Talon Khorus with no soundstage?

While not having heard these speakers, I can relate to you that I heard a pair of the $22,000 Sonus Faber Amati Heritages sound worse than a boombox, thin and as though one speaker was not connected, being driven by top of the line Krell electronics at a local dealer. The sole culprit was a sonically terrible, small room which had reflections everywhere and could not hold any bass due to its flimsy construction. Possible that it was the culprit in your case? Sure sems like it to me from your description.

quote: I'm not a pro in accoustics but the only thing I know that original soud wave travels to our ear before the reflected one. That's why I think that soundstage in %$16k speaker must be present even in the wrong room.

i totally agree but speaker placement will make a huge difference regardless of the quality of the speakers. room acoustics are just a sad fact of life. otherwise, we'd all shove our high-end speakers into the back wall or some out of the way corner.

i would bet that the talons will image the hell out you if you get them broken in and set-up correctly.

The February 2001 stereotimes.com has a detailed (and entertaining!) article about break-in of the Talon Khorus... what you describe may be normal for the Khorus when it hasn't been broken-in.

I owned the Talon Khorus. The imaging of that speaker is one of the best things they do. But they have a very long break-in period...up tp 500 hours of music playback. Until then, the sound is very closed in and boxy. Leave for a week or more and leave your stereo playing. That's what I had to do to accomplish the break in. I also owned the EMC-1, and I know it soundstages very well also. If there is a component in the chain that is suspect in performance, it would be your pre-amp. I have never heard the 4.7, but a dealer friend who sells Electrocompaniet has told me in the past that their pre-amps are not very good compared to others in the same price range.

I have had the exact same system that you auditioned including the Vahalla cables in the showroom. If you were listening to the original Khorus the actual total break in period is 3000 hours I have had plenty of them in here playing 24 hours a day. Yet after just a few hundred hours they should have started sounding holographic. Although the preamp is the weakness of the system you still should have been impressed if not amazed. I wonder if the speakers had enough toe in? They should be pointed right at you, also if they are too close to a back wall you lose a great deal of the soundstaging. The new Khorus X burn in totally within 500 hours. The speaker is magic! Also coming from Talon the new Raven which looks very much like the old Khorus at an unreal price of $5000 - $6000. They do everything in house now and the speaker is awesome!