@audionoobie I read your post with great interest. Your experience mirrored mine...that is until I contacted Evan about what I was hearing, or more correctly, what I was not hearing. Your characterization of it sounding like it was being played thru a blanket fits, but what I said to Evan was this: it sounded to me like dialog was way rolled off, like maybe a big dip in the crossover region between the walsh driver and the tweeter. What I noticed in particular was the total lack of natural sibilance but the upper frequency response seemed ok. So it was like a dip in the 2k -5k response. His response was that he would see what he could do to tweak that in such a way to open up that midrange a bit. So he sent me a couple of replacement drivers that I installed myself. This was the entire canned driver assembly so it was an, unscrew old one, connect new one, and screw back into the cabinets and voila, they went from rejects to keepers. Since then I have had a lot of time to live with them and they continue to impress. I'm sorry your experience was ultimately not satisfactory. I'm glad I stuck it out as I ended up with what I would easily call an end game speaker for the room they have to play in.