$9995

Some years ago, the late distinguished cellist David Etheve auditioned at my suggestion a pair of Stirling Broadcast LS3/6s, a Derek Hughes design similar in general concept to the famous Spendor BC1. He bought them straight away. He told me at the time that they were the only speakers he had ever heard where he could really recognize his own playing. This reflects something profound about these speakers. They really do have the property of enabling the listener to hear through them to the reality of the source. One could (and I found it irresistible to, in my review, see below) try to guess why in technical terms. And they surely have abundant technical virtues—smooth response, absence of resonances, dynamic life, coherence (no crossover until 3kHz). and so on. But in my experience, they also have a kind of reality that is not easy to put one’s finger on, but which is definitely there. They lack the deepest bass, but with a subwoofer system added on (at a low crossover point), they make a system one could just live with forever. This is especially so if one wants not audio spectacle, but the sound of real concert music. Few people are able to play music with the quality of David Etheve, but we can all understand what he meant and what it meant to him and could mean to you. (228)