Years ago, I purchased Alon 5s based on outstanding reviews and I owned them for several years. During that time, I was never "thrilled" with how they sounded, the way I sometimes was with my previous ADS L810s and B&W M803s. I kept working with Carl and upgrading the speakers with the bass driver upgrade, alnico midrange and tweeter upgrades, outboard crossover upgrades (same as Circe) but still, they just never sounded good to me. It took years before I realized the cause of my problems was probably me - based on my choices in partnering equipment and the types of music I listened to, and that the speakers were probably just not an appropriate design for my preferences. The Alons had the unfortunate combination of sounding best when driven by tubes yet needing a robust amount of power. I was listening to rock and blues while driving them with SS amplifiers. On one hand, some would probably say the Alons never had a chance to show what they can do, on the other hand some would say a properly designed speaker should sound good on a wide range of music, regardless of the type of amplification.
The point is that some of the speakers mentioned may have not lived up to their potential for certain owners because of issues with power, impedance matching, room acoustics, or something else, but not because the speaker is poorly designed. In addition, I now take reviews with a healthy dose of skepticism, since I have read many where the partnering equipment seemed inappropriate for the piece being reviewed and some where (amazingly) the reviewer even admits as much yet then tries to draw conclusions based on the discrepancies, i.e., "I drove the Theil CS7s with my flea-powered SET amplifier and they sounded super pure at SPLs that would not worry my next door neighbors in this thin-walled apartment complex." These threads are certainly interesting to read but folks should consider that one size does not necessarily fit all.
