Ron, I'm fascinated by this thread and your other one, "introduction and Listening Biases". I've read through both, and perhaps I missed the information that would answer this, but I am curious about something regarding your tastes in music and the speakers which you are considering. Given your tastes for more contemporary music and what I consider less complex music focused around vocals and a few instruments, are you basing your speaker selections on those that are best suited for reproducing this kind of music?
These super speaker systems would seem to excel at reproducing the most complex type of music which I've always considered to be full orchestra at realistic volumes and scale. That involves extreme resolution, accurate timbre, ultra clean, fast dynamics, great frequency extension and very large scale with dimensional depth, and believable soundstaging.
Your tastes would imply to me that you are interested in mid range magic, a more intimate presentation with palpable presence. The singer in your room kind of experience. Your analog front end, tube electronics and cables seem to support that, yet the speakers under discussion here seem to be the type that excel at reproducing everything extremely well, hence the "super speaker" description. I wonder if you need full bass towers, for instance. Do you need the scale and extension of some of these choices? Perhaps large panels for a transparent, seamless presentation would suffice. One that excels at mid frequencies and Tone, Dynamics and Presence, but not the last word in soundstaging, extension and scale.
Could you clarify what it is that you are looking for in this SOTA pair of speakers? Do you want them to do everything well, or do you want them to have particular strengths which suite your specific tastes in music? It's early, and perhaps this is an inelegantly phrased series of questions, but at this level of speaker, do you want them to do everything well or do can they perform better in some areas than in others?
That is a very appropriate question! How can I search for my speaker if I do not know what musical "equation" I'm trying to solve?
As you correctly write, my main musical interest is female vocals with minimal acoustic instrument accompaniment. I like a little bit of jazz and I like a little bit of classical. I enjoy a lot of perfectly ordinary rock and pop songs.
Since I love vocals you are right that I am most interested in midrange magic. You put it very well: "an intimate presentation was palpable presence. The singer in your room kind of experience."
In my current quest it would be nice to find a speaker which excels at reproducing
everything extremely well. My ideal speaker would do a fantastic job of reproducing the singer in the room, but also excel at jazz and orchestral symphonic music, too. At the prices and sizes of SOTA speakers it
should be able to excel at everything!
Alas, we know this is not, in practice and reality, the case. Even with super speakers compromises must be made, and not one speaker will excel at every kind of music.
My personal musical preferences drive me to focus on the MartinLogan Neolith and full-length ribbon systems. (I understand that the Neolith (indeed, MartinLogan in general) is somewhat derided by the audiophile cognoscenti, but for someone like me who wants midrange magic and some cone excursion impact I think the Neolith is a good answer.) But as long as I'm doing this last, ultimate speaker system search installation, I also would like my system to able to compete with the state-of-the-art in scale. And for that you need height.
I believe that there is important ambient acoustic space information in the lowest frequencies. I think that vertical arrays of dynamic drivers are the theoretically ideal way to reproduce those lowest frequencies with scale and spaciousness and realism.
In summary your implication is quite correct: for the music I like the Neolith will do the trick and the full range ribbon speakers will do the trick. But I would like to see if I can find a SOTA system which is as good on solo vocals as the Neolith/Analysis Audio/Apogee derivatives but which can also reproduce the scale and grandeur of a full symphony orchestra. Even though I prefer the one-designer solution adding tall subwoofer towers to a Neolith/Analysis Audio/Apogee derivative could also do the trick. But, with that design brief, why reinvent the wheel when we already have the Genesis Dragon and the Gryphon Pendragon and EA MM7 (and maybe the Soulsonic Impulse)? (I know I am going in circles.)
Have I answered your question, Peter?
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