Neutral, transparent, warm

a speaker i tried for a bit [then put back into their shipping boxes] was a vandy 1Ci, in the oversized demo room of a local dealer, they sounded very 3-dimensional [utterly non-boxy if you kept your head in a vice] and warm yet sufficiently clear, run from a rega amp [which doubtless added to the perceived warmth], utterly non-harsh. but when i tried them in my 14' wide by 14" deep listening room, they sounded obnoxiously bright and forward and shouty while simultaneously veiled [driven by old jvc 130 wpc amp]. a disappointment. was told i needed twice the listening room size and another rega amp to duplicate the dealer's experience. no thank you. enter my gently used set of Thiel cs.5 speakers, about half the size of the vandys. the Thiels combine all 3 [aforementioned] attributes. it is the warmest-sounding of all the other Thiel speakers, the only one that can be driven satisfactorily by non-audiophile non-powerhouse amps and the only one that can be used in a small listening room. these speakers are neutrally transparent and image solidly, while the vandys did not, in the same listening room with same amp driving them. the only other speakers i've heard with my own two ears, did not quite have all three attributes in one package. the maggie tympani IIIs were transparent, neutral, but not a trace of warmth. never harsh, just ease and a cold accuracy and images that floated in the room regardless of listener position. no other speaker i've heard could do all that. back in the 80s i heard KEF 105.2 speakers in a fancy schmancy dealer in DC, they were also transparent, neutral but not warm at all. later that decade i heard the revised Snell class A speakers, in a room slightly too small by about half, they were decidedly warm but not KEF-level transparent and not KEF-level neutral, but i could easily have lived with them. i remember they had a visceral deep bass. 

all this reminiscing aside, transparent to me = being able to hear deep [all the way to the back of the recording venue and all around it, from FFF to PPP and everything in between, hearing in between the notes] into the recording without any haze or hash or resonance getting in the way, IOW low distortion. neutral to me means an announcer's voice sounds like you are in the announcer's booth with him, no shriek or boom or overhang/resonance, just clean accurate sound with the same tonal balance as the real thing. warm to me can mean both a bias towards the lower half of the frequency spectrum esp. below about 2k, but also a lack of strain, an ease, a sheer clear naturalness of sound that ties in with transparency and neutrality.

New Duntech Audio Senators and the new Fink Team Borgs are some of the most transparent box speakers on the market. Very Quad like !

Oh yeah, I forgot some of JGH's other analogies about transparency:

In addition to the term "veiling" (thanks for the reminder emrofsemanon!), he likened lack of transparency to a layer of "scrim" (must be a term from before my time, but I get it) being inserted between listener and source.

A quality important to me in the sound of reproduced music that is closely related to transparency is that of "immediacy"---the images being "palpable", as in "reach out and touch it". Another is "forward" vs. "recessed". I think that may be more a function of frequency response than transparency, but the two are not completely separate.

First, is there a difference between “neutral” speaker, and one that is considered “transparent”?

Yes neutral one is more of tonality (frequency response).
The later can be more of a time domain thing. Or it can be something that is different between speakers. 

To me, "neutral" means flat in FR and with very low distortion. A component with nonflat frequency response I'd call "colored."

Agree… and well put in general.

"Transparent" implies low noise and distortion. A transparent component is not necessarily neutral.

Agree in general… but:
Speakers that have cabinet resonances or port noise, or other driver anomalies reveal themselves more easily.
If the distortion is solely harmonic distortion, and when it the same in both channels, then to me it is more like a colouration than anything else… and not always lacking in transparency.

We either hear the speaker or we do not. However some hard panned music is not easy to listen to if one is accustomed to not hearing the speaker when on better recorded music.

"Warm" implies a little boost in the lower midrange, say the two octaves from 100 Hz to 400 Hz. A warm component is colored, but it could be transparent.

Agree.
(If bright is the opposite of warm, then it makes it easy for me to step backwards.)

