Dan,
You’re gonna get us kicked off this thread ;-)
I’ve got another long thread going detailing my auditions of many speakers, often comparing against my Thiels. Most don’t fully hold up.I even preferred my Thiels to the latest Magical A3 speaker.
I am however smitten by Joseph Audio Perspective speakers (incredible purity of tone) and Devore Fidelity Orangutan speakers (they sound very organic, richer than most speakers, yet do rhythm/drums etc in a super compelling manner).
Other speakers I really like are ones I own: Waveform (very neutral yet warm tone, image like crazy, very palpable), my MBL 121 omnis (incredible tone, peerless 3 dimensional imaging), and my small little Spendor S3/5 (which are so smooth, open, rich and engaging they always have me wondering at first "Maybe this is all I need!" until I put on content that really needs some bass foundation). And my Hales Transcendence 1 speakers (which do HT duty, but I often hook them up to my two channel system for a change. Incredible timbral beauty, rich, spacious, though missing the palpability factor of the Thiels) All spend some time in my system at one point.
The thing I come back to with the Thiels is the coherence, lack of speaker/box artifacts, tone and density/palpability of the sound.
