The best speaker you ever heard?

Well, The ones that I owned and enjoyed the most ? Not the most accurate of all, but of superior musicality and the best bass panels I ever heard in my life...Magnepan timpanys, hands down!. When i can follow every single chord of a bass guitar without straining and hear and feel the texture of the kick pedal impacting on the bass drum, thats Amore!! They also have plenty of bass!! better than any subwoofer and more natural!! I love the Timpanys! anyone who says that they do not have bass, don't understand the principles of positioning planar speakers as opposed to Dynamic speakers for the best bass response!

Best Sound I heard at CES 2004 was a French Speaker called PRAM. Horn-loaded mid/tweeter crossed over to 2(12) woofers in D'appollito configuration. Front end was all Jadis, the CD player, JPL line preamp and JA-80 monoblocks. Lovely, super seductive liquid mids. Very coherent. Dynamic. Only lacking in extreme lows and highs but you don't care. You only want to hear another tune. Wow! Almost bought the show sample but reason prevailed. I certainly can't afford to upgrade my entire system to do them justice.

Avantgarde Duos. In a big room with vinyl and tubes, they sound like real music. Even my wife is impressed!

The closest sound to live music, is the new Von Schweikert VR 11, which was demonstrated in Vegas this year at the 2004 Show. We compared live versus recorded each night, with the help of wold famous recording engineer (13 platinum records (?)) Chris Huston, by making on the spot, "live recordings" of Misty River, a wonderfully tallented group of beautiful young ladies possessing absolutely heavenly voices.(Please buy their albums!!) The sound we achieved using the VAC electronics was spectacular, but the cardboard-like walls of the ballrooms of the venue at the San Remo, were an obviously limiting factor for us all (including our friends in other rooms) Even so it was, by all accounts stupendous.
The bottom line is that, NOTHING IS CLOSE TO THESE SPEAKERS for realism of sound. With a frequency response of @ 10HZ to beyond 50KHZ, they pretty much cover the full musical spectrum. They list for $100K, and I know that this is a great deal of money, so one must ask, are they worth it? Not to a neophyte or beginner, but for those in search of the Holy Grail of Speakers, I would say, unequivocally, YES!!!Everyone who heard them agreed that they are beyond amazing...and now for the good (call it even better, news... for those not able to come to the Vegas show, Von Schweikert Audio has the VR-11's set up in their private listening studio in San Marco, California, at this very moment, making them available for private auditions. I am now using the Halcro Mono Block amps for the electronics, since we no longer have the VAC. Good news gets better: I am currently booking flights for interested parties, First Class (credit with purchase) and hotel accommodations. This is an experience that any music lover will never, ever forget.
Email me @ lrsky@bellsouth.net Serious inquiries only, of course.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Larry R. Staples
President Emeritus, Von Schweikert New Business Devopment Worldwide

The best speaker system I ever heard was the Wilson Audio WAMMs, years ago. They could reproduce the dynamics of a full-scale orchestra and still present a close approximation of the sound of real instruments.
But, the top of the line Soundlabs I've heard recently (Ultimate-1s, I think) are better at capturing the nuance of detail and the size and shape of the "acoustic image" of a real instrument's sound and are the best I know of, now, especially at anything other than ear-splittingly loud levels.