Most agreed upon best speaker?

Age of listeners v age of speakers, is I think relevent, but I would add that a lot depends on the recording practices and electronics that existed in the period of time when the recordings were made and how they would sound on equipment contemporarily available.

I would offer the following observations to support that. We went thru a transition tube/analog with closed box dynamics or horns stuff in the 50s/60's to SS electronics w/ported dynamics, and panels, in the 70's and 80's, to digital and a reassessment of tubes/electrostats/panels and high resolution dynamic speakers in the 90's to the present.

In the early 80's I had full frequency response, phase correct, vented three way boxes, driven by SS and some fairly decent sources. The Telarc digital LP's that came out in the late 70's sounded wonderful, bass drum and all - and I think that is because they were recorded with my kind of system in mind, not Quad 57's. :-) Today, these same recordings, either the LP's or digital, but especially the CD's, sound relatively airless.

I've also found that a lot of the RCA and Merc digital 'remasters', and some of the LP's, can sound a bit thin and/or bright, which I think reflects the status of equipment in the 50's/60's.

In response to the OP's question, the 'best' speaker must judged in relationship to the 'age' of the recorded music and electronics in use when it was recorded IF you interested in the most 'musical' result and you love RCA's and Merc's you want to voice your system accordingly. There is no one size fits all. Apart from personal sonic pleasure that is.

FWIW, that is MHO anyway.

"Why don't I just enjoy the music as it is now and forget about upgrades?"

Dammed if I know, but it seems to be a disease, some sort of a masculine thing, that all audiophiles suffer from, at least to some degree.

FWIW, at least it worked for me, I made a point about becoming informed about the music I was playing as well as the performance, etc, - then, when my potential critics arrived and started to launch an attact, ala your wife's, where I could dazzle them with knowledge, they would feel inadequate about their own music knowledge, and leave my obsessions alone. Works for guests as well, just don't try it on a musicologist!

And the side benefit - In the process of acquiring all of this knowledge I acutally enhanced my own enjoyment of the music in the process. Go figure. :-)

Atmosphere, I find your comments interesting. You may be right.

You certainly are right about the 'golden age' of recording techniques 50 years ago that survived the initial introduction of stereo (ping pong anyone) and ultimately, and unfortunatly I think, grew into excessive multi-miking, spot miking/mixing, etc. There were/are some great recording engineers, just not enuf I think. In this case I'm not sure that the exception proves the rule. At least when I started listening to the RCA's and Merc's I had modest stuff and didn't start to appreciate their sonic 'greatness' until Harry Pearson started pointing it out and I had started to assumble some stuff that let me hear what was actually in the groves.

I was listening to a couple of those original RCA LS's last night on my modest analog system (SP10 II, Oracle TT, Benz Glider, and MMT arm) and the results were excellent. Every bit as good, or better, than quality, contemporaneously recorded, digital over a system addmittedly tuned to flatter digital. BUT, and you knew there was a BUT (or butt, as the case may be) remasters on the RCA .5 series, the Chesky series, the Classic reissues, and some CD's, just didn't rise to that level.

Perhaps wrongly, I assumed that the folks resonsible for re-issues were using equipment to assess the reissues that flattered the reissues and it was equipment contemporaneous to the re-issue process - equipment that was/is not in my possession. Hell it must have sounded good on someone's stuff, I've seen it get many accolades. This suggested to me that, as with my Telarc experience, my supposition had some merit. But I'm often wrong, especially when I extrapolate from personal experience some thing more universal. :-)