Classic Audio T1 and T3 field coil loudspeakers

David, Thank you very much for your thoughtful and thorough remarks. No doubt the T1s are something to aspire to, but even at $28K the price is over my head (besides which I would bet those show special units are sold). I AM still interested in the T3s cum field coil drivers, however, even moreso now that I've read your post.

You sound a lot like Ralph in describing them; he was ecstatic. I am coming from a lifetime of listening to full-range ESLs. Now I am open to trying something different, but I don't want to give up any of the transparency and coherence that I have with my Sound Labs.

Thanks, David, for the interesting comments. Can anyone suggest T3 room size guidelines, and how much do the T3 go for ?

Jtimothya, I have T-3s at home. The T-3 as an all-alnico unit is $15,500. You can add the field-coil drivers as options. The midrange is the most important (that's what I have right now- next step is the super tweeters), that puts the cost at $18,000/pair. To add the tweeter makes it $21,000 and finally with the field coil woofers $28,500/pair.

The T-3 uses the same drivers and crossovers as the T-1 and has similar cabinet volume. It differs in being narrower and taller, on account of its use of a JBL horn which is not as wide as the one on the T-1. That is why I have the T-3 at home- the wider dimension of the T-1 would not have worked in my space. In sound and measurement the two horns using the same driver seem to behave nearly the same.

The speaker is easy to set up in smaller rooms as long as you can have a listening chair at least 8-10' from the speaker- they aren't so great near-field. We've set them up in some smaller hotel rooms with good success- you can back them up against the wall (mine are 6 inches from the rear wall) without loss of air or soundstage effect.

You could set them up easily in a room that was only 10 feet wide as long as you could get at least that far from them. If you have your listening chair against the rear wall there would probably be too much deep bass reinforcement, so for a 10 foot wide room one would hope that it was at least 13-17 feet in length. Of course big rooms are easy and the speaker is so easy to drive that a 50 foot long room could be filled with ease.

Agree with Dlanselm and Ralph...the A-S/Classic Audio/Triplanar room was one of our favorites!

Best,
Sam

Thank you Ralph - very helpful info!