The best speaker you ever heard?

That old, "Source first," axiom must come to rest. No golden ear front end has ever overcome the deficiency of other components. Besides, the title of this topic thread is, "What best speaker have you ever heard." In my case, I bought the best speaker I ever heard, and have constructed a system around it.

I completely agree with Mr. Muralman.

I owned a pair of the original (read extremely large and heavy) Apogee speakers and still feel that in a number of areas (detail, transparency, speed, low level rtesolution) they are the best speaker that I have ever heard; however, I did not find them them to be conducive to long term listening enjoyment using either matcjed ML3's, 2 pairs of ML2's or the largest of the then current Krells. Perhaps, I just never found the right amps.

Fcrowder, I hear you. Frankly, the only amp eater made by Apogee is the Scintilla, my speaker. The Diva needed to be bi or even triamped. That can be expensive. The Duetta Sig is easy to drive.

The 1 ohm Scintilla is the best sounding Apogee, save maybe the FR. That's according to most opinions.

I was disappointed in the sonic results using conventional amps for all the reasons you point out.

I'm in heaven now. Amp design has finally caught up with the Apogee.

I never likes Krell and Levinson on Apogee's The best I ever heard was hybrid amps like David Berning or New York Audio Labs. Also heard Meitner amps sound good on them and an old VSP TransMos amp. Jeff Rowland isn't bad on them but could never get away from the fact the instruments always sounded like they were connected to aluminum foil.