Advice on making a speaker change

I value a big soundstage, imaging, tonal accuracy, musical involvement vs the ultimate in detail and resolution, Having said that, my KEF’s are a little lacking in high frequency air/transparency and perhaps a little TOO polite.

Given that I’d put the Joseph Audio Perspective 2/Profile, ProAc K3/D48/D30, Vandersteen Treo/Quatro, Sonus Faber Maxima Amator/Olympica Nova, Usher ML801/802 (or even the Mini Two), and QLN Prestige 5 or 3 high on your list for speakers to hear. Best of luck.

The VR-4 are a great speaker for the money. I think I paid $3500 for them around 28 years ago. Their huge soundstage was what I was most afraid of losing when I changed speakers. The Model One also has that, but better imaging, clarity, and separation of instruments. I think it’s fair to say that it’s better in every respect, but it’s a much more expensive speaker. The VR-4s have deeper bass, but not as tight. 

Von Schweikert’s design philosophy is accurate reproduction of the music sent to them. It does that in spades. Excellent detail, but not at all sibilant in my system. If your hardware is sibilant, you’ll hear it.

My son is a musician and he’s done some recording, so he’s a geek about recording techniques, mastering, etc. The other night, he and his former bandmate spent a lot of time listening to recordings to analyze the recording. I kept wanting to play recordings that I knew sounded good, but they wanted to listen to popular music to analyze the recording quality. It was interesting.

@soix Thanks for the suggestions. QLN and Joseph Audio Pearl/Perspective were already on my short list, (The new QLN Reference 9 that was introduced at Axpona last year is excellent)  I'll research your other suggestions. 

Ah, didn’t know your price range so going up the line in all the brands I mentioned where applicable would obviously be even better.  Given your potentially higher price range I’d add Rockport to the list, and I neglected to mention Wilson that should be in there too. 

My dilemma is twofold. I still think my speakers sound great in many ways. They are musically involving and still dazzle me on occasion. They have some weak points as do ALL speaker designs.

I value a big soundstage, imaging, tonal accuracy, musical involvement vs the ultimate in detail and resolution, Having said that, my KEF’s are a little lacking in high frequency air/transparency and perhaps a little TOO polite.

@dmiller01     You could get some PEQ and salvage the situation a bit... bump it up with suitable Q in approx frequency range shown below. That’s how you could start creating "air", a sense of "transparency" etc...

If it’s acting too polite, maybe add a very low Q bump further lower on the frequency range. That could prevent you from rabbit hole diving and let you hang on to your current speaker.

But, if you plan on letting go of the KEF anyways, look at some measurements at the least as it can give you a feel for the sound signature you’re looking for (help narrow down the pool since everyone and his uncle offer a speaker these days from their garage).

I get the feeling that this is the speaker you’re looking for, it certainly isn’t very polite (real musical instruments are not that polite), quite airy, transparent, etc. Its called the Yamaha NS-2000A, price = 8k. If Schweikert or Magico tried to make you something of this quality, price could go up to 50k atleast.