Speakers The single most critical component

The problem with the vast majority of speakers including everything Mr Mozartfan is talking about is, they sound like speakers. The very best speakers disappear. Unfortunately, the very best speaker I know of does poorly with tube amplifiers with the exception of Atma-Sphere amps. Solid state amps as a rule tolerate difficult and reactive loads better. The best loudspeakers will appreciate better gear up stream but excepting the amplifier you can get away nicely with less expensive equipment. Unfortunately, the cheapest speaker I have heard that disappeared was $30K. On the other hand I have listened to $250K loudspeakers that sounded like  loudspeakers. 

The very best speakers disappear.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Excellent addition to this discussion.
Your post is timely and helpful towards understanding of ~~The Speaker Choice Dilemma~~

Can we take your ~~disappear~ to say, ~voices the music as close as possible to the very actual studio recording~~ provided the studio engineers are capable of producing high fidelity~~.
WE all know there are a few lousey quality recording in the catalogue.

I would add, what speaker can present music, witha certain natural-ness, neutral-ness, channeling the dynamics which are in the actual studio performance, ,
Further
w/o the listener feeling his sensibilities are being attacked in any aggressive manner.
lastly, zero fatigue , or as close to zero as possible.
In my rather limited experience of xover/traditional designs, most have not meet these criteria.
Sure xover/traditional low efficiency designs might sound fantastic to the listener (I thought the world of my Philips 375 2 ways, , then the Thors were The Ultimate) but when enters the room a high fidelity wide band/FR driver, now the listener is made fully aware of all the faults and distortions added to the music by his most perfect xover/traditional design.

FR are the new kids on the block and they mean business.
This is how I see the future of audio comos,
1) That speakers will be understood as The Most Critical Component
( King Amps will now have to , regretfully to many of you here on audiogon, take a distant 2nd place in terms of critical importance ina audio system)
2) That wide band/FR /kigh efficiency drivers will be understood as the most perfect ideally voicing driver ever engineered.
These 2 objectives/goals will take another 10+ years brought to cognition.
1st awareness, next the pondering, reflecting, last the fruits of my hopes that FR/wide band will become The 21st Century Speaker by choice.
10 years, we will see some changes take place.
The FR/wide band is comming into its own by low price drivers from Dayton, Emminence and others these past 10 years, Mostly used for car audio applications.
We owe alot to the early models , Fostex, Lowther, JBL, Seas, for important engineering which the new FR labs have built upon.

Its up to us to acknowledge these new 21st C developments and take the FR new designs into consideration for our next speaker purchase.
FR/High sens speakers are ~~Win~win~Win~Win,  the only weakness, but simply, economical fixable~~ is the roll off on the high register. 
But as i say, the newest high fidelity FR may actually voice the high fq's  w/o the need to add a  Horn tweet.
I havea   budgest 8 FR arriving in 3 weeks, At that point I can make a  determination, The Diatone 6.5 has severe high roll off.  Miniscule fault considering everything  the driver does well with  mids/bass. 

Ii‘s all about the implementation. Not the mode.

@mijostyn --

The problem with the vast majority of speakers including everything Mr Mozartfan is talking about is, they sound like speakers. The very best speakers disappear. Unfortunately, the very best speaker I know of does poorly with tube amplifiers with the exception of Atma-Sphere amps. Solid state amps as a rule tolerate difficult and reactive loads better. The best loudspeakers will appreciate better gear up stream but excepting the amplifier you can get away nicely with less expensive equipment. Unfortunately, the cheapest speaker I have heard that disappeared was $30K. On the other hand I have listened to $250K loudspeakers that sounded like loudspeakers.

Let me guess: those 8’ iteration of the Sound Lab 645’s retail for $30k? I feel rather confident that setting the bar at the top with those speakers will actually have a substantial basis as something that delivers on that "promise," though I don’t understand why you’d skimp out on the subs? ;) Partially kidding; I’d have proposed vertically aligned, flanking bass columns with higher driver count (i.e.: more displacement) to seal the deal, so to speak, but it would seem your current solution is a rather capable one.

Many can’t afford the luxury of a binary approach offered by a main speaker system like yours, and will instead have to make settlement with a solution that more pragmatically dictates the speakers, in conjunction with their interaction with the acoustics, as the (by far) most coloring part of the chain. Indeed, though: sheer displacement and headroom are your friends and among the vital parameters to attain, and yet that demand sees limited following.

~~~ Relentless,  Avenging, Controversial, The Adversary~~
WEll it was a  lobgggg time a  comming,
All dinasaurs are fated to perish.

With that we will try to place this speaker shootout in a  clearer perspective.
We need to list the negatives and positives of each design.
Xover Traditional/conventional/= The Popular vote
all their goods and evils.
Then we list the pluses and minuses of FR/Wide band  single point source drivers.
OK   so lets begin
Lets have 3  weaknesses concerning xover speakers we've all been listening to since the AR's came out in 1975, or Seas A25's, 1960's. .
Then we list the  3 best things we love about the xover things we find difficult to give up. 

Then someone  who knows more about FR than I do, can list the 3 positive and 3 negatives of this  design. 
In this super competitive world, I think this is a fair challenge. 
Consider this contest like the Speaker Olympics. 
Gold is the winner, and  silver ,,,well thats the loser.