More on the Sonatas: the speakers are extremely coherent from top to bottom, in my room the bass doesn't really roll-off much until below 30 Hz, and still remains very very tight and accurate. The midrange is simply astounding, the softcone midrange driver (which is set with a higher cross-over slope than the other components) makes voices and instruments such as pianos well delineated and clear. The speaker is very dynamic but can be easily driven by low power tube amps --though I would recommend 25-40 wpc real power minumum. However it also works well with good solid state amps. It is a matter of opinion, the tubes will make it sound sweeter primarily due to the looser midbass, and it will be drier and ore accurate with a top solid state amp. With the later the speakers become less tolerant of low quality recordings or front end: they will sound heavenly with the best recordings but will reveal the dryness or harshness particularly in poor CD material. For instance on MA Recordings "Sera una noche" which is a compilation of revisited Argentine Tangos with non-traditional instruments, you can hear well into the recording and the acoustic signature of the monastery it was recorded in, and all instruments are tonally accurate and very well delineated. In Rebecca Pidgeon's unbelievable "The Raven" CD both the voice and the piano are very lifelike. You can almost hear the recording as it was being made. The speakers are also good at reproducing the lower noise floor of the new formats such as 24/96 --I've tried them with many Chesky 24/96 recordings (Livingston Taylor, Sarah K) and Classic remasters and they sound simply gorgeous. One thing which is very critical with these speakers (as with almost any good speaker) are room acoustics. To get the most out of them you definitely need a room that will allow good bass reproduction, and add treatment to minimize mid and hi frequency reflections which will otherwise color the sound. The speaker's distortion is so low that any of these artifacts, whether in the source material, the upstream components, or the room, will be sorely evident. If you are a perfectionist on a budget then these speakers are for you. If you want to cover other defects with your speakers then they are not !
