The best speaker you ever heard?

it's the original quads.

4 of them with a low powere tube amp is audio heaven.

the best speaker is no speaker. it's ive music.

the next best is 4 original quads.

the best speaker is your ears listening to live unamplified music.

the best speaker system i ever heard was the non-speaker speaker.

you can hear it anytime you attend a symphony orchestra concert. everything sounds real. all other speakers are deficient.

there is no best speaker. if there were such a thing, it would be a cone design that sounds like an electrostat, full range ribbon, or other planar magnetic speaker.

I remember the gradient 1.3. that was a wonderful speaker.

in all areas of life, there is no best of anything.

there are too many variables, and some of them will be imprecisely measured, so that judgement is unreliable.

many speakers have been mentioned in this discussion.
it is therefore not possible to say what is best. the criteria used to judge vary with the person who is doing the judging.
it is a fruitless exercise. it is sufficient to like something and consider it a favorite without concern for its quality. as long as you like it, in this case the sound of a speaker, nothing else matters.

the notion of "best" is a philosophical argument which has no conclusion.

with the diversity of opinions so far expressed, it is obvious that there is no best speaker.

i am surprised that anyone would assert that a particular speaker is better than any other speaker, at a given price point, when such a determination is so subjective.

we all have our favorite speaker, but none is the best.

if there is no best, because "best" does not exist in audio, then, i suppose the word "favorite" should be substituted. this is not a subtle distinction.

whenever the word best is used as a descriptor, it implies some standard for judging. for every judge, there could be a different standard, so the term best is subjective and is really one's favorite.

i believe there have been many threads in the past dealing with the subject of favorite component.

my point in all this is to suggest that "best" is a misued term that usually does not have much usefulness.

end of philosophizing.

perhaps the question can be rephrased, for example:

"what speaker would you be willing to live with for a long time ?"

my answer would be : stacked quad esls and apogee duetta signature

this is a difficult question to answer, because it depends upon the amp-speaker interaction.

i would say the best driver type is a ribbon, electrostat or planar magnetic.