Mikirob and Charles, For two decades I stuck with the Magnepan/SS amp route. This worked well for me because of my preference for large scale orchestral works, because of my insistence on true timbre, and because Magnepan offers so much speaker for the money. In my opinion, Magnepans remain best suited for this type of music.
As I began to become more and more focused on chamber music, the inability of Magnepans to portray quartets and trios with a reasonable image scale as well as the difficulty in instrument localization due to violins crossing over from the midrange to the tweeter became increasingly frustrating. A couple of years ago I started a thread asking for advice on assembling a second system specifically optimized for chamber music. I got a lot of good suggestions, but that project was put on hold due to my retirement and the impending move. During that period, I picked up a Coincident Statement Line stage and was of course profoundly impressed with it, and also during that period, my plans for a second system morphed into plans for a bedroom system. I began to pick up used speakers and amps that I thought might work well for me. Then one day, a used pair of Coincident Triumph Extreme Mk IIs came up for sale. I snatched them up and went to Tennessee on a house hunting trip. When I returned, the speakers were delivered the next day. I set them up in my main rig and gave a listen. I was floored with what I heard. I had never, ever, heard that level of coherence, timbral accuracy, detail, speed and sheer musicality from a box speaker under 20K. (Talk about a great bargain, I paid 2.5K for these with stands new. The value proposition is at least equal to the dynamo.) These small monitors pushed the Magnepan 3.7Rs to the side of the room, never to return to use for more than a few minutes. With the Triumph Extremes (at 94 dB efficient) in place in my main rig, the big SS mono blocks were no longer needed. The decision to bring in the Franks was an easy one.
What Mikirob has found to be true of the dynamo, Charles and I know to be generally true of the Coincident line. It brings music of every genre to life. In my case, the sheer beauty of good music through this system has facilitated an expansion into previously unexplored genres. I've dipped for the first time into Italian opera, brought in a few bluegrass disks, and will likely begin an exploration of jazz and renaissance music.
Large scale orchestral works remain the supreme challenge for any system, and no, I can't close my eyes and think I'm sitting main floor center row J Severence Hall during a Mahler 3 performance. But, I hear the music performed in a way that is enormously satisfying.
I will be keeping my eyes open for a used pair of Coincident Super Victory II speakers, which should give me enough low end to get the subs out of the main rig. If that never happens, I will be perfectly happy with what I now have.
What I see is that a pair of golden ears has met up with a brilliant scientific mind. Beneath this, as a foundation, lies a commitment to delivering products at real world prices. Mikirob, it's going to be a lot of fun reading your comments about the CSL and Franks.
