Change to Horns or stay Dynamic

"You can listen at 100db and not even know you are listening so loud. No distortion etc. And everything remains stable in space with a transparency that is hard to believe."

ATC, PMC will do it and so will some horns and several other high end designs but you are basically getting into the realms of professional main studio monitors (Westlake, Meyer, custom Augspergers with Tad drivers - take your pick). If you sit 4 meters back (large room like I do) then you are talking 112 db SPL capability at 1 meter continuous to get your 100 db spl at the listening position (and remember that headroom up to 122 db SPL may be required to be handle this cleanly on some music).

Very few speakers can do this that are not specifically designed for this task....and they only sell handfuls of these kind of speakers - not tens of thousands like B&W's. Most people don't want or need this kind of eye watering capability - but it can be incredibly fun and exhilerating.

Dgad,nice post....Btw,didn't I meet you at HE 2007?There are not many other hobbyists living in Aruba,whom I met at that show,so I assume this "is" you.

Sorry for my short session listening to the Singer demo,with you.

Best

"The -only- reservation I have about my MBL 101Es is that they too get congested at loud volumes during complex passages. They lose detail and smear and the soundstage becomes confused."

I'll bet any speakers with a sensitivity of 81dB/2.83V/m powered by 40watt tube amps(no offence to current owners intended), will sound congested if you try and push them past 93db in a big room.

Solution: Spectron Musician III SE Mk. 2 monoblock amplifiers.

Kana813,

You missed, or simply ignored, the part in my post where I said "This is true with any of the many amplifiers I have used with them."
Two of them were monobocks, each worth over $30,000 a pair. One of these delivered 640 watts into 4 ohms and the other 220 watts into 4 ohms. Believe me, I've tried throwing high-quality watts at the tops (105Hz and up) of these speakers.

I only hooked the SETs up to the speakers as joke when I was between amplifiers; it turned out the joke was on me!

My 40 watt SET amps distort after 93db but MBLs get congested at loud volumes during complex passages no matter what amps you put on them and no matter how many watts you throw at them. The upper drivers simply reach their excursion limits.

The Spectron Musician III SE Mk. 2 monoblock amplifiers; the top MBL amplifiers; the CAT JL-3 Signatures; the top Boulders monoblocks, none of these is the solution because the problem isn't amplification, its the drivers.

I'm pretty sure I'll never find amps that sound better (to me) under 93dB so that's why I have the 40 watt SETs. If you heard my speakers without seeing my amps you'd swear the amps were putting out over 250 watts (not that I have to justify my decision to you or anybody else).

Dgad,
I have to ask you about the "air pressure in the room" with the Cessaros. One of the reasons I gave up on the idea of owning horns a few years ago was because I often felt a sort of pressure on my skull, which quickly let to a headache, when listening.
I know a horn lover in Italy who feels the same thing but puts up with it because the sound is so good.
Did you feel any sort of fatigue or discomfort with the Cessaros?