The best speaker you ever heard?

I own a pair of the Quad 2905's and they have exceeded any expectations that I may have had. I bought them because I listen mainly to Classical music and more specifically, to chamber music or music for solo instrument. I was initially concerned that I wouldn't be satisfied with their representation of full orchestra because of the lower end but I got over that old idea right away. I have a great system to go with it. Matching up speakers with amplifiers and CD players can be more an art than it is a science. I had to think of what type of recordings I played the most. If I listened to mostly rock or jazz I may have considered another speaker, possibly the Vandersteen 5's or even a classic pair of JBL's.

Enjoy, GoofyF,

thats a nice set of speakers...out of curiosity...what amp are using to drive them?

I'm using a totally upgraded ASR Emitter 2 Exclusive version blue and my digital source is an Ayre QB9 DAC with High Diamond interconnects and speaker cable. My analogue is an ASR Mini Basis Exclusive but only with a Thorens TD-145 turntable with a Grado mono mm cartridge and an old Pioneer Tuner from 1971 but in mint++++. I started running out of money at some point.

HALLMARK OF A GREAT SPEAKER. There are 4000 speaker companies worldwide. Ony 10% of those companies make their speaker cabinets and driver's in house. Out of those 10%/400 companies, only a handful rise to the top as the best sounding speakers, since they all use the same parameters. Very heavy multi-layered cabinets with internal ladder or cascading braces, isolated chambers for each of the drivers, and multiple crossovers with large power caps. Magico's top models use capacitors the size of a coke can. Awesome to look at. The final part is a damn good anechoic chamber with state of the art measuring equipment that will result in a razor flat frequency response top to bottom. When deciding on the right amount of amplifier power, find out from the engineers at the speaker company whats the maximum continuous power limit that the drivers and crossovers can handle and divide by two. If they say a 1000 watts, use a 500 watt amp. Remember, not short term peaks but continuous power. This will greatly reduce heat in the voice coils and crossover components and they will operate at cooler temperature's resulting in the best performance from your speaker and eliminate clipping.

Don't disagree with Audio Zen, very few make their own drivers.

For me all about the drivers. Great drivers are still hard to come by.

Brad