The best speaker you ever heard?


In my opinion, the speaker is by far the most important part of the audio system. After all, it is the only part you hear. OK, the other stuff really matters a lot, but without a great speaker... No go.

I am a bit 'speaker-obsessed' I guess, and now I am wondering: What are the best speakers you have ever heard, and what made them the best?
njonker
An earlier post declared the best speaker was, "no speaker. it's ive music." I used to agree, typos aside. That is, until this last weekend. I went to Jim Salk's house to audition a pair of his Veracity HT3s. After listening for a bit, I came to the conclusion that they are better than live. Or at least what live SHOULD sound like, were it properly miced, set-up, and amped. They magically fill the room with high resolution, no distortion, crystal clear music. Exquisite and incomparable - both in sound and asthetics.
B&W's flagship Nautilus speaker (you know, the "Racing Snails"). I wont say it's the perfect speaker, but I could not detect any flaws in the sound or the presentation.
Dear Dingus, excellent choice.Infact that speaker is a text book loudspeaker design.The designer is a genius.The original concept called for a 4" dome instead of the 4" flat mid-woofer, but B&W did not want to fund such an expensive and time consuming driver project.Till date whenever B&W tries to design a replacement, they still cannot come up with even one concept that seems to better the Nautilus project.
BTW the MF and HF drivers on the new Vivid speakers are the culmination of the designers ideas with regards to metal domes.
Here is a little trivia,the original Nautilus was conceptulised as a 5 way, using a 16"/8"/4" dome/2"dome/1" dome.Cheers.
Rockadanny: I went to Jim Salk's house to audition a pair of his Veracity HT3s. After listening for a bit, I came to the conclusion that they are better than live. Or at least what live SHOULD sound like, were it properly miced, set-up, and amped. They magically fill the room with high resolution, no distortion, crystal clear music. Exquisite and incomparable - both in sound and asthetics.
I'd be curious to know which speakers you are comparing HT3's against? A comparison with Tyler, Zu, Silverline, Acoustic Zen, Daedalus etc would be great, but if you have others in mind it would be good to know what they are.