The Shure V15 V with a Jico SAS/B stylus VS The Soundsmith Hyperion MR and Lyra Atlas SL

@mijostyn 

"I specified the distance, 10th Row"

True, and many people would roughly agree with you.  But there is nothing mathematically special about the 10th row.  Why not the 9th or the 12th?  Or an equal distance behind the orchestra?  I hear your advice but want to also make my own mind up.  It is well worth reading Morten Lindberg's philosophy of the art of recording About 2L (Lindberg Lyd).

"It takes a full range line array from 18 Hz to 20 kHz"

If the alternative is separate dynamic drivers, then I understand where you are coming from.  But there is an alternate solution which should be better. The problem with a line array is the arrival times from the top, middle and bottom differ, which produces wave reinforcement and cancellation at various frequencies.  One symptom is that your head has to be at the 'right' height for the audio image to snap into place.  A secondary issue is that the path length differences are accentuated by reflections from room surfaces.

The solution I prefer is the virtual point source electrostatic panel invented by Peter Walker of Quad in 1963.  These panels have all the virtues of other elecrostatics, plus the point-source.  Most people including reviewers don't really get how the virtual point source works, so here's my interpretation. 

Imagine a point source of sound waves one foot behind a flat sheet of mylar.  As a wavefront starts to radiate from the point source, it first contacts the center of the mylar sheet, then progressively expands outwards in a full circle which grows in diameter.  The geometry and timing are totally determined by the speed of sound.

Peter Walker's design drives the mylar sheet electrostatically with a set of concentric anode rings carrying the audio signal.  The signal is delayed slightly to each successive ring, so the net effect (except in the plane of the panel) emulates that point source of sound a foot behind the panel.

It is not immediately obvious why this should sound good, but the answer lies in the coherence of both the direct sound and reflected sounds.  This speaker and its descendants are widely recognised as the most accurate speaker.  Note I did not say best!  For one thing, they do not play particularly loud.  When my ESL-63 pair was working, I got them louder by relieving them of bass load by using a pair of Duntech Thor sub-woofers.

Duntech was the brainchild of US physicist John Dunlavy, who moved to Australia and designed and built his high tech Sovereign speakers here.  Above all, they were designed to be loud and time-coherent. The reference speaker he used was the Quad ESL-63.  He designed the Thor to go under, which also raised the ESL to a better height.  When he returned to the US, he launched Dunlavy as a more affordable brand.

Later I replaced the Thor sub-woofers with an 18" Velodyne servo-controlled unit which can go very deep.  It comes with its own microphone and equalisation capabilities. Time coherence disappears as an issue at the long wavelengths of deep bass.

When my ESL-63 speakers started to fail, I replaced them with ESL-2905 which are identical except they have six panels instead of four, to give more bass extension, and are tilted slightly back.  This FRED (Full Range Electrostatic Doublet) goes quite low from 32-Hz to 21-kHz -6dB.  More impressively the harmonic distortion is quoted (100-dB on-axis at 1-meter) as 0.15% above 1000-Hz, 0.5% above 100-Hz and 1.0% above 50-Hz.

"To get the best image the channels have to be equalized separately and have exactly the same response curve so that the volume of the two channels is exactly the same at all frequencies between 100 Hz and 12 kHz. No two speakers are exactly the same"

The final quality test for Quad is to position a reference speaker and the test exactly equidistant from a microphone. A square wave (which theoretically contains all harmonics) is played through one speaker, and out-of-phase through the other.  The speaker passes if there is complete cancellation, that is to say no output from the microphone.

"Then you put them in different locations and they become very even drastically different".  

Peter Walker made a big thing of getting the room eigenvalues right, whatever that means.  But once the speakers are positioned, you can walk around several paces without losing the imaging.  When you get close to one speaker, you can hear the sound coming from a foot behind, even when you move behind the speaker.  There is meant to be a null in the plane of the speaker, but I have two ears, and they are never both in that plane.  It is quite uncanny.

"IMHO every audiophile should have a USB measurement microphone and an audio program for their computer".

That's what I am doing with my Garrard project.  Measuring every change when playing a silent track!  One of my cartridges is a Shure V15 type III which vaguely keeps this on-topic!

Once again we seem to be in violent agreement on most things ...

