I am aware of several speakers that people say produce an image "free of the box": Green Mountain Audio Continuum, Ohm Acoustics Walsh, Reference 3a DiCapo.
Definitely Audio Physic Virgos, especially when placed along the room's long wall with the listening position set nearfield almost mid room as per AP's recommendation. Unusual setup; astonishing results.
I concur with Bdgregory's mention of Totem Acoustic loudspeakers regarding "transparency". I am running Forest's myself. As others have said, the whole audio hardware chain absolutely affects the final result - not to mention recording quality. From the responses, there's a lot of other good sounding stuff out there to consider.
I think the most interesting phenomenon I enjoy is when a musical entity is recorded hard left or right and still the sound seems to come from somewhere external to the drivers or the speaker itself. I find this to be true with Kharmas (and before this with Apogee Stages). Do other speakers out there do this? [By the way, I also will add my thanks to Mikelavigne for all the great, insightful posts of his over the years. I always look forward to them.]
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