igglebert: Both the 1SC and Spendor SA1 are amazingly unboxy and with high class amplification and source can produce a huge scale.
I know, I agree.
But I'm not only talking about the size of the soundstage. I don't know if I'm going to be able to explain this properly, but here it goes.
A small speaker with a small mid-woofer can create a wide soundstage, because its dispersion is good. So it fills the room with sound. But...if you "measure" the volume each indicidual instrument occupies in space, a bigger mid-woofer will give you a bigger individual instrument image. For instance: I used to own at the same time the B&W CDM9NT (towers, one 16.5" mid-woofer, two 16.5" woofers) and my current Tannoy System 800 (monitors, 8" mid-woofer). If you considered the soundstage as a whole, the two woofers of the B&W added up to a broader soundstage. But if you listened to Ella's voice, it was bigger and weightier with the Tannoy's.
I don't know if I make myself clear
. The point is, after having more than 30 speakers of different sizes, I've realized that, in a certain way, the size of individual images depends largely on the size of the mid-woofer cone.