High Performance Audio - The End?

"Flawed" is a pretty harsh assessment of a budget speaker. It had severe fiscal limitations, a price point to hit. Some slack has to be given for that. True, the hype has been over the top. I certainly was not overly impressed when hearing the bookshelf Elac that people were falling over themselves to make hyperbolic statements regarding the performance. It was another bookshelf. One that did impress me duly was the Ryan Speakers bookshelf model. 

Power compression is another common form of distortion that can occur in a high resolution system.

@dannad 

I don't think I have had enough caffeine yet this morning for this thread.

This thread gives me a headache, coffee or no coffee... ugh

The AF-61 was 5K list; that's hardly budget territory.  And despite all the innovative design, it was bass shy.

@millercarbon-I don't understand your comment concerning background music speakers.  I assume that you were not writing about Von Schweikerts, Lumenwhites or Legacy speakers.  My Signature IIIs in my second system kills the Elac Andante-no contest.  Sure, it's a $6,500 or $7,500 in its current iteration.  The Tekton I heard was not for me as it is too limiting in listening width, a one person speaker, which is fine if that is what you want it to do.  Same with Quad 57s-they can be upgraded to excellent quality but lack dynamics and bass no matter what one does to it.  

The other problem I find in many high end system is poor matching of components and bad cabling (which can cost as much as the equipment).  I can play electric 78s and mono LPs and derive great musicality despite sonic limitations.  No one comes to my home (pre-Covid) and said anything about my analog sound.  Usually, they couldn't tell it wasn't a digital format since record noise was absent just the music was heard.  The worst problem I have with poor recordings is compressed sound (don't get me started about phony stereo-95% of the time bad).  Weird balances, frequency anomalies, missing highs and/or bass are not always detrimental to musical enjoyment but the better the system, the better the communication of the music despite the recording faults.  

Purchasing high end sounding speakers used is generally a great idea.  There is competition for the Tekton brand at similar prices.  There are always trade-offs but I would rather own older VS speakers at the same price (or my current Legacy speakers) than Tektons as I desire a wide seating/listening area with big dynamics and near electrostat quality mids..