speakers for classical music

Larry510 said:

"Tube amps have an advantage here with softer 2ed harmonic clipping characteriics..."

I think it's a mistake to plan on clipping, even if it's mostly 2d harmonic. An amp that's clipping a your listening levels likely has very high distortion, particularly in the bass and highs. This should be avoided if you want accurate musical presentation.

Dave

I think it's a mistake to plan on clipping, even if it's mostly 2d harmonic. An amp that's clipping a your listening levels likely has very high distortion, particularly in the bass and highs. This should be avoided if you want accurate musical presentation.

I agree with you Dave...but one has to respect that many people don't want an accurate presentation - they prefer even order harmonic distortion from soft clipping. I think of the excellent Sonic Frontiers manual about "A taste of Tubes"....that is what it is about....adding your own seasoning to your favorite tracks. Judicious use of the volume control allows a user to control the amount of soft clipping to achieve a desired effect....it is a form of audio compression similar to what is done in studios.

Putting on my "green" hat:

Hey, we're starting to be forced to move away from gas guzzling cars, maybe we should be moving away from inefficient speakers and power guzzling amps as well?

I say this being a very proud and happy owner of some fairly inefficient yet great sounding speaks (the Ohm Walsh 5's) and an amp (MF A3CR) capable of driving them very nicely to reasonable SPLs in my listening room, yet I know that a bigger, beefier amp could up the SPL ante further if desired!

Class D amps seem to be a step in the "green" direction ie higher efficiency and lower power consumption to power our gas, I mean watt guzzling speaks, like my Hummer-like Ohms!

Jsadurni, doing a valid a/b comparison of Avantgarde with Mahlers on the same system may be a little challanging. . . Vienna speakers like to be driven stoutly with high current / high power amps. Avantgarde need to be driven gently with nimble low power SS or tube push-pull or triod amps as they are highly sensitive. G.

I guess there are two camps for audiophile reproduction, the SS camp with Lower efficiency speakers and the Tube camp with high efficiency speakers. To achieve a credible result for full symphonic orchestras in both camps top of the line equipment is needed. A mini monitor with cheap SS amps wont do it, and a single driver speaker with a single ended amp wont either.

The only SS-cone speaker system I have listened to that can do full orchestra was driven by Levinson monoblocks and had huge ADS speakers (with two 12 inch drivers per side etc. active subs, super tweeters) and top of the line electronics and turntable (Raul´s system if anybody knows him) Mainly all other cone speakers I have listened to, even with good setups sounded like a nice reproduction of an orchestra, everything is there but smallish, really when you get your ears adjusted to that, these systems can be pretty enjoyable.
I had been going back and forth to cone and horn speakers and finally settled for horns, triamplified 5 way system, Of course because of the size of both systems and different electronics needed a direct comparison is very difficult, but the sheer dynamics of horns really put a smile on my face!

I was curious about a direct comparison anyway.....

FWIW, The Mahlers were on my list for a long time but never got around to them.