The best speaker you ever heard?


In my opinion, the speaker is by far the most important part of the audio system. After all, it is the only part you hear. OK, the other stuff really matters a lot, but without a great speaker... No go.

I am a bit 'speaker-obsessed' I guess, and now I am wondering: What are the best speakers you have ever heard, and what made them the best?
njonker
ATC active 100's. Can any passive speaker equal active speaker technology? ATC supposedly hads the most accurate mid driver made as well. I haven't heard nautilus 800's but I think ATC beats Thiel 6's.
Martin Logan Statement II. With this speaker, front end and amplifications are as important as the speaker itself. The sub woofer are passive, which is a bouns. You can really tell whether you have a good or bad front end with these four towers in front of you.

Surprisingly, this tower works really well in a 13.8' x 19.5' x 8.5'hight room. It really works!
Heard most of the mid end speakers including Dynaudios, Totems, Sonus Fabers, Kefs, B&Ws, Spendors, Harbeths, JM Reynauds.

So far the best one i have heard and have decided to keep is the Spendor S3/5. Its a small speaker but it does everything right except for bass. Imaging, layering, soundstaging, tonal accuracy, musicality, etc. etc. Its fantastic. So for me, this is the best speaker I have ever owned.
Wisdom Audio back when they only made one speaker. It was driven by a pair (or maybe a trio, I can't remember) of Classe Omega amps fed by Levinson 39 (via an active crossover). Wow. That was as close to audio nirvana as I've come. Way too expensive for me, but hey, they come out and deliver and set up in your home for that $35,000. What a deal.
You inadvertently raise an interesting point. The original Wisdoms had a much simplier crossover ("brain") which did significantly less processing of the signal than the current unit. The reason for the change was to allow the speaker to sound good in almost any room. In gaining flexibility, it no longer ever sounds great in any room; too many IC's, too much processing.