Speakers The single most critical component

research involves viewing on-line videos. I don't see how that can be of ANY value in evaluating sonic performance.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Yes and no,. 
Agree its very dif to make a  rock solid determination of how a speaker voices, its qualities all based ona YT vid.
Yet is larryi makes a  YT video and then we meet in person. 
How or why would your voice be any different from what i hear on the YT vid?
2ndly
Im my 40 yrs spealer experience, not a  single one matches what the Diatone 6.5 does for musical presentation. 
I can see absoluetly no reason whatsoever to continue with any/every/all xover standard/traditional speaker design, not when there is  a  high fidelity wide band in the room.
There is not even 1 xover/traditional speaker that would change my ideas about the  FR supreme victory over the old standard design. 
Not sure why there is so much resistence on this board for FR/wide band single source???
When  the Voxativ is up N running in my system, I will upload many YT videos, showing off what this driver can do, BUt my video will be superior to any current YT Voxativ vids, all the current YT vids on Voxativ  have poor choice in music selection, which does nothing to reveal the full potential of this driver.
Voxativ drivers are only limited by the associated equipment it is paired with. 

The problem with the vast majority of speakers including everything Mr Mozartfan is talking about is, they sound like speakers. The very best speakers disappear. Unfortunately, the very best speaker I know of does poorly with tube amplifiers with the exception of Atma-Sphere amps. Solid state amps as a rule tolerate difficult and reactive loads better. The best loudspeakers will appreciate better gear up stream but excepting the amplifier you can get away nicely with less expensive equipment. Unfortunately, the cheapest speaker I have heard that disappeared was $30K. On the other hand I have listened to $250K loudspeakers that sounded like  loudspeakers. 

The very best speakers disappear.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Excellent addition to this discussion.
Your post is timely and helpful towards understanding of ~~The Speaker Choice Dilemma~~

Can we take your ~~disappear~ to say, ~voices the music as close as possible to the very actual studio recording~~ provided the studio engineers are capable of producing high fidelity~~.
WE all know there are a few lousey quality recording in the catalogue.

I would add, what speaker can present music, witha certain natural-ness, neutral-ness, channeling the dynamics which are in the actual studio performance, ,
Further
w/o the listener feeling his sensibilities are being attacked in any aggressive manner.
lastly, zero fatigue , or as close to zero as possible.
In my rather limited experience of xover/traditional designs, most have not meet these criteria.
Sure xover/traditional low efficiency designs might sound fantastic to the listener (I thought the world of my Philips 375 2 ways, , then the Thors were The Ultimate) but when enters the room a high fidelity wide band/FR driver, now the listener is made fully aware of all the faults and distortions added to the music by his most perfect xover/traditional design.

FR are the new kids on the block and they mean business.
This is how I see the future of audio comos,
1) That speakers will be understood as The Most Critical Component
( King Amps will now have to , regretfully to many of you here on audiogon, take a distant 2nd place in terms of critical importance ina audio system)
2) That wide band/FR /kigh efficiency drivers will be understood as the most perfect ideally voicing driver ever engineered.
These 2 objectives/goals will take another 10+ years brought to cognition.
1st awareness, next the pondering, reflecting, last the fruits of my hopes that FR/wide band will become The 21st Century Speaker by choice.
10 years, we will see some changes take place.
The FR/wide band is comming into its own by low price drivers from Dayton, Emminence and others these past 10 years, Mostly used for car audio applications.
We owe alot to the early models , Fostex, Lowther, JBL, Seas, for important engineering which the new FR labs have built upon.

Its up to us to acknowledge these new 21st C developments and take the FR new designs into consideration for our next speaker purchase.
FR/High sens speakers are ~~Win~win~Win~Win,  the only weakness, but simply, economical fixable~~ is the roll off on the high register. 
But as i say, the newest high fidelity FR may actually voice the high fq's  w/o the need to add a  Horn tweet.
I havea   budgest 8 FR arriving in 3 weeks, At that point I can make a  determination, The Diatone 6.5 has severe high roll off.  Miniscule fault considering everything  the driver does well with  mids/bass. 

Ii‘s all about the implementation. Not the mode.

@mijostyn --

The problem with the vast majority of speakers including everything Mr Mozartfan is talking about is, they sound like speakers. The very best speakers disappear. Unfortunately, the very best speaker I know of does poorly with tube amplifiers with the exception of Atma-Sphere amps. Solid state amps as a rule tolerate difficult and reactive loads better. The best loudspeakers will appreciate better gear up stream but excepting the amplifier you can get away nicely with less expensive equipment. Unfortunately, the cheapest speaker I have heard that disappeared was $30K. On the other hand I have listened to $250K loudspeakers that sounded like loudspeakers.

Let me guess: those 8’ iteration of the Sound Lab 645’s retail for $30k? I feel rather confident that setting the bar at the top with those speakers will actually have a substantial basis as something that delivers on that "promise," though I don’t understand why you’d skimp out on the subs? ;) Partially kidding; I’d have proposed vertically aligned, flanking bass columns with higher driver count (i.e.: more displacement) to seal the deal, so to speak, but it would seem your current solution is a rather capable one.

Many can’t afford the luxury of a binary approach offered by a main speaker system like yours, and will instead have to make settlement with a solution that more pragmatically dictates the speakers, in conjunction with their interaction with the acoustics, as the (by far) most coloring part of the chain. Indeed, though: sheer displacement and headroom are your friends and among the vital parameters to attain, and yet that demand sees limited following.