The Worst Speaker you have ever heard.

for the more expensive line the B&W and SOnus FAber
they both have a nasty peak in the mids the B&w more so
around the 5-6k range ,My freind had the 801 untill last new year inner detail was a little indistinct
for single driver units the Zu druid are a little fuzzy in the inner detail compared with the a Dynaudio ,or A ZEN ADagio in a conventional speaker.

Anything by Wilson Audio. Dry as a desert. They leave me cold every time. I listened to Wilson Watt fives at one time and was totally unimpressed. In the same room they had a pair of slightly used Dunlavy SC-1's. (Their entry level speaker.) The Dunlavys sounded better in every way. I bought them that day. $700 the pair and they were far more musical than the $15,000 Wilsons. I have never heard a Wilson speaker that I like. I have heard many speakers in the $1,500 to $2,000 a pair range that are far better.

Anything by Wilson Audio. Dry as a desert. They leave me cold every time.

I've heard exactly 1 pair of Wilsons at a friend's house, WP 8s driven by Pass Labs. Absolutely beautiful sounding system, worth the price I suppose if you have the money.
And I'm a SET / Hi eff guy, so it's not like I lean towards dry and analytical.

Well, the worst ones in a home stereo system are almost always the real crappy cheap ones that have come in compact stereo systems from the likes of Aiwa, TEchnics, Soundesign, Sanyo, Panasonic, Sony, Fisher, and the others for years that are cheap and mass produced.

The worst ones I have heard that were very expensive and should have sounded good were Peak Consults at Sound By Singer in NYC a few years back. All bass high end, no midrange. Something must have been wrong with the setup somewhere, yet this mega buck system was demoed as if normal. I've never heard Peak Consults otherwise so hard to say for sure. Maybe it was fine and there is someone out there that would take to the flavor of the sound, which admittedly was quite different from most anything else I have ever heard.

I've also heard some large Sonus Fabers sound really bad run off Krell amps in an old shop in Paramus NJ a few years back, but I know that was an aberration in that I have heard the same SFs sound very nice elsewhere set up right.

Mapman, would your experience with Sonus Faber and Krell have been at a Harvey Electronics store (there used to be one in Paramus)? I heard the same combo at a Harvey down in Eatontown, NJ, and it also sounded awful. It was definitely the room (flimsy sheetrock walls); the poor distributor rep doing the demo was beside himself, finally shook the walls to let us know that it wasn't the speakers that were the problem. I too have heard SF speakers sound very nice in better conditions.