For my money the B139 was probably the best air-mover ever
made - along with its later cousin the B200. I used to have
a pair of the Dr Bailey Transmission Lines (Wireless World
1972) which could shake windows at 10 paces and with
relatively little power!

However I suspect two things may be the cause of the poor
sound quality from the Cantata's: one is that there was
little overlap between the specified responses of the two
drive units - B139 was 20-1000Hz and the T15 was 800-20000.
The original design of the Bailey TLs was for the B139 as a
bass unit up to only a few hundred cycles, the B110 as a mid
range from a few hundred up to about 5KHz, and the T15 above
that lot - the T15 being superceeded by the T27 after the
T15 was ceased. The result was a very relaxed sound that,
whilst it was not as good as a two-way unit for stereo
imaging, gave immense detail, clarity, and realism from top
to bottom. I used to have a (sample CD) recording of a piece
of Bach played on the organ of Limburg Cathedral which made
tremendous use of pedal reeds - I have never found any
speaker (save a Cambridge R50 which used the same drivers
and had a TL construction) that could reproduce those reeds
in any realistic way and I have heard said organ.

B
ear in
mind that the B200/T27 combination was also used in the
LS3/5 - many would argue the best small monitor ever
designed?

Yep I've heard a few other more recent designs of the same size but I
reckon the 3/5A's are still there...


--
Tony Sayer