Recommend A More Dynamic Monitor Than Harbeth C7

Bcgator, I am entirely aware of box coloration brought in by typical wood boxes. And I am not talking about them being musical harmonics at all. I have heard many open baffle designs, completely aluminium cabinet studio monitors, electrostats and planar speakers and of course some horn speakers which have absolutely either no boxes around it or no wood around it. The good examples of all these speakers have no tendency of leaning out the harmonic content. They can play rock and pop the way it should, with its original color, drive and vigour. At the same time they play with extreme precision classical and jazz too. A true system should bring out everything that a recording has to offer. Most of the popular albums from the rock n roll era are not great recordings but they still have some raw juice and energy which comes out on most low to mid-fi systems. It is an audiophile dogma that high quality systems cant play such recordings. Its not true.

Pani, you think we're talking dogma, I think we're talking tastes. You don't like the sound of the Arcs, and that's your personal opinion and preference, I have no issue with that. Just the same way that I think you oversell the ATC SCM 19 - it's not a recommendation I'd make to the OP for what he's looking for. But nobody is saying high quality systems can't play lo-fi recordings, or extract the "raw juice and energy" of the recording. My personal experience is simply that a bad recording is a bad recording, and a revealing, high-resolution speaker is going to give you exactly what's on the CD, for better or worse. It's not the role of any speaker to magically remove the effects of excessive compression, or change the frequency balance. You may still get, as you put it, "color, drive, and vigour", but if a recording is lousy it's lousy. It's not a fault of any brand of speaker if they can't change that. YMMV. Let the OP do his listening tests and decide for himself - it's his taste, not yours or mine, that matters in the end.

Bcgator, you are right!

BTW, have you heard an ATC ?

Yes, fine speakers, excellent for their price point, but I'm not comfortable saying they can outperform most $20,000 speakers. Others may feel differently, but $20K buys some pretty amazing speakers these days.

In my experience very few $20k speakers justify their price and sounds complete. Most of them are just big speakers with more drivers to justify the price. I respect companies like ATC which do not compromise at any price point. They build speakers for a certain purpose and then price it, not the other way round. To build such speakers they build their own drivers, their own crossover components, cabinets and amps (for active version). At a recently concluded AV show in Malaysia, a simple ATC active speaker costing $15k blew away many $300k systems and some. I dont use an ATC but they remain as my reference because they present the truth in one of the most honest ways.