Quote Originally Posted by emaidel
The L-110, part of a JBL lineup introduced in 1978 to try to be more "accurate," and less forward, was an unmitigated disaster. Not only did it not have the punch of an older L-100, but it had a horribly colored midrange which made some of the lackluster AR products sound a whole helluva lot better.
I've had the good fortune of meeting and spending an evening talking and listening to the system of an *inmate* from another forum. Business travel put me in his state and he graciously invited me over. He is a retired engineer, lover of Scotch, happens to have similar musical tastes and is an enthusiastic electronic tweaker. One true gem of wisdom he has always espoused is that of system synergy - many differences we hear between components relates to compatibility issues. Amen. He uses very carefully chosen, reasonably priced and good sounding gear. I wish he lived nearby - one can only communicate so much in posts like this over the 'net. The only reason I left was that it was two in the morning and I had a meeting six hours later. Oh well.

He has a number of speakers, including Advents and L-110s. Neither, however, is stock. The Advents are highly tailored with mirror imaged drivers, custom dowel-reinforced cabinets, new wiring, connectors and crossover components. They sound excellent. The L-110 has some mods including the use of an Advent woofer. I find them to be highly neutral sounding, a most pleasant surprise as compared with my experience with the L-100. I have a different complaint of the midrange: narrow dispersion. The tweeters are arguably better than the Advents with their great extension, but I was immediately struck with this weirdness: the image width curiously collapses with frequency as one travels downward from the top. While the Advents don't exactly radiate terribly far off axis, they are at least consistent and more coherent sounding across the full range - an important aspect to me.

The SL electrostats are sweet in that every one of the 4400 square inches radiates a full range signal. As you walk towards them, the sound does not change at all. Top to bottom, front to back or side to side you get the same signal no matter where you are relative to them. By comparison, either the Polk mini-monitors in the HT system or (especially) the double Advents in the garage require some distance for the drivers to blend seamlessly.

rw