordings, we learned a lot about not only recording engineering but also spatial dynamics, microphones, mixing, etc.
The bottom line is that, while there were some real jokes--Bose 901, for example--and real popular if pretty bad ones--large Advent’s--the ONLY box we found even close to accurate was designed and built by Bob Fulton. Nothing against Mr. Kloss--a true pioneer and super guy--but other than the Fulton box, every other box and electrostatic speaker sounded artificial when compared to the Magnepans.
Lesson learned. Today, many new engineers and inventors are making very good box speakers, and they sell quite well to discerning customers. That is great, IMO. However, I have yet to find anything that is as transparent as Magnepans, which, when set up correctly, reproduce what you send them, thus revealing the quality of the electronics, recording, etc.
Finally, and yes, a bit snarky, I find it interesting that almost all the "better" speakers today are about 6’ high. Wonder where they got THAT idea, eh?
Cheers!
