Stereophile complains it's readers are too informed.

It's not least, indeed predominantly due to Art Dudley's fondness of the "incalculable number of iconoclasts, heretics, mavericks, nonconformists, lone wolves, enfants terrible, and hidebound kooks" that Stereophile has seen some degree of real diversity spread these latest years - one so keenly advocated by now editor-in-chief Jim Austin - that would include a limited selection of high sensitivity speakers (by all accounts mostly favored by the "passionate outliers"), without which Mr. Austin's claim would've seemed quite hollow. I still find it is, though, because former editor-in-chief John Atkinson saw to it with his, to my mind, rigid adherence to the low to moderate sensitivity direct radiating speaker dogma - no doubt fueled and aided by his measurements - that horn(/-hybrid) speakers were mostly expelled from any serious consideration in their review slate. With Mr. Dudley now sadly having departed our earthly realm it remains to be seen whether the "hidebound kooks" will have a new ambassador to voice their cause over at the 'Phile. I doubt it.

If only there was a Consumer Reports for high end audio equipment. Would at least insure countless flame wars.  My bet would be the differences would be negligible.  

jpwarren58,

For normal people yes, but we’re audiophiles.

We don’t mind paying exorbitant prices for those loudspeakers that will be guaranteed to induce headaches.

There is a belief that beyond a certain price loudspeakers can start to sound very odd.

In my experience, large expensive loudspeakers tend to impress with huge dynamics and scale (Avantgarde Trio XDs!), but sometimes at the expense of a homogeneous sound.

Even worse, some of them can have what appears to be serious treble/sibilance issues.

You only have to look at the numbers of bad reports regarding some of the Magico and Wilson models.

Everything suggests that they must be excellent transducers, (years of R&D and cost no object materials) yet they seem do something that some folks cannot stand.

Assuming that those people are voicing genuine concerns, and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t, either those speakers are doing something seriously wrong, or it may be they are simply too revealing in laying 'poor' recordings to waste (by poor recordings we mean 95% of released output between 1950 and the present).

More to the point perhaps, recordings that were made using entirely different loudspeakers to the ones being played back on.

Some people believe that you need similar speakers for playback as to the ones that were used in the original recording.

Not an option for most of us when we look at all the different loudspeakers used for monitoring in different studios around the world.

You only have to think how different vintage Tannoy studio monitors sound to vintage JBL studio monitors to realise the problem of audio's notorious circle of confusion.

Hence the need to find an acceptable compromise between the hardware and the software. 

I was lucky with my speakers...

Tannoy dual gold for 40 years...(400 canadian dollars in 1975)

Now for the last 5 years, Mission cyrus 781....( 50 dollars bought used)...

They are very different but the 2 are musical, with more power to fill the house with the Tannoy and a very subtle equilibrium with the Mission... I cannot compare them because they were in vastly different rooms, and connected to very different audio system... but i loved the two dearly and loved the Cyrus, the best Mission ever create...

British rules!

I think you're safe as far as being informed, Erik. "Its" is the word you were looking for in your thread title.