The best speaker you ever heard?

Norm

In my first post about this subject the first paragraph referred to the DQ10's which were a break thru in in time aligned and phase aligned speakers. When Jon used separate baffles he may have only by chance hit upon a way to reduce unwanted vibration "drowning" the music. He partially achieved this again by taking the crossover out board. The DQ10's had wooden feet or an optional wooden stand.

The second reference speaker was the DQ9 when Jon applied the Nextel to block the bad sound of MDF and then putting a flocking material on the front baffle he succeeded in remaking this speaker. Maybe these were all accidental and with no clear cut understanding of why but the outcome of vibration reduction was made more apparent by Jon Dahlquist. I can write about these speakers and materials because they made an impression upon me and gave me direction to pursue and better understand resonance control methods. Tom

OP-

to date- my reference loudspeaker is the current THIEL line-up. The CS 3.7, CS-2.7 or CS 1.7 is working well.
A shout-out goes to the older CS 2.4 additionally.
These are outstanding speakers and one would be hard-pressed to do better. Solid state ot tubed gear, they all sing!

It's funny to me. I've never liked the Thiel's. Too hot on the top end for me and I've tried all kinds of amps, cables, cords etc... My local dealer sells them and personally he loves them. That's just my ears and I respect all who swear by them, but I can't listen to em. I don't love the Focals that much either anymore. I did when they were JM Lab and I even had a pair. They do a lot right, but for their price points, I've heard a few others (for my ear) that I like better. For me most every phase coherent speaker that is first order crossed sounds natural and still detailed. The biggest problem I have with most speakers is that they cross things in the most important part of the mids and you lose that magic that music has. I have begun looking for designers who make their own mids that are fast fast fast and are crossed over in a 1st order so that you don't' lose that magic. It's a learned thing I think. You hear it sounding 'right' and don't' even know why. It just sounds 'un hifi' like and very natural like live music does. To me, even most of the esoteric speakers don't' get the mids correct. I"ve now heard so many of these top of the line, 100k plus speakers and they don't sound as good as some of these others speakers that I've fallen for. They do some other things better. They may be much dynamic, however in the end, they don't' get the micro or macro dynamics right and they really aren't so dynamic. As a reference though, I don't like panels of any kind really and I've only heard a ribbon tweeter sound good in a couple of speakers I've heard recently. Most are way too hot on the top end and even to the point of being distorted to me.

Again, nothing against my of these great speakers our there that you all love. It just reinforces that there are different makes for all our ears.

The best speaker I have ever heard? The ones in my system of course!

Which is what speaker? Do you really think that's the best one you've ever heard? Most of us can't afford the BEST we've ever heard.