Q. on shootout between time/phase coherent speaker

This is an old thread, but that is nonsense. 1st-order crossovers are the simplest and such speakers can be made *very* easy to drive - GMA's sure are.

If 1st Order xovers are easy to drive why are Thiel and Vandersteen not easy to drive. They are both fairly inefficient with dips in impedance down to 4ohms or less - not the defintion of easy to drive. I'm no engineer, so I don't know anything about the design parameters - theoretical or implemented, both these two manafactuers make good speakers, but easy to drive is not one of their attributes. GMA, may be a different thing altogether, but I'm not familar with them.

My Reference 3A Dulcet mini-monitors are time and phase aligned. The only cross-over in them is one capacitor. They are very efficient and my 70W VAC monoblocks drive them to very realistic volumes.

http://iar-80.com/page65.html

Amp/speaker matching is very critical in achieving good sound. There are a lot of threads on time and phase in speaker alignment. Do a search for more info.

Check out Earthworks Sigma 6.2's... unreal... or should I say REAL!

My GMA Callisto's are easy to drive, very tricky to set up, adjusting toe in by even a fraction of an inch yeilds a very different sound...pointed straight ahead they sound broken. They have a quite small sweet spot, at least compared to my previous non time/phase coherent Totem Arros, those sounded fine pretty much from any angle. and they diffinately interact with my room quite a lot...again compared to my previous speakers. They are tricky enough to set up and interact with the room to the degree that I would almost be learly of auditioning them in a dealers room unless i was very sure they set them up very carefully and calibrated them to my listening hight, otherwise you're not hearing them to their consderable capabilities.