Well, long story. But audio is a journey, so long it is, bear with me. Since mid-November I got into an accident which resulted in a foot surgery to repair a broken bone. The accident was very much audio related but not for this pair of speakers... but that's another story . Anyhow, I was relegated to crutches so while I am able to do small stuff it was work to move around, so not much work happened. later in December, vacationing mean I didn't get to do anything.
So when i was out vacationing, mom and I got really good front rows seat at Covent Garden and Teatro dell'Opera di Roma. I rarely sit in such prime location in concert hall with top acoustics and that was eye... i mean ear opening. The sound was large, massive, enveloping, quick, detailed, and mostly, not loud. Pizzicato from cello/double bass was quick, details, and while not loud, i can not only hear, but feel the sound. Natural, not piercing.
And most importantly, nothing like what I am hearing at home from the horns and the 15" woofer. At home sound was mostly too loud, when turned down to concert hall volume (I measured the dB at the hall, with my phone, I did... and matched it ), the sound was dull, compressed, no life. Sound stage was narrow, only between the speakers. Sound stage while still ok "deep", it wasn't massive. When loud, it was piercing. Details was ok. But overall, it sounded boxed in instead of this airy huge sound stage.
I couldn't get that sound off my head, and want to see what can be done. After I came back, I keep thinking and then remembered that last year I bought a pair of Heil AMT tweeters. So I start messing around with it. And it sounded... really good! The dipole tweeter engages the room, sound stage was bigger, more airy, more open. It is not as detailed as the horns but it was natural and not fatiguing.
I also posted a little in the other thread about it. But here is the story. I have been listening to and enjoying this new sound for the past week. It is not perfect, far from it, but at least from the sound stage point of view, I have not heard any non-dipole that sound like that.
I am still using the 2216ND-1 as the bass up to 1.2kHz, and it is really quite impressive as REW measures it matching the AMT in distortion at the crossover point.
Long way to go in this journey.