Building an audio system from scratch...

[igrek]

Thanks for the suggestions, guys. I'll check every piece you're suggesting.

Cal Blacksmith - thanks for the invitation, but I'm SF bay and not planning to go south anytime soon.

One more thing. I'm not very good with music classification. So, when I said I listen to rock, alternative and electronic mostly, I'm not sure if that gives right impression.
I guess, the MTV-music my daughter is listening to is also called rock/alternative - it's Green Day, Good Sharlotte (sp?), Black-something-peas, etc. But no, I don't listen to that music at all (nor to any hip-hop or rap related). To be concrete, this is a representative sample of my listening tastes:

50% Tom Waits
5% John Lee Hooker
5% AC/DC
5% Bob Marley
5% Dead Can Dance
5% Piano (classic)
5% Guitar
5% Jean Michelle Jarre
5% Pink Floyd
5% Mike Oldfield
5% Peter Gabriel

[accastil]

Thanks for the suggestions, guys. I'll check every piece you're suggesting.

Cal Blacksmith - thanks for the invitation, but I'm SF bay and not planning to go south anytime soon.

One more thing. I'm not very good with music classification. So, when I said I listen to rock, alternative and electronic mostly, I'm not sure if that gives right impression.
I guess, the MTV-music my daughter is listening to is also called rock/alternative - it's Green Day, Good Sharlotte (sp?), Black-something-peas, etc. But no, I don't listen to that music at all (nor to any hip-hop or rap related). To be concrete, this is a representative sample of my listening tastes:

50% Tom Waits
5% John Lee Hooker
5% AC/DC
5% Bob Marley
5% Dead Can Dance
5% Piano (classic)
5% Guitar
5% Jean Michelle Jarre
5% Pink Floyd
5% Mike Oldfield
5% Peter Gabriel

if you are into rock and other bassful music, dont consider the magnepan. choose among BnW, Monitor Audio, Paradigm, Energy. magnepans are really good but only to a limited type of music...mostly light jazz, classsical, and the likes...and you may also find it hard to match a driver for them, they normally need more powerful amps.

[Florian]

Completely wrong in my opinion about the Maggie....all about driving electronics, room acoustics etc...

-Flo

[accastil]

hi Florian,
no offense meant here...while i agree with you that magnepans sound glorious while playing light and mellow music, i also would like to open your consciousness that they are not that good with bassfull, pop music.
i myself am considering to buy a pair of magnepans soon and i plan to have them driven directly by a pro-amp with gain controls. this is to suit my light music listening while still making use of my MS set up whenever id like to listen to heavy, pop music.
and yes, the maggies would definitely require a workhorse of an amp to bring out their potentials unlike most of the box speakers we know.

[Florian]

hi Florian,
no offense meant here...while i agree with you that magnepans sound glorious while playing light and mellow music, i also would like to open your consciousness that they are not that good with bassfull, pop music.
i myself am considering to buy a pair of magnepans soon and i plan to have them driven directly by a pro-amp with gain controls. this is to suit my light music listening while still making use of my MS set up whenever id like to listen to heavy, pop music.
and yes, the maggies would definitely require a workhorse of an amp to bring out their potentials unlike most of the box speakers we know.

No offense taken, the only Maggie i still own is the .5 (my first good speaker) and have moved over several Maggies (1.6's, 3.6's) to Apogees. (Scinitllas and now DIVAS). People have to understand that Maggies (planars in general) are VERY different to boxes and if they place and drive them like boxes then they will never sound good. They require a different level of dedication to make them work. Yes bass output is limited but still far deeper and cleaner then any box in a mortal price range.

-Flo

[hermanv]

Planar speakers as a whole simply can not match the excursion of a dedicated cone woofer, and the panel can't realistically be placed in a reasonant box to improve their bass efficiency.

The traditional solution has been to make the panels bigger. Unfortunately this creates two problems; 1. They become large enough that those of us with houses whose rooms are of average size have real probelms with placement and 2. Making them bigger does nothing to reduce the speakers price.

Martin Logan has augmented the bass of many of their ESL speakers with cone woofers. Many of you know this has not always been as sucessful as might be hoped at a given price point. The latests efforts have gotten substantially better sonically but the pricing of the better models has gotten quite a bit higher.

Adding a seperate sub-woofer to a planar is not impossible, but it also is far from either cheap or easy, if you want to do it well.

I love planars, but I agree they are not the best choice at the price point we have been discussing. IMHO to do planar speakers well requires a large expensive planar, a well treated large room and a more powerful than usual amp, especially true for tube amplification.

[Florian]

The traditional solution has been to make the panels bigger. Unfortunately this creates two problems; 1. They become large enough that those of us with houses whose rooms are of average size have real probelms with placement and 2. Making them bigger does nothing to reduce the speakers price.

Point one is not correct if you look at the Apogee Scintilla (flat to 20Hz and much more powerfull than any commercial snaily prices subwoofer), the Apogee Duetta (25Hz), my DIVAS play to 18HZ....... so for size the Apogee Scinitlla, Duetta and Caliper are wonderfull and need no stinking cone in a box.

Besides you know that the specs quoted by Paradigm, Axiom, B&W etc... with 16 Hz extension is bogus and completely unrealistc in a normal room even with a Rel Stadium III.

Point2, is not important to me. I care about music, and if it requires a 6.4ft tall 300lbs speaker, then so be it.

As for price, i would much rather take a 1.6 for 1.6K that does 35Hz no problem, with NO box, whiked speed, much less colored and extension requirements and a more even surface wave.

Again, Quality or Quantity....take your pic.