Let’s confine ourselves to floor standing speakers costing up to $3000. New or used. Give me one or two examples that in your opinion epitomizes “Transparent”, one or  two that are good examples of “neutral”, and a couple that are usually described as being “warm”. Thanks.

My experience (in the extensive sense) is mainly limited to Vandersteens, and in particular the 2C.

There are probably others in the used category that are sub 3k$.
And maybe some in the new category.

If the music plays and you hear the speaker, then it make it quick for me to walk away.

The old Spika was pretty good and cheaper.
The old Magnapaners can be transparent.
The old Duntech/Dunlavy can also be amazing on all those fronts.

Well an interesting topic I would also say that Robert Harley s book would be worth a read. Now first and foremost I bought a set of paradigm studio 100 s it was there top of the line in the day stereophile has them rated as class b borderline class a. Well I believed them and bought them. Huge mistake everytime I bought something it got both better and worse. Each time the resolution and transparency went up they got even brighter. In my opinion bright is the last thing you want. I worry thirty years or more latter when you read about some item having sparkle that to me sounds like they are trying to say something is bright in a nice way. So first advice use your ears to pick items not what you have read somewhere. I since figured out why those speakers had such a good review I realized they had lots of full pages ads in the magazine at the time. They were making money from paradigm. So use your ears. Secondly don't be afraid to buy used you can go up the food chain abunch for the same money. If you have a local HiFi shop or more than one go often and listen to what they have setup. Perhaps write down in a little book what the system is including wire source power preamplifier. Don't be afraid to listening to the really high priced systems as well. It takes experience and skill to decide what component is making the sound bad. You can listen to a hundred thousand dollar two channel where something is wrong and a five thousand dollar system that sounds better. Keep in mind that there are a few things at play there people don't buy fifty thousand dollar speakers just to look at when you read that it assumes that anyone with money is stupid that is not the case particularly if the made there fortune themselves. There is likely a mismatch or a setup or a recording problem. That's where your detective brain comes in from experience. Precise speaker setup will increase the transparency and resolution of any stereo vs just dropped down. And I am talking about exactly the same distance from each wall same toe in level side to side front to back and to the other speaker. Stereo is about the difference in timing between the two channels so you want that timing to be correct when you hear it. If it is not you will hear everything with a blur to it. Terrible recordings are just that junk in equals junk out. Early CDs were terrible or some of them were for that. Lol if you find an old MCA John Denver CD you will understand what bright is. If you turn it up and your ears bleed that bright. Lol. There are different styles of systems and one isn't necessarily better than the other. I like to think about it from the point of view of a painting.  Some one may like Rembrandt and another likes Picasso. Both are wonderful painters or were but the art is very different. With your stereo you are painting a sonic picture so make it your choice. It doesn't matter what I think or anyone else do you get enjoyment from it? If so you have hit the ball out of the park. Enjoyment I think is the end goal. After the paradigm speakers I was with a friend of mine we walked into a store and there was a set of kef 103 speaker there he had the guy hook them up I asked him if he thought they were really better lol he told me to let the moths out of my wallet I bought them and brought them home.that was a transformation. I sold the paradigm speakers and it cost me two hundred difference and I moved a long long ways up. I went to a set of Maggie three point threes that I actively biamped that system after a two year setup experience you could walk around the sound field and shake the singers hand it felt that real.  Currently I have a set of neat speakers in a home theater a set of harbeth slh5 on the big system and a set of equation 25 in a secondary system and a set of some phase in the bedroom. The small neat floor standing speakers go the deepest of any set I have ever owned and they are small. The equation speakers have not been made in years they are easy to drive and interesting they are easy enough to drive that they don't load the Mark Levinson monoblocks I have enough and don't sound the best put them on a tube set of monoblocks and they sing beautifully. Also remember that a balanced system is what you want to good of one item will show what is wrong with the other pieces in your system. A really bright cd player will sound brighter as you get better power pre and better speakers and better wire. Wire in many ways is your tone control. Lol to bad you were not closer I would have you over and you could listen to the difference between the systems all day. You may not like any of them but you could decide what you liked and what you don't like.   Regards