What are some of the most underrated and overrated loudspeakers you’ve auditioned?

Years ago I owned the original B&W Nautilus 800, the pre diamond tweeter version.  Like them in the shop but could never get them to image well.  May have been the 9x13x8 room or the c-j tube amps.  Eventually replaced them with Wilson Watt-Puppy 7s.  Marvelous.  

The point of this is a couple of visits recently to my local top line dealer... a Magico shop, and all powerful high prices electronics.  Nice speakers but for the $$$, not for me.

Admittedly I'm a Wilson guy, now with the terrific Yvette's.  
My local high end guy had just picked up the B&W line to fill in the lower price gap in the shop.  He had set up the new 800 D3, so took a listen.  No more kevlar mid range...good.  But you could hear each driver on each side playing.  Tweeter was tweeting, the woofer was woofing, and the mid range was screaming.  Terrible.  

A couple of weeks later I was back in and there they were again.  He asked me to listen again.  Just amazing.  They needed a few hundred hours to break in and now sounded terrific.  Really gave his $100K Magico's a run for the money.  We both agreed the B&W's, well run in, were a terrific value.  You just never know what your listening town making these comparisons...

I tend to evaluate "overrated" or "underrated" based on technology employed and quality of implementation rather than brand, advertising, popularity, etc. 

It means little to me when someone names a particular brand is over or underrated without discussion of the implementation.  

 

My old DLK 1 pair had a more ' live' realism than many more modern, ' accurate' speakers I've owned. Paper driver, cts cone tweeter, real walnut cabinets..I dunno, some low tech magic.

Can’t see what anyone sees in B&e’s.  As a say Where’s the Bass.

think SALK In incredibly underrated.  For $6,000, the Song3 Encores best anything in the $20,000 range maybe $30,000 range.

Sorry Larry just because Salk uses good drivers, they don’t necessarily compete with $20-30k loudspeakers.

We have heard Salks at both CAP and Axpona and they were nice not amazing in any way.

Personally we would take Wilson Vvettes, Rockport Atrias, Vimberg, Persona 7F, Legacy Aeris any day of the week.

At Axpona the Golden Ear Triitron 1R were blowing away most of the sub $10k loudspeakers, look at the reviews from Axpona we were not the only ones saying that most of the reviewers were.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