Sonus Faber Guarneri vs Guarneri Memento

If someone picks a speaker because of its tweeter behaviour, or soundstage or any other audiophile trick, he/she is missing the point. I pick a system or a speaker for the matter, based on the overall presentation of music and how the artist intention is rendered thru the chain, anything less than that becomes boring talk and a waste of precious time IMHO.

Trust your own ears is what I always tell people, you system should please yourself, not others.

If you have a chance to hear a super high resolution system consisting of diamond/ribbon/Be tweeters at length, even better if you can live with them for months, and go back to hear an older silk dome, you will know what I am talking about.

I am super sensitivie to brightness/harshness of any kind, I sold my Wilson WP 5.1 after owning them a month for that exact reason. I still like Esotar based speakers because they are very easy to listen to, but when compared to newer and better tweeters Esotar is showing its age. Sorry, technology in mechanical, electrical, and psychoacoustic engineering have advanced very far in the past 20 years. I have to admit diamond tweeter is very seductive, as much as I used to hate B&W (sold 802N in no time too), the new B&W diamond are very capable speakers as well as other diamond speakers like Tidal, Avalon, and Marten Design.

An older design that masks out micro dynamic and details though pleasant to listen to can't be called world class when compared to the current SOTA. Not saying GH is garbage, it's far from it, but GM simply does more in recreating music and that's a fact.

Once again Semi, what is IYHO a 'fact' is far from it.
Is the Esotar still SOTA, not to your ears, ok I can accept that, however,
to say it masks micro dynamics and detail tells me that there is something else in your system that is the culprit in that area.( The Esotar certainly does not do that in my system, in fact my female a'phile friend enjoys this aspect greatly and I suspect she has better hearing than you do!) I don't know what is in your system as i notice that for some reason you don't post it on 'Agon and therefore we have no way of seeing your room or equipment.
I presume that you own the GM's and therefore the bias.BTW, you seem to have owned numerous pieces of equipment that have come and gone, are you really happy with the GM's?

All I know is.. If I were left alone with a set of Guarneri Memento's for more than an hour.. terrible things would happen to em'.. >: )

Daveyf,

I do try as many piece of gears as I can just to learn each and everyone's strength and weakness. I only keep what I like, the beauty of Audiogon is I can afford to try more gears w/o losing much money and only keep what I like. and yes, I like GM and therefore I decided to keep them. like buying stock, I learn to not marrying to your stereo equipments and use your ears to decide what to keep.

I suggest you do a bit more reading on the pro and con of Dynaudio Esotar, even call some speaker designers and chat with them including those who do not use Esotar. keep in mind there are no perfect drivers, but some are better than others.

reason why drivers are so important in speaker design, it's like the ingredient of a main course and you can't expect to make beef taste like chicken. I almost want to say I can successfully identify Dynaudio speaker blinded folded, afterall I have owned them a long time and know them intimately well.

have fun listening and shopping.