The best speaker you ever heard?

Gallardo, I like your $8,000 limit. Would you rate 4 or 5 current models you think are as good as money will buy ?

What about the Wilson Maxx 2? Can the duos get that kind of bottom end clean, sharp punchy bass response???

Legacy Whispers are Whonderful!

KLIPSCHORNS--Read on..I'll tell you why. Before I ended up with a pair, I been nosing around high end audio stores and listening to some high end setups. I have heard GRAND UTOPIAS, AVANTGARDE DUOS AND TRIOS, WILSON GRAND SLAM and DYNA AUDIO--can't remember the model but their about 7ft. tall. The salesman usually tells me what the speaker is all about and more importantly the price. None of these speakers impress me. I don't know, maybe because of the listening room--or just the overall setup. One weekend I got invited to a get together in a friend's house. In the basement they had a pair of 1985 KLIPSCHORN on the corners-- 20 FT. apart being driven by a 300B SET amp. The chair I sat on was about 8 ft from the front wall. For the first time the hair all over my body stood up. I could not believe what I was hearing. The depth and width of the Soundstage, the three dimensional very life like midrange and the immediacy. That's when I found out that these speakers where first made in the late 40's to present with very little changes. Now why would a company make the same speakers for over 50 years if it's not THE BEST SPEAKERS in the planet.

Yo, Justubes,
I owned K-horns for 20+ years. I absolutley loved everthing about them...BUT, the 4,000 Hz - 8,000 Hz peak drove me crazy. On almost all of my classical recordings, they made the violins sound like wire, and twangy wire at that. Higher-pitched brass instruments would drive you from the room with a whanging headache. Their bass was the deepest, most natural I have EVER heard, and their legendary sensitivity made them driveable to full volume on less than a watt. Hell, I could have driven them to 100db with a battery-powered wristwatch! I kept them for 20 years for their virtues, hoping to be able to eliminate the one damnable flaw by experimenting with different electronics, etc. But no luck. I finally sold them, for TWICE what I paid for them, and the buyer was ecstatic (still is) to get 'em so cheap! Now, THAT's value!!
I never had a room that was large enough to space them 20 feet apart, though. The most I could do was around 15-16. I DID hear K-horns, with a derived center channel (the "Heresy," I believe), in an enormous room...it had to be over 40' wide. If you sat at least 30-40 feet away from them, the peak was ameliorated and they sounded fine. The guy (lives in Hong Kong) used vintage McIntosh tubes...25 watts per side. I suspect you are right, that SET's in a large, LARGE room might do the trick. You'd only need 1/2 to 1 watt to fill the LA coliseum! Even though I had no luck with 'em, it's fun to read about someone else who responded so positively to these "old" classics.
Happy listening!
Gerald Clifton