Sound Lab vs Magnepan 20.7

05-18-15: Lrsky
After much contemplation, I'm leaning toward the SL.
They were great in '04, and I'm sure they've made lots of improvements.
Larry

I love my "little" Maggie 1.7s, but if I had $40K and space for 9-foot-tall speakers, the SL Majestic 945PX would be on my short list.

It's true that the entire Maggie line is a bit of a bargain compared to box speakers in the same price range, but I suspect you could say the same thing about $40K SLs vs. similarly priced box speakers.

Stringreen,
Why?

Analysis Audio,Sound very good,surprised more are not on this site.

Stringreen, The newer SL ESLs are not only more reliable, they are also a lot easier to drive and sound better at the same time. They appear to have wider bandwidth and higher efficiency than the Maggies do, whereas a few years ago I would have said the 20.7s were more efficient.

Put another way, most of our MA-2 amplifiers produced used to go to Sound Lab owners. Nowadays you can do with a set of MA-1s what used to take a set of MA-2s... That is a nice improvement!

I do think though that the 20.7 is one of the better deals in loudspeakers...

Based on what I heard this past weekend at T.H.E. Show in Irvine, CA, there I another speaker you might want to consider. I don't know the model name or number, but it's the $20,000 Sanders ESL. You get two panels with a sub in each (175Hz x/o freq), a crossover, and power amps for the panels and woofers. They sounded really, really good---highly transparent, seemingly completely uncolored, great coherence and timing, and providing life-size images. The dealer used recordings featuring a stand-up bass, pipe organ, vocals, drumset, and varied stringed instruments. The timbre of every single one was spot on, and the dynamics were startling. The really quick "snap" of the bassists fingers pulling off a string, the string buzzing as it slammed back against the neck , the tone and resonance of the body of the bass changing as the note died away. I want to hear them again with my own source material, so I have to look up the dealer and pay him a visit.