A driver operating out of its passband due to a shallow slope crossover cannot handle the power that it could if it were crossed over more steeply. I am not aware of any debate about this point, which is salient if the issue is suitability for home theater, where Patriot Games-type soundtracks are generally cherished and power handling thus very, very important.
Large-scale symphonic music can indeed be more taxing than the vast majority of movie sound tracks, and for this reason, speakers featuring first-order crossovers also generally fall down in power handling on extremely taxing music (there are a few exceptions, such as the gigantic DAL SC-V and SC-VI, each of which features seven drivers to share the punishment -- they can go quite loud). For overall musicality, however, I prefer the DAL / Vandersteen / AudioMachina time-coherent speakers, and despite listening to mostly symphonic music, I've never been troubled by first-order design congestion.
Regarding the demise of Dunlavy Audio Labs, Dave 1's point is well taken. I was never on the inside of this company, and being closely held and the fact that Mr. Dunlavy recently passed away, we will never know for certain what happened. That said, my dealer, whom I have known for fifteen years and who carried Dunlavy's Dunlavy Audio Labs brand from the company's inception through to the end, told me that the company perished because his gigantic speakers were simply unacceptable in what is an overwhelmingly home-theater oriented market place, and that the Cantata / Aletha line was DAL's room-friendly accomodation to the home theater market (that came too little too late). Knowing what I do about the business, that all sounds right, but it appears that Dave 1 was on the inside at DAL -- in any event, perhaps you'll be good enough to tell us how you know what you know.
A final comment with some additional details about the demise of the Dunlavy Audio Labs brand. My comments should not be read to imply that "DAL went out of business" while in John Dunlavy's hands, inasmuch as he did sell the DAL business to a neighbor in his industrial park that had no previous experience in hi-fi. The brand quickly disappeared thereafter and at least part of the remaining stock was purchased by Audio-Video Logic. Mr. Dunlavy was also a principal with Australian speaker manufacturer Duntech (for which he designed similar, gigantic sealed-box time-aligned speakers). For the record, I will say that Mr. Dunlavy was delightful the two or three times that I spoke with him, and I loved my SC-III's and every other DAL speaker I ever heard.
In any event, I fully stand by my original comments -- I believe that first-order crossover designs like Dunlavy are less than ideal for home theater.
Large-scale symphonic music can indeed be more taxing than the vast majority of movie sound tracks, and for this reason, speakers featuring first-order crossovers also generally fall down in power handling on extremely taxing music (there are a few exceptions, such as the gigantic DAL SC-V and SC-VI, each of which features seven drivers to share the punishment -- they can go quite loud). For overall musicality, however, I prefer the DAL / Vandersteen / AudioMachina time-coherent speakers, and despite listening to mostly symphonic music, I've never been troubled by first-order design congestion.
Regarding the demise of Dunlavy Audio Labs, Dave 1's point is well taken. I was never on the inside of this company, and being closely held and the fact that Mr. Dunlavy recently passed away, we will never know for certain what happened. That said, my dealer, whom I have known for fifteen years and who carried Dunlavy's Dunlavy Audio Labs brand from the company's inception through to the end, told me that the company perished because his gigantic speakers were simply unacceptable in what is an overwhelmingly home-theater oriented market place, and that the Cantata / Aletha line was DAL's room-friendly accomodation to the home theater market (that came too little too late). Knowing what I do about the business, that all sounds right, but it appears that Dave 1 was on the inside at DAL -- in any event, perhaps you'll be good enough to tell us how you know what you know.
A final comment with some additional details about the demise of the Dunlavy Audio Labs brand. My comments should not be read to imply that "DAL went out of business" while in John Dunlavy's hands, inasmuch as he did sell the DAL business to a neighbor in his industrial park that had no previous experience in hi-fi. The brand quickly disappeared thereafter and at least part of the remaining stock was purchased by Audio-Video Logic. Mr. Dunlavy was also a principal with Australian speaker manufacturer Duntech (for which he designed similar, gigantic sealed-box time-aligned speakers). For the record, I will say that Mr. Dunlavy was delightful the two or three times that I spoke with him, and I loved my SC-III's and every other DAL speaker I ever heard.
In any event, I fully stand by my original comments -- I believe that first-order crossover designs like Dunlavy are less than ideal for home theater.