I received the following in an email, to add to the info. Thanks for your responses so far.
Slightly edited, OKed by the sender:
"I auditioned the Offrandes ... and was very impressed - to a great extent, they do deliver that "warmth and realism" that you hear about... They were also really beautiful sounding... I really liked what seemed to be a "high-efficiency" kind of sound that was coming from the Offrandes - a lot of impressive dynamics and detail, kind of a delicate sound at times, albeit a response that didn't seem to be entirely flat.
The GMAs, on the other hand, are all about delivering "what's on the master tapes" - a quest that has long been an obsession of mine. The one thing that bugs me about Reynauds - and I've heard a number of them - is the way the cabinets resonate and color the sound. With the Offrandes, it honestly wasn't something that bothered me as much as it did on the other models, which was part of why I liked them so much - there was a certain sense I got that I was hearing the cabinet and it was resonating, but everything sounded so sweet I didn't care as much - again, kind of a high-efficiency type sound.
In this regard, the GMAs are kind of the polar opposite of Reynauds - they're all about eliminating the cabinet vibration, and the result to me is extremely satisfying. Cabinet vibration has always been a pet peeve of mine, and when you eliminate it, it's a bit of a revelation - I've honestly never heard a pair of speakers that "gets out of the way" of the marvelously detailed pinpoint soundstage it's creating - thinking visually, I'd say a lot of other systems create soundstages that to me seem like watercolors or pastels, whether beautiful or not. The GMAs create a soundstage that's more like a Dutch master oil painting, or a photograph even - marvelously sharp and detailed, and clear all the way to the edges (although I don't want to give the impression the soundstage doesn't have plenty of depth too). And still, they manage