The best speaker you ever heard?

You mean these Fatboys?

Here's the actual Tone Magazine review(.pdf)

Darkmoebius, I heard that system with ESP speakers at the LA show too and it was fantastic - one of my favorite 3 rooms of the show. My other two favorites were the MBL room and the room with the Rockport Mira speakers and Gryphon electronics.

Without any doubt Quadral Titan Transmission Line 130KG each 15inch bass 4 or 5in mid and ribbon tweeter FLAT down TO 19Hz. I run Tannoy Canterbury SE 15s and I was jealous after hearing these! Superb on classical as they are on techno or trance. I will not forget them in a hurry. Have listened to Acoustat, Quad ESL, Apogee ribbons Ambiance ribbons, Klipschorns, Linn Isobariks Vaf ETC these Quadrals top them all

The new Von Schweikert Unifield Three speakers are simply mind-blowing. I was lucky enough to get one of the first few pairs made, and they are stunning in their musicality, transparency, holographic imaging and expansive multilayered soundstaging. And they are hardly even broken in. I have been listening to a lot of piano music, and I have never heard a baby grand sound more 'right'. These speakers are special. I recently auditioned the Usher Be10 and Wilson MAXX2 speakers and while they can probably play at louder levels and dig deeper into the low 20Hz, they did not have the coherence, transparency, mid-range warmth and delicacy, and non-fatiguing high treble of the Unifields. Not that these cannot do pure bass, since I could hear the organ pedals in Saint-Saens piano concerto go far lower than the 32Hz specs on these beauties. Highly recommend an audition, and if you are in the Seattle WA area, you are more than welcome to listen at my home.

This is an absolutely impossible question to answer without also mentioning what amp the speakers were powered with, or even the room dimensions the speakers were situated in.

I'm usually partial to my own personal systems, but that is only because I have each of them personally tuned to what I enjoy, and the type of music I typically listen too.

I have never heard a single speaker that can excel with all types of music.

My personal favorite system consists of Bottlehead Strait 8's, with a low powered all tube front end. I typically like to listen to acoustic music (female vocals), and have a rather odd shaped room with a 13 foot high sloped ceiling. The floor plan is 18x25, and I have the speakers about 7 feet out from the rear wall. The adjacent wall is all windows, that can completely open in sort of a rotational manner. I find the the sound quality is much improved with all the windows open.

With the type of music I enjoy, I tent to mainly gravitate towards speaker designs that use full range 4" to 6" drivers.

My primary system has a very small sweet spot, but when you sit centered. The sound is near heavenly for me.

It does have it's draw backs though. It's not very good with any music other than acoustic. And It has one very small sweet spot, If your anywhere else in the room, you tend to loose the soundstage, and much of the enjoyment the system can potentially offer.

When seated in the right spot though, I have never heard a system I enjoy more than the one I described above. In my house, it just works magic for my ear's.

I really believe nearly any competent speaker could sound fantastic, when properly placed in the right room, with the right front end electronics.

On the other side of the spectrum, I believe a great speaker could also sound terrible when powered, or placed incorrectly.

I believe the only way to find audio nirvana, is to experiment, and flip lots, and lots of equipment. If you move to a new house, you have to start the process all over.

This is where being relatively young, single, and without kids can offer an advantage, or at least even the playing field with the big time money earners / spenders.