Experienced audiophiles best speaker

Hi Rleff
I'm guessing that there aren't too many people really qualified to answer this question, other than maybe a few reviewers and dealers. But it might be hard to get an unbiased opinion from such a person, if they're still in the audio business.
I looked at the thread again, but I didn't see any answers that sound 'authoritative'. I'd like to hear from someone who's spent real time with some of the best of each design (planar, electrostatic, horn, high efficiency, multidriver, others) and then formed his/her opinion.

What do you mean by 'real time'? Hours- days- weeks, years?

The closest you will get is to go to RMAF (for a few years) and decide that for yourself, there simply cannot be that many folks who have had the time, or money, or inclination to have heard it all (and also be good listeners with critical faculties), in their home, with their electronics, etc. And then good luck trying to find any "authoritative" conclusion - it's just not like that. It gets all the more complicated when you take into account that the speaker is a very different creature depending on the amplifier and source driving it, let alone the room. And then, at the end of the day, if all that were possible, you would only know what that one person thought was best for them.

Pubul57....

That last sentence is "spot on",Imo.

I'll admit that first impressions are important- you know immediately when a speaker sounds good if its in a good setup. But you have to live with a speaker to really understand its virtues with different types of music. A 'lively' speaker can eventually become fatiguing, and a more neutral design might be preferable over the long haul. I also think that speaker (and amplifier) evaluation is highly dependent on music type- for example, some speaker designs that excel with symphonic music simply fail with heavy metal, and vice versa.

We're not talking about absolute truth here, since the definition of great audiophile sound varies. That's why these opinions always need to be qualified. And its always nice to know the opinion of those who are really well-informed.