Anyone remember Sonus Blue??   

What is so interesting is that Mijostyn and I arrived at the same speakers (full range ESLs) driven by the same brand of amplifier (Atmasphere) completely independent of one another and before we ever met on this forum, and yet we differ emphatically on every other aspect: on the absolute necessity of subwoofers (I think the idea is good but I am living without in favor of simplicity; whereas in Mijo's case subwoofers are a must, and it must be a specific design of subwoofer), on the indispensability of digital processing (I wouldn't have that crap in my house), on the necessity to equalize (for me, not even in the analog domain), and in general to allow anything digital into the analog listening chain.  (I don't hate digital, but if I want digital, I would use a digital source.)  I'd love to hear his system and to have him hear mine.

@richardbrand In relation to the Quad ESL Speakers, I am a user of Stacked 57's that are completely refurbished and are also incorporating a replacement Treble Panel that creates + 3dB lift to the Upper Frequency.

Within my Local Audio Group there are Fully Original 57's, Fully Original Stacked 57's, there have been 63's, both very early production models and later models, 2812 and 2912's.

My experiences had within the Audio Group, is that out of all the listening experiences had, there is only the Later production ESL 63's that did not impress in the same capacity that the other models have.

This same experience of the 63 model has extended to my hearing it in use outside of the Audio Group, when the 63 is heard and not enjoyed the likely hood is a Later Production Model is in use.

There are a Group of individuals in the UK who carry out modifications to the 63, there are suggestions a structural change was made to the later produced models  production techniques. Maybe the changes by the Group of individuals is to create the sonic that is capable of being created. Which has much closer similarities to the one that has been discovered in the earliest run of the production models.    

@richardbrand What is so special about the 10th row is that is where we use to sit, I can vouch for that location. The presentation may be better elsewhere, but I can not say.

You obviously do not under stand how lines sources work. The best are continuous such as ribbons and ESLs. Separate dynamic drivers works OK in a concert system, but not so much in a home system. If the drivers are less than 1/2 wavelength of the highest frequency they are to reproduce apart the drivers function acoustically as one driver and if the combination of drivers is longer than the lowest wavelength then they function as a line source, a one driver line source. What you talk about does not happen. Another way to look at it is you are only listening to the portion of the line source that is closest to your ear, the size of that portion increasing as the frequency drops. There is no cancelation or reinforcement. What you do get is more powerful projection by an order of magnitude and a unique radiation pattern that limits early reflections to the front wall only, very easy to control. The virtual point source you are touting is the exact opposite. It is the weakest radiator with the maximal amount of room interaction. Peter Walker blew it on that one. It was Jim Strickland of Acoustat who finally got it right when he came out with the "+" series. For a line source to function as one down to 1 Hz the line has to terminate at barriers, floors and ceilings or be 50 feet long. If you think that square wave test works you are smoking some good stuff. That is a fairy tail or marketing drivel. No two speakers are exactly alike and music is not square waves. In ESLs just the variance between transformers is enough to throw things off forgetting about stator distances and flatness. I was involved in the testing and formatting of the HQD system back in the late 70's. I have blown up more quads than you have listened to. I have also been using ESLs since then with a few short interruptions. All have been line sources since 1981.   You should get a CD or computer program with Sine Sweeps and you can measure your system's frequency response. Very informative. 

    @pindac  That is what the HQD system was, Stacked 57s with a Decca Ribbon Tweeter between the two and 30" Hartley subwoofers. It was amazing...when working. We blew 57s and ribbons almost every day. They were so much cleaner than anything else of the day that it was easy to turn them up above their handling capability, except for the woofers. Those were indestructible. The Quads would blow before they distorted. Sound Labs speakers will saturate transformers before the panels suffer any damage and their dispersion is more controlled than stacked 57s. If you are not using subwoofers you can actually rap the diaphragm against the stators without doing any damage. Later Quads lacked the magic of the 57s, with all their weaknesses the 57's did something no other loudspeaker did, make the midrange sound real.

@lewm  Ditto

@stringreen No

I have installed the capacitors in my XLR to RCA adapters which are in line with my phono cables. The harshness is gone, a big plus. I have to listen more before I can make any definitive comments other than for $480 this is some cartridge. I do have a slight noise issue I have to conquer, probably a grounding issue.