Magneplanar LRS

High End to me, isn't about truthful realistic (as far as possible) reproduction of recorded music. It's a wealthy man's (rarely a ladie's) gear hobby and apparently, I read today on ASR that the current must-have is cable risers...

Having been subjected to the paint removing Dynaudio Confidence 60's - www.analogueseduction.net/all-speakers/Confidence60.html

- the people demonstrating them were staggered that I didn't 'get' the detail and definition, but instead, I complained instead of the listener fatigue and lack of tonal body (the . These same people love the Falcon LS3/5A. The Confidence 30's at £18000 I heard last November were similar and again, people praised the 'detail' they gave where I nearly recoiled out of the room at the total lack of any warmth at all and the upper mids almost screaming (not an electrostatic cleanliness either). Mind you, B&O's better active speakers were balanced like this and the lack of subtlety kind of gave them a relentless quality.

Maggies as a breed used to be hideously inefficient and awkward impedance loads too. Unlike the Apogee ribbons which themselves were pigs to drive and not always well balanced, I gather Maggies can be much worse in terms of sensitivity and to be honest, Martin Logan seems to have taken over from that kind of speaker these days? I heard some MG1.7's? a year or two back and these were laid back to the point of falling over in my opinion.

The first time I heard Mark Levinson amps was twenty years ago. I think the preamp was an ML28 (fully balanced from input to output) and two of the matching stereo power amps (plain rectangular boxes with rack handles from memory) into then £1200 Maggies (1C's?). They sounded ok with the smaller amp but sprang to some kind of life used with the bigger one - not a small difference and same volume level. A similar kind of epiphany moment I had decades later hearing the Harbeth SHL5+ with Croft and Sonneteer amps and then a Krell Vanguard, which really told those cones and domes what was going on in a way I didn't think they were capable to be honest.

Sorry if I've drifted again.

Are there any speakers that can’t do girl-and-guitar music?

Biggest test of many speakers is proper rock music with low-mid-bass, seems to find a hole in many speakers’ ranges

The Dali probably do nothing wrong. But if you sat them side by side with better - and inevitably more expensive - speakers that's when you'd notice what they don't, or can't do. That's probably true of most modern little two-ways.

Once the design gets a bit more esoteric, that's when they start having audible flaws and so forth. Like those £14K speakers I heard that couldn't reproduce a bit of phat mid-bass without embarrassing themselves. The vendor quickly switched back to plinky-plonk jazz...

Incredibly, later, I noticed in the show reports a few people thought they were wonderful speakers.

Painters are here a whole gang of them and being African the row is incredible, the blokes all talk at the top of their voices.
It is a cultural thing, shows you are not gossiping, a fact that few 'White people' can appreciate.
So upstairs I went put on Bonnie Riatt - Road Tested, and cranked it up.  No lack of anything with the Cornscalas, it felt like I was right there. My chest was vibrating.
On 30 w they sound like you are feeding them a kw my kind of speaker, and yes they sound great at low volumes, one of my criteria for a good speaker does it sound good at all volumes, and go loud enough to get the cops buy without distorting. 
Only problem they are huge, you need a big box to do it propper like.  

lemos, Have you heard Harbeth speakers?

S.

Oh FFS!!!!!!!!

Spendor and Harbeth have NEVER sounded anything like each other, not even in 1977 when Harbeth started!

Spencer Hughes was a lovely character I remember and never patronising to keen young hifi store personnel, always answering their questions with knowledge and extreme patience. He also never dissed the 'flat earth' rising stars... The BC1 if used away from walls in a medium size room has a midrange to admire. It doesn't shout, compress, hold back and it 'does' timbres so well. To go with this is a resonant (deliberately) 'bass talky' carcass, a usually nice hf with no nasties and a bass which is 'there' but today, painfully low power handling and limited volume and timbres.

The SP1 from 1983 was a very different animal. Based loosely on the BC2/SA2/Prelude driver but with polypropylene and phase plug, the tauter suspension, higher power handling and more modern styling took the SP1 to new heights for jazz and rock music lovers. I feel that all the other pre take-over models were inferior in many ways, the lush tones masking a multitude of musical enjoyment, for me at any rate, the SP1/2 being the only saviour for me in the late 80's. sadly, the Spendors made from the late 80's suffer driver surround hardening and this has a terrible effect on sonics. Spendor can fix some but not all I gather. Post take-over, Terry Miles I think, has been the main designer and he has a different take on speaker design and voicing, the range geting livelier as time's gone on. I love the D7 and would like to own a pair and apparently, the newer models have a similar life to them.

Now Harbeth.. Dudley Harwood has an interesting story worthy of a small book I think. the original HL had a couple of consistency wobbles ans unlike Spendor, he didn't make the main poly cone driver himself, but with the unofficial HL2 and more commonly the HL III, this speaker was a delight for tuneful rock lovers. It was musical, 'lyrical' and deeply involving to listen to and it kind of took over from the quirky but interesting Tangent RS4 when the latter changed and subsequently disappeared. At the time, we sold HL's over BC1's time after time, but the SP1 kind of redressed the balance somewhat. Rogers, also making a 2CU box with 8" bass driver, had lost the plot and were making boom boxes based on the original concept, although the LS7 and smaller models were more successful by this time.

Harbeth developed the HL4 with different cone (driver made for them by Audax) and these were warm toned with more refined hf. the one I knewpersonally was the HL5, which wasn't as slushy as Spendor had become, but the bass was fruity and top restrained. Current Harbeths are much tauter (I reserve judgement on the C7-ES3 fruitbox in anniversary form) and brighter in balance, needing lots of power to open them up ime.

One thing Harbeth and the best Spendors still have is a sweetness to them that is polar opposite from the astringent tinsel of 'detailed HiFi speakers.' i once put this down to the passive crossovers absorbing energy, but having heard one or two seriously good and almost 'sweet' active speakers (Kii Threes and modern ATC actives), I'd suggest that careful crossover setting probably does it.

Sorry for the above. The BC1 (which the little made LS3/6 official design was derived from) and the LS3/5A were the only ones the BBC ever used at the time (four? hundred pairs of BC1's and similar 3/5A's I think) and all the others were kind-of derivations I think.