Speaker Preferences?

Yeah, I tell you what I'd like to see from at least Wilson and Revel, is some "ACTIVE" speaker offerings! Dynamics for such clear, detailed, and uncolored sounding speakers would/should be off the charts for ANY source material.
I still feel this is where most fall short. I think we have, even mentioned above, entirely too many similar sounding, clear, refined, detailed, and otherwise well balanced sounding high end speakers to chose from, with even a little initiative and some cash. Higher end active, more efficient audiophile choices would be more pleasing to someone into "heavier(?) sound", personally

Meagan02,

I would go listen to all of them. People can tell you what they prefer, but no one but you knows what you will end up prefering. Save yourself from possibly making a big mistake and go demo them personally.

Out of the three I've listened to, I would go with the Sophias, but that's my personal preference. I know a lot of people that would go with the Revels, but I also know a lot of people that would go with the Sophias too...

Funny enough, I was in that higher-end section of Best Buy (Magnolias?) the day before yesterday and I got to hear those Vantage speakers... I didn't like them much, but that is just my preference.

The Sophias are among my favorite speakers, but the Vantage would be a close second for most things. I would say that they need to be positioned right and run with the proper upstreams to get them to sound good (the ML moreso).

Dull would not be the word I would describe them. Unlike other speakers I have heard (Cremona, BW 802D, Wilsons), I feel that the current ML Xstat ESL series speakers (Summits mostly) are less "showy" the first time you hear them. They do not have a truly audible signature to the sound, no "wow" factor aside from the disappearing act. This may be the reason some all it dull.

However, position it right... by that I mean toe them in and get your ears at the right seated height, get some tubes in the system and a good source - wallah... supremely coherent and very musical.

My 2 cents.

BTW, most of the MLs I've heard at dealers sound nothing like their potential... in fact, I wont hide the fact that I find dealers' ML setups sound like crap. Meaning - don't judge them based on hearing them at a dealer.... especially Magnolia/Best Buy. Imagine if you heard the Wilsons at a BestBuy running on an $800 receiver.

BTW, most of the MLs I've heard at dealers sound nothing like their potential... in fact, I wont hide the fact that I find dealers' ML setups sound like crap. Meaning - don't judge them based on hearing them at a dealer.... especially Magnolia/Best Buy. Imagine if you heard the Wilsons at a BestBuy running on an $800 receiver.

So basically you are saying, we shouldn't ever trust hearing them set up by any dealer if we don't like how they sound? So what do we have to do to hear them correctly, buy a pair and have a ML representative come to our homes and set them up for us (we can't have the dealer do it, since you are telling us that most of them don't know how to set them up either and if they can't do it correctly as people that do it for a living, where does that leave us customers...)? Aren't dealers ML trained representatives? Those seem like even greater reasons to stay away from that speaker line to me...

BTW, Magnolia doesn't use the same gear as BestBuy proper, and my Wilsons wouldn't sound bad on a low value receiver (unless it was malfunctioning or too underpowered), I just wouldn't get that extra 3-5% that an all high quality product system would give (assuming the products are high quality and not just overpriced junk)..

dealer's demonstrations are problematical. the best suggestion is to visit several dealers and listen to a spekaer on your short list. if you observe some consistent sonic patterns, maybe you can trust the demonstrations.

if the "sound" varies significantly, you may need to get a home trial. if this is not feasible, you are facing the risk of not liking the speaker when you buy it.