Wilson Sasha, SF Amati Anniversario, Thiel CS3.7

Wilson speakers do a great job of revealing your electornics and cables. IMO they sound very Hi-Fi-ish and unpleasant with solid state.

That very much depends on electronics. Wilsons sound great with Pass XA or Dartzeel SS amps. Those are just two combinations I personally tried, but I bet there are many, many more available.

That beeing said - the best I have heard was the combination with a SET amp. Not because Wilsons need tubes to sound good, but 'cos SET amps IMO sound better than transistor amps. Of course, YMMV.

SET amp for Wilsons? I thought they are quite tough to drive. Speaking of SET amps, I forgot to mention in my original post that I will be listening to the Sasha, Amati and Thiel CS3.7 using the Avantgarde/SET combo as my benchmark because they have made the biggest and most profound impression on me thus far. A SET amp is ideal for the Avantgarde because of the latter's sensitivity rating of 104dB with a nominal impedance of 8 ohms.

I will also audition the Avalon Indra but I'll have to take a one hour plane ride to do this. I will be listening to the Indra together with Spectral DMC-30SS pre and DMA-360 monoblocks. Yummy!

Looks like you are in for a good time. I am looking forward to reading your impressions.

Wilson uses high order crossovers that require putting the mid range driver out of phase with respect to the tweeter and woofer in order to compensate for the ridiculous phase angle created near the crossover point. This destroys harmonic content of timbre, by design. Why anyone would accept this is beyond me. It must be the paint jobs.

Thiel has always used 1st order crossovers which cause the least phase angle distortion and hence preserve the most harmonic content of timbre. For some of us that matters.

Wanna preserve the harmonic content of timbre? Then it's a no brainer.

Stevecham,

you must be more knowledgeable about speaker design than a man who has successfully marketed the best selling high end speaker over $10,000 K. His speakers continue to earn raves all over the globe.

Did you stay at a holiday inn last night ?