The best speaker you ever heard?

EFE T-60s. $5K buys you $20K-sounding speakers.

First off let me just say that their is no one "best" speaker. We all have different ears, hearing and music types that we listen too. We all also have different expectations of what we would like to hear. As well, we all are using different electronics, some with Tubes and some with Solid State. That being said we all are entitled to our opinions. I personally have not heard all the speakers listed yet I am sure they all have their own special sonic qualities. I personally am in love with Dynaudio speakers and their uncanny ability to reproduce just the music with no real masking of anything artificial. The Esotar tweeter in my humble opinion is the finest tweeter to be produced. Why else would SO many other manufacturers be buying that tweeter to place in their boxes? If you ever have the chance to audition the Evidence Master, Evidence Temptation, the new Confidence C4 or C2 with the proper electronics, you all owe it to yourselves. You will not be disappointed. I personally own the Dynaudio Craffts which is a studio monitor produced and marketed in Europe. What a fine piece of craftmanship. Oh, one more thing; for those of you who think that the speaker or the amp or the pre-amp is the most important piece of equipment in your lineup, you are HIGHLY mistaken. The absolute most important piece of equipment bar none, is your source!!! All music starts at the source and works it's way back to the speakers from their. If your source does not reproduce the sound in the most accurate and purest form, everything else down the line is most inconsequential. Great thread by the way.

Happy listening,

Steve Bachman
Phoenix, AZ

Before you spend to much time on discussing which speaker has merit or this one is better then that one, spend a little more time on the right amplifier, consider also that nearly 100% of all professional recording studios use the B&W Nautilus 801as their reference for the best quality sound, ever wondered why??? I own a pair of B&W nautilus 805's the bookshelf variation, the 801's I found to expensive, the 805 really come into their own with an excellent valve amplifier, I have compared most of the speakers, and really Quad is just crap and sorry, so is Dynaudio, you get better flatness and sound accuracy from much cheaper Infinity or Sony speakers, Sonos Faber are for people who do not understand music or have an ear for proper intonnations, I found then highly annoying.

happy listening

Tom Gorman PHD

Hey Tom:

I guess beauty is in the eye, or in this case, the ear of the beholder. That is why their are as many opinions as there are manufacturers. Personally, I wouldn't lamb-baste your speakers and say they are crap. Although they are not my cup of tea since I don't like metal tweeters which make my ears bleed, I wouldn't insult what you own. And as a matter of record, many recording studios in Europe do use Dynaudio and in this country they use a lot of M&K. But you are most welcome to express your opinion just the same.

Happy Listening,

Steve Bachman
Phoenix, AZ

The ones in my rec room, the Revel Salons. I used to have a pair of Dunlavy SC-V's and prior to them the SC-IV's. The Dunlavy's were good but the Salons just do it better. The detail is better at low volume levels, there is more bass punch and the speakers image so well that they dissapear. They are power hungry though, I use to run either of the Dunalavy's with a Bryston 4B-ST and I had to go to 7B-ST monoblocks for the Salons.
I have auditioned the big Wilsons, Avantgarde, Sonus Fabers and others and none have matched the overall performance of the Salons.