What is under $5k speaker with best bass slam?

Hi Dh4kim

Will 12" drivers produce slam in a 12 by 12 room? I think that they will, but this is very subjective. How much slam do you want? I think that slam is probably a sort of coloration, but for me it is a euphonic coloration. I like to feel the thump in my gut, the visceral impact along with the aural impact. If in this case "best" is "most", then bigger is pretty much always better.

Bill

Salk HT-3's have deep tight bass with good slam and, an all around excellent speaker.

You should just go ahead any buy that used pair of Piega P-10s on the Gon. I love mine and they have the most articulate and satisfying bass of any speakers I have owned to date.

Shakey

The thing with Legacy is my father owned them and tho you would think they slam they dont, as I mentioned earlier the Vandersteen Quatro is a speaker I would look into...my dad purchased the wood version and they make the Focus sound like a sloppy limited LF speaker. My father was happy with his Legacy speakers for years but didnt know what he was missing til he found it.

I dont know about the slam being coloration, I think most take slam to be quick fast, tight and that impact you can feel that makes you smile....thats Vandersteen's bass.

Matti:

The Salons use 4th order crossovers, which ultimately allow them to go louder than the 1st-order slope Mahlers, assuming you have massive amplification to drive them (Salons are only 86 db. efficient, while Mahlers are +/- 90 db. efficient).

The Mahlers are a very different type of speaker, being intentionally colored to sound good with large-scale symphonic (i.e., rolled off a bit in the presence region, well-damped cone materials, fabric-dome tweeter, fat in the midbass, all designed to take the bite out of what digital does to string sections and to give body to wood-body instruments -- he didn't name it "Mahler" by accident). Having a peaky midbass, they are particularly exciting with rock/pop (... the WattPuppy formula).

The Salons are more linear and more extended, lower distortion, and often times, a lot less satisfying because of the nature of many recordings (not made for high-end equipment).

The real problem with Salons is that they require high-powered amps, and given that most high-powered amps sound like shit, well, ... .