@lewm sorry for the delayed response.
i am not a regular here, mainly because of the user interface. Regarding your points addressed to me: I have heard Maggie many times, the glass door pic was only in relation to a vyger system as in that article I covered vyger. I think Maggies are high value. I was a panel lover first, liking electrostats and analysis audio and apogee, and you were on my “hit list” as I wanted to listen to soundlabs with an OTL. Unfortunately too many targets and I haven’t made it across so far.
horns was my other love, and I moved completely from panels to horns when I realised dual front loaded horns could do the midbass of well set up apogee grands, with all their might and with low watt SET magic.
on how do I evaluate sound? There were reference components and recordings I had on the site which I need to update, with the background that before pandemic I was doing almost 50 classical concerts a year across 6 halls in London before cloacal was primarily a rock guy so essentially what I like is to suit classical reproduction.
There was a time when I used to like the gear creating soundstage, bass, etc, but since 2018 I have been focused on transparency to recordings, which means the gear should reflect the stage on the recording and the venue ambience should change with the recording. However for this quality original LPs are required which are not easy to access given the rarity and expense.
flow is self explanatory to those who have heard it. It is a continuity of music, from note to note which you will hear with good analog compared to bad digital, or good valves compared to bad SS (please allow me these strawman generalisations to keep explanation simple). The opposite of flow is a stop start you hear after every note.
i like coherence, from top to bottom with linearity through the midbass, and also coherence off stage. Tone, timbre, dynamic range (the low to high distance traveled off a note). I like inflections and contrast…contrast of dynamics, of tone, inflections for example many notes in a violin as compared to just glossing over. Attack of the piano with the body of the note. Breathing of the bass section of the orchestra. Energy. All this should play without strain.
i have liked highs in vintage speakers as well as in TAD ET703 and 4003, I have liked the nuance of beryllium horn drivers and disliked beryllium cone drivers, like paper horn drivers, ribbon drivers, electrostatic drivers, Altec woofers, Vyger TT which is a linear tracker with red sparrow cartridge, Dava, Lampi dac, many SETs, like to tube roll to optimise, blah blah. End game is Oistrakh, Heifetz, Kogan, Annie Fischer, Szell, Fricsay, Reiner, Jochum, Klemperer, Rostropovich, Hoelscher, and many others on decca, RCA, EMI, and some not so popular labels and get realism from them.
i am writing on the mobile so might have missed a few things