Duntech vs Dunlavy?

Pryso, I have personal messages from other goners that also believe that the Duntech are a overall better product.
As I told before I, have a mixed amplification: tubes/digital, and I should add that I have also an digital active filter (BSS-336) but only in the bass path, in order to adjust the SPL of the woofers and correct the room modes. For me (and many of my audiophile friends) the sound is very smooth and detailed, with fast and clean bass, but with the big and focused soundstage and, when required, with the high dynamics and SPL that this speakers can produce.

I always thought that the floorstanders from both companies sounded as if they were cut from the same cloth. If you like a given model from one company, my guess is you'd like the other's equivalent offering. Beyond that, as to which YOU would prefer, it gets down to nuance and personal taste.

However, IIRC, Duntech was a different kind of company with a broader approach. For a while they focused on wall mounted dynamic models (actually sounded pretty good) and other quirky products. I always thought the switchover to DAL was more of a focused re-org thing, rather than any drastic change in the "voice" of the product.

Marty

A little more background might be of interest.

John Dunlavy originated Duntech in Texas (Dallas in the late 1970s I believe) with a 3-way, large box speaker (but not 6' tall like later models) which was adopted as a reference speaker by Big Bert White at Audio Magazine. The Duntech line was next expanded to include one or two wall mounted models (but fairly shallow, looking not unlike a picture frame) supplemented with a floor mounted woofer box. I'm not aware of any "quirky products".

By the mid 1980s, Mr. Dunlavy had moved his company to Australia and began developing the Sovereigns, Princesses and smaller models in the line up. Due to their size and weight, most of Duntech speakers were very expensive to ship, particularly to a major potential market like the US. So in the early 1990s Mr. Dunlavy returned to the US to supervise construction of a new, lower priced model in Utah, the Black Knight. After roughly a year, and for reasons I'm not privy to, he decided to separate from Duntech Audio which remains in Australia, and form a new company Dunlavy Audio Labs (DAL) in Colorado. With DAL he initiated the SC series which eventually numbered from I to VI. Like his floor standing Duntechs, the SC speakers were tall D'Appolito array, time and phase coherent designs. This suggests why there is such a similarity in sound between the two speaker lines. He went on to develop several additional speakers, not all of which made it to the market place. One of those was self-powered, tri-amped, with digitally compensating crossovers. While not inexpensive, in my opinion the DAL speakers were built more to a price point.

Unfortunately after age and health forced him sell DAL, it failed within a year under new ownership.

I've heard many of these speakers and while I have a few favorites, I respect everything I know of that John Dunlavy designed.