Quality of Stereophile Class A speakers at 2K?

In my opinion, the Stereophile ratings have become next to meaningless as an accurate way to gauge the performance of audio components from one rating category to another. I have heard all three of the speakers you list, and not one of them would have earned a "Class A-" rating when G. Gordon Holt was running the show at Stereophile (which may explain why he now writes instead for The Absolute Sound).

Since I am feeling opinionated today, I'll also add that NO speaker deserves a "Class A" rating -- minus or not -- if it can't essentially reproduce the full audio frequency range. Several audio reviewers and critics have questioned Stereophile's "Class A-" rating as nothing more than a mechanism to include products from manufacturers that spend a lot of advertising money with Stereophile. Logic would dictate that no $2000 speaker could compare favorably with other "Class A" speakers costing $10k or more, UNLESS the more expensive speakers were seriously flawed.

In one of Richard Hardesty's issues of "The Audio Perfectionist" online newsletter, he commented that some (maybe many) high-end manufacturers are using high prices as a way to position themselves in the market, rather than being reflective of products with genuine high-performance. Some speakers, for example, are designed with a boost in the upper-mid and/or high frequencies, which tends to make the speaker sound more "transparent" and extended. Infact, such an imbalance is NOT true high-fidelity and becomes tiring to hear over time. Of the three speakers listed in your post, I'm inclined to say that the Triangle Celius sounds the most natural to my ear.

All of this, of course, begs the real issue: what do your OWN ears tell you? If you do an objective personal evaluation of the three speakers above -- in comparison to essentially full-range speakers in the $2-3k price range -- and conclude that they merit inclusion in the "Class A-" rating, then so be it. I've always told other audiophiles to trust their own ears before the comments of reviewers, and I think that advice has more merit today than ever.

Your next-to-last line in the post makes the most valid point: how do these "Class A-" speakers really compare to some of the more expensive speakers in "Class B"? The only way to know for sure is extended listening comparisons, preferably in your own system. If audiophiles were less influenced today by the ratings of audio critics, I suspect that many would be very surprised to find in blind listening tests that some moderately priced speakers offer performance that comes very close to much more costly models.

Sdcampbell, is right on.

I haven't looked at Stereophile in years--and seeing what comes up about them I'm not missing much. I thought their definition of Class A was "state-of-the-art." Class A restricted LF meant that definition minus that last octave of bass. I'd give those speakers a high strong C+. I'm not saying they suck, but they're not state-of-the-art when there's $1,600 ribbon drivers (Raven R-3) out there and lots of $500 tweeters (Scanspeak Ring Radiator, Focal TLR, Dynaudio Esotar, etc) that when well designed into a system can deliver the goods. I agree with alot of SDcampbells statements. You can do some good stuff with cheaper drivers, but you can't make'em outperform better drivers that were executed into the design with equal attention to detail.

To answer your question "but I wonder if speakers are getting much better for the money"

They're getting better, but the expensive ones should be getting better too, so the entire bar is constantly higher than it was 5 years ago. Stereophile is just stupid. Isn't even the Avalon Eidiolon using a $200 Accuton tweet, which is better than any of those speakers. Scan-speak Revelator at $220 is another good one.

I like Stereophile a lot - it's not what it once was, but it's still an enjoyable read and the price is right. The Recommended Components section, however, has gone from suspect to laughable. I'd love to see somebody try to put the "meaning" around the ratings - I can't imagine even Stereophile is trying to say that the $2K monitors in Class A truly outperform some of the $8K speakers they list in Class B. Those of us who have heard one of each often loudly disagree that that would be the case. I don't know how anybody could or would take anything meaningful out of those ratings other than that Stereophile liked the speakers they list in Class A.

They've always been so protective about their Recommended Components list - "we might make it available but we'll charge for it". With the way the ratings are now, that's comical.