The best speaker you ever heard?


In my opinion, the speaker is by far the most important part of the audio system. After all, it is the only part you hear. OK, the other stuff really matters a lot, but without a great speaker... No go.

I am a bit 'speaker-obsessed' I guess, and now I am wondering: What are the best speakers you have ever heard, and what made them the best?
njonker
Justubes,
As I said, I finally sold them for about twice what I paid for them...and you are right, there were plenty of buyers who responded to my ad. I kept them for so long, because I thought there would SOMEHOW be a way to make them work. I moved around quite a bit, but I really think I just needed a permanent house with a HUGE listening room. Some rooms sounded better than others, of course, and I was always reluctant to let them go because of their tremendous, accurate bass and their near-perfect dispersion pattern: they filled any room wall-to-wall, and it's tough to give all that up. But I finally gave up when I had to move cross-country, and realized that I had to have something that reproduced the "silky" characteristic of massed violins in a symphony orchestra (my favorite type of music). Some smaller B&W's actually sounded better, overall, than the Khorns in my smaller apartments, because they captured the upper-mids to highs more smoothly, even though they couldn't approach the Khorn bass quality. Cheers and happy listening.
Gerald
Totem Hawks...in the presence of music being played...they haunt you and demand you listen as much and as long as you can!!! Truly soul stirring, more than I can say about my Watt/Puppy 6's, 801N's, Dunlavy V's, ML Prodigy's or Magnapan 3.6's! The Winds and the Forest are equally special in unique ways. Magic be made here..dare ye try them?
Many years ago , I first heard then began to build the kits which Bud Fried offered to hobbyists , they were far too $ for me factory made .
One could 'tweak' these and I did in the building of over 100 enclosures ,(many boxes went to dealers unstuffed , and I stuffed some too), I've had 4 sets in 25 years (retrofit).
I tryed many different capacitors , inductors , resistors , wire . The basic - just as Bud sent - set sounded real good . But , fully tweaked , these Transmission Line Subwoofer/Satellite full range systems sound to me more like real unamplified instruments sound . And the effortless reach down low is a great plus .
Probably the Von Schweikert VR-11 or VR-9 (I own the VR-9). The VR-11s have the slight edge in scale and ease of presentation, by virtue of their much bigger size, but they need a lot of space to really sound their best. The 9s, though, were better in imaging, intimacy, and overall user friendliness and flexibility. Either way, the two are the best speakers I've ever heard, and I've owned the Kharma Midi Exquisites and heard many more elite speakers, including the Alon Exotica Grand Reference, Kharma Exquisite 1Ds, and various Avalons. They VSAs just don't exhibit any real weaknesses.
Hands down JBL K2. Used to think it was a toss up with the B/W 801 and Infinity Beta. Then I heard the K2's. Damm!!!