Dear Phil ( 213cobra ),
Many thanks for your post and even agree with it, I still having doubts about the price v.s. performance of Sophia's.
A good friend of my uses Royal's in his Zanden 7000 and after he tried AVVT C37, he started to hear all these things I have been describing more clearly.
Sophia "Mesh" been described, at least by many Cary CAD 300sei users, as match made in heaven. It took me not that long to realize that its not.
This is not the coincidence that Treasures, for example, didnt do it for me either, Royal's are for sure better, but not vs. AVVT's and KR's. My KR's are tubular type, not in production anymore and have pretty much identical inside construction as AVVT 32BL, but in much smaller glass. Going to give them more listening time, KR's I mean, because they just stay in box after C37 arrived.
The easier way to describe my feelings is when Royal's are installed, I listen to Royal's, and when AVVT's, I listen to music.
There is another player in town, Takatsuki TA 300B, made in Japan with huge influence of Air Tight, here is the link where you can read some impressions
http://robertmusic.blogspot.com/2011/07/heads-up-coming-very-soon-takatsuke-ta.html
I dont have anything to do with these guys and dont know more than you, after you read the post from the link, but he seems to have the best 300B's around and even he didnt compare them to everything he owns yet, but so far, he is very impressed with these Japanese...
THX