The best speaker you ever heard?

When you listen to speakers, you are really listening to the whole system, the setup, and the room. I have Vanderseen 5A's set up by Richard himself...and yet, it took 5 years or so, to get them to sound as good as they do. It is sooooo difficult to just get a component (yes a highly rated one), drop it into a system and expect it to be nirvana...oft times there are 4 or 5 steps rearward and lots of fussing to advance the performance.

Stringreen, true but it is an art that can be acquired.

Yes, I heard the new FOCAL GRANDE UTOPIA EM at the CES 2014,and that is the best speaker I ever heard. I still couldn't believe that music can sound that good.

Stringreen, I completely agree with you. That's the biggest reason I decided to shop around to as many stores as I could when deciding to sell off everything I have put together over the years and start from scratch. By selling off all my stuff it gave me a budget to work with. I then told myself that I wanted to only buy a SYSTEM and not just components that sounded good on their own. I ended up over 2 hours from where I live (Audio Connection in NJ). I fell in love with the Vandy Treo's with Ayre integrated, AQ cables and a small Music Hall DAC. I figure that the DAC is musical enough for now and I'm sure THAT will be the first thing I change if and when I change anything. The synergy of amp/speakers was huge and the cables made a huge difference. I have heard the same speakers elsewhere and they sounded awesome, but the Ayres just made them sing to me.

I just think synergy gets lost as we always say things like "best component ever'. How often have we heard something sound great in the store and not so great at home in our real life room? I think you have to start somewhere of course, but this is why going to a dealer is so important I think. I was willing to buy new this time in order to get things right the first time.

Best I've heard is Vandy 7 with Ayre mono's and AR pre with top of the line AQ cables adn Music Surroundings (I think that's the company) turntable. with all AQ interconnects. The room is perfect and it all sounded awesome. I would love to hear the same system with the new Vandy amps installed. It had everything I've ever wanted in a speaker. They were real. Soundstage was correct and not HUGE, unless it was recorded that way. It was revealing, but truthful if bet (you never know what the engineer was laying down). JMHO

RWO/Fostex LS3