The best speaker you ever heard?

Shadorne,

Wait till you hear the custom amp packs crossovers were making for the (right now independently) for the ATC line. Still trying to get Billy to sign on but it will have to wait till he visits for the AES show this fall. Hopefully he can squeeze in a demo.

I removed the amp packs from my Anniversary 50's and used a Lake Contour for the crossover and these new Tomba! amplifiers, which we designed specifically for the 50's.

Uber ATC, improved bass and just overall a more tangible more involving (just easier on the ear) so I could play them about 6db louder and the sound it was remarkable how the bass just stayed strong and controlled the speaker never leaned out, the room acoustics eventually did :). Key is the amps sacrifice zero accuracy and timbre shift, better phase for ridiculous imaging and the above improvements took nothing away from other areas of the sound. It just added a little that made the ATC's simply more lifelike that they are already.

for ATC fans this could be a very nice jump up.

I'd love to talk about modding my ATC's. Assuming my amp packs are a bit tired I'd certainly love to understand what could be done vs. recapping the existing arrangement. Always open to new niche solutions. Would you offer them regardless of what Billy does corporate-wise?

Just heard the large Sound Labs - wholly crap!

Someday I will own these or the MBLs

I agree,the most important component are speakers.Spend as much as you can afford on them.I would better than 50% of your budget.Even if you don't have systems list buy the speakers first then add to them over time.You will often get better bargains on electronics than speakers.To answer the question of best speaker I ever heard would be the VMPS Towers In a little Audio shop in NJ.Brian Cheney had been there earlier to do some mods,soundcoating was one I think.Anyway my taste in music is Big Bands & Jazz.Man, those speakers blew me away.At the time I had Snell's A2,then Acoustat's 2+2 now NHT's 2.4 suround a/v All very good but don't have that visceral impact of the VMPS