Tube Friendly Speakers - Down to 30Hz - $3000?

Tvad,

Have you listened to Tannoy dual-concentrics? These are large speakers with the specs you are seeking. New they're quite expensive but used pairs are often availabble. I own a pair on Turnberry HE's.

Jim

Jim, I have not heard them, however I have read great thing about the Churchills. I do think they are probably too large for my 16x19 living room.

The answer is simple. But the Cain & Cain Abby's and the Bailey subwoofer. This system will honestly sound better than many/most 10$ speakers, 15watts is plenty, soundstage is huge, more resolution and warmth than the Druids, much better tonal quality's then Coincident plus tighter and easier to manage bass. I much prefer this sound to the Merlin VSM's. If you look on the virtual systems you will see a number of Abby's.

While the Abby/Bailey combo is very good, I don't think it would be the best replacement option for his Von Schweikerts. Just my opinion, based upon having heard the Abby/Bailey combo, as well as TVAD's speakers in his room.

I appreciate Sounds_Real's enthusaism for C&C speakers, but if Tvad is truly looking for "Speakers - Down to 30Hz", I'm not sure the Abby/Bailey combo is going to deliver that performance with sufficient SPL's.

Tvad's room and mine are almost exactly the same dimensions. I have the much larger C&C IM-Bens with two passive Balieys driven by an IcePower 500ASP module in mono and in my room it's -4/-6dB at 30Hz.

Granted my room is; a) untreated, b) accoustically insane with the room looking down onto the living room below. So, I am not getting all the room reinforcement possible.

But, I would be hard pressed to believe he is going to the kind of low frequency output he seems to desire with the Abby/Bailey combo.

One thing I will agree with you on is the tonality that can be had from the combo. It sounds very, very, good. Shockingly so, if you like high(ish) efficiency fullrange-driver speaks.

30Hz, "Reasonably small footprint", and "fully driven without compromise by tube amplification with as little as 15wpc" is a very, very, difficult demand.

So, it all comes down to which tradeoffs a person is willing to make, especially in the $3,000 or less range.