Which speakers vs Vandersteen 3A sig's in large rm

Intuitive Design makes some nice speakers.....

I would say you need at least 12" woofers for that size room - probably 15". Anything smaller that delivers signifcant base will probably be with tuned LF ports and these often sound rather boomy. I have a 25' by 20' room with 9' ceilings and use a sub with a 15" woofer and two left and right channels with 12" bass woofers each.

Good luck!

Laid back bass? lack of detail? Not Vanversteen's. They are very dependent on the amp/ preamp that you are using. I have 2CE signatures and they sounded different with every combo that I was using. When I bought mine, here in Houston, they were hooked up to an excellent amp and sounded full, dynamic with plenty of bass slam. I went to the same store a year later with a friend to have him audition them. They were hooked up to a 80 watt SS amp and sounded dry and lifeless. Sorry to say they did not impress either my friend or myself at that time. I have had mine for about 4 years and I have never considered anything else. But, as you stated, its your dime and evreyone's taste is different. just make sure you audition them with electronics that are right for them. I think that some retailers will purposely put lousy electronics on a great speaker just to steer a customer towards something else. A little trick that I learned at a now bankrupt chain called "Tech hi-fi". They would try to make Ohm speakers sound great instaed of Advents because Advents were not as profitable a line to sell... Advents were very smooth and nuetral in comparison to the "house brand". good luck... Eagleman

Stylinlp 38, I'm not sure what you mean by "...stuck with a Tyler Acouistic situation." I will say that both Dunlavy and Meadowlark are out of business.
My recomendations were based on the fact that all designs share major design philosphies with Vandersteen. I should mention that these very design philosphies seem to share the same lack of specific absolute excellence in dynamics. Thats not to say that they are lacking in this area, they just don't excell as well as some other designs that are willing to sacrafice other aspects of sound to give priority to this specific aspect. I have not personally heard the Green Moutain products so I can't comment on them. I have heard just about all the other's products. IMHO, based on your desired criterion, you might be well served by auditioning the Thiels. One caveat about the Thiels; they require top quality amplification and they benefit from a lot of it. Good luck.

Something in the Induction Dynamics line might be worth auditioning. I heard their 3000 dollar monitors a while ago (maybe about a year?) and they sounded excellent. Their crossover design is proprietary and described as a "brick wall", i.e., quite the opposite of a first order design and more similar to Thiel, if I'm not mistaken (Unsound may be able to chime in with any clarifications about the Thiels' crossover design). Anyway, the Induction Dynamics monitors that I heard did NOT seem to have a constricted soundstage at all, and tonality, balance and detail were very good as well. They were quite strikingly good.

The company states that the drivers are "inductively coupled" (or something like that), whatever that means. I THINK it may mean that there's some compensatory mechanism to couple the drivers' timing so as to maintain (phase?) coherence, but that's JUST a GUESS.

This company is not yet a well known high end contender, but may become known as such in the next few years, if the rest of their product line sounds anything like the entry level monitors that I heard, and if people get the chance to hear them. Time will tell.
-Bill