Your experience/thoughts on Meadowlark speakers, esp., Kestrel, 2, hot rod. etc

I owned a pair of Shearwater Hot Rods a long time ago. They sounded a little mellow in the room I had them in. They were placed well away from the side walls and I was sitting lower than the tweeter axis.

I listened to a pair of Thiels - not sure what model - but I felt the upper midrange / treble seemed accentuated.

Vandersteen speakers also follow a similar philosophy to Meadowlark and Thiel - first order crossover, time aligned drivers.

IMHO, easier to drive but not as good as Thiels. YMMV.

i owned the kestrel hotrods and i'm sorry i sold them--very "musical," with seamless driver coherence  and none of the exaggerated frequencies that other manufacturers use to create the illusion of more detail. they also imaged well, with lots of space between the performers. some might find them bass-shy--they don't plumb the depths--but they're  at least adequate+ they're easy to drive and not super-fussy about front end--i ran them with an arcam avr for awhile and they sounded fine.