Speakers for vocalists

Single driver speakers that sound boxless. These can be fostexs or lowthers with tubes or (ideally) full-range, non-hybrid electrostats with tubes. Less ambitious boxes and crossovers can be bad. As a general rule, it may be best to avoid them. I suggest electrostats for human voice with the caveat for human voice and preferably no electronic instruments. Electrostats fare best with acoustic sounds. YMMV.

While I agree that my Magnepan 3.6's reproduce human voice fairly accurately, the thing that bugs me is that it produces too large of an image and soundstage. Its like a 6 foot mouth in front of me, does this bug anyone else? I guess soundstage and image height is both its strength and weakness depending on what is being played.

Kkm...Some recordings are like that, but others give pinpoint imaging. It's not the speakers. Maybe you need to fiddle with placement or room treatment, especially the wall behind the speakers.

The point source concept is overrated. Even if the sound source is nearly a point (and voice is the only example of this that I can think of) sound waves propogate away from the source, and by the time they reach 10 or 15 feet what you have is a (nearly) planar wavefront. That's what a planar speaker replicates. The point source lies well behind the speakers themselves.

I have a set of three MG1.6, so my center channel imaging is not an issue. However, I sometimes play 2 channel programs, or multichannel ones where the center channel is not used, and it is impossible to verify that the center speaker is silent without walking up to it and puting an ear to it.

The best I've heard are the ATCs (from 50s upwards).

Lowther horns + 300B SET . Just listen !