Audiophilepure

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“The science of loudspeaker design is like any science: it obeys the law of diminishing returns. For anyone buying loudspeakers, this means that the more you pay, the better the sound will be, but there will eventually come a point at which the increased costs are not matched by similarly satisfying increases in sound quality.

The ideal is to find a speaker at the ‘sweet spot’ where the balance is just right for both your ears and your own budget. For me, the Focal Kanta No.3s represent that ‘sweet spot’. For you? You’ll obviously have to make that judgement for yourself – but I do sincerely recommend that you at least listen to a pair of Kanta No.3s… no matter what price you might originally have had in mind.”

http://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/magnepan-lrs-loudspeaker/

“At $650 the LRS is an easy top recommendation. It will need considerable power and careful placement to perform at its best—and frankly it will also need a decent subwoofer if you want full-spectrum fidelity. But if you’re listening in a smallish room and are a fan of folk-rock or acoustic music, it will outdo anything else at or near its price. No matter how much you spend on your stereo, getting it to sound like the real thing isn’t a given, folks. In the midrange, the LRS sounds like the real thing.”

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“Best of all, Elipson hasn’t thrown everything at the bass and midrange and forgotten about the treble. The top end is deliciously sweet and insightful, but without any sense of hardness that could ruin the whole delicate balance. Admittedly, it can’t quite match the ultimate purity of Bowers & Wilkin’s similarly priced 703 S2 floorstander (HFC 433), for example, but there is never a sense that I am missing anything. The guitar string plucks from Nickel Creek’s Reasons Why are beautifully defined and the subtle percussion effects backing Aaron Neville on Everybody Plays The Fool are present, correct and easy to distinguish.”

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“As I’ve just implied, some speakers can simulate soundstage depth by recessing the midrange. The YBs were above such trickery. If I had to venture a guess as to how these speakers mastered space so well, I’d say it’s everything about them — their rounded, organically shaped, exceptionally dead cabinets, high-quality drive units, and good engineering. None of these characteristics are unique to Estelon, but the combination of them in so elegant a package verges on the stunning.

The owner’s manual hints that it’s best not to overdrive these speakers and thus risk driver failure. Well, far be it from me to second-guess the manufacturer, but I pushed these babies pretty damn hard at times, and never once heard from them the slightest whimper of distress: no compression, no hardening, no distortion of any kind — instead, for the most part, only a direct relationship between the position of the volume knob and the volume of sound coming from the speakers. Turn it up, it got louder. Not sure what the fuss is about here.”

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“The two high-excursion 8″ woofers are loaded in an unusual quasi-transmission-line arrangement. In a full transmission line, the woofer’s rear wave is directed down a labyrinth filled with mineral wool (or other damping material) inside the cabinet. The woofer’s rear wave is dissipated as it travels down the labyrinth, and in theory is completely dissipated at the end of the transmission line (the opening in the speaker enclosure that looks like a port). A transmission line avoids the problem of sealed loading in which the trapped air inside the enclosure acts as a spring against the woofer as the woofer moves in. It also avoids the problem of reflex (ported) loading in which transient behavior is compromised and port artifacts (resonances, the sound of air moving through the port, etc.) can become audible. Although a transmission line has none of these problems, a true transmission line requires an enormous cabinet enclosing a very long labyrinth to fully dissipate the woofer’s rear wave. In a quasi-transmission line such as in the Image1, some woofer energy emerges from the end of the line, but it is greatly attenuated. The Image1’s transmission line gets progressively narrower, forcing the energy into a smaller and smaller area that has progressively greater damping. Sanders says that this unusual approach delivers tighter bass than traditional sealed or reflex loading.”