Thanks for all the great input. I'm not going to make any changes, at least not for a while without further thought and possibly some auditions. My listed alternatives may very well result in a lateral move, and therefore not worth the hassle of selling and shipping the large 4 speakers I have. I was thinking about Quatros a month ago when I saw a pair at a local dealer and really liked the look of them, so much smaller than the 3A Signatures. Seeing them is what got me thinking about a speaker change. And now there are two pair for sale on Audiogon. I'll listen to them before making any decisions, however I've never found listening in a showroom to provide the definitive answer since nothing sounds the same in your own home, but it helps of course, as does talking to dealers who know what they are talking about. This would be the case for the shop here where I am. Maybe an in-home demo is possible but I doubt it. At any rate a month ago the Quatros seemed to costly, then I saw a used pair of Coincident Super Eclipse speakers (not the latest version) and called Israel Blume about the difference and he convinced me at the price he would deliver a new pair to my door (a nice discount from full retail) these would be the way to go. I enjoyed our correspondence, nice guy and he assured me I wouldn't have the one "problem" I described with my Vandersteen setup. This is the narrowness of the sweet spot, both vertically and horizontally. Not sure how his speakers are able to have the wide sweet spot he described or if they really do. I also asked how he makes them time aligned since most speakers that are have a sloping baffle while the Coincident speakers do not. The answer is the way he implements the D'Appolito alignment. Another nice feature of these speakers is they can be driven by low powered SET and OTL amps since they have such high sensitivity at 92db and nominal impedance of 14 ohms, never dropping below 10. Then I spoke with Roy Johnson of Green Mountain and was equally if not more impressed by him. His description of the Pico Mideo, how it sounds and the science behind it had me thinking of spending more again, but at least less than the Quatros. The Pico Mideos cost $6,500 plus shipping compared to $7,695 I believe for the Quatros with crossovers. And a home demo is possible. You can buy them and return for the cost of shipping both ways. He believes the Pico Mideo will sound much better than the Quatro and explained why but I am unable to remember the details. I'm speaking from memory and aware of the danger of misrepresenting what he said, as well as leaving out most of his explanation, but I think his design is simpler than the Quatro in terms of crossover and the 11-band room compensation controls in each Quatro is problematic from his point of view because of complexity. I apologize to anyone reading this (especially Israel Blume, Roy Johnson and Richard Vandersteen) if I've got it all wrong re: their designs or speaker design in general. I'm just an enthusiast trying to decide between competing speaker implementations who is also a strong believer in phase and time aligned speakers.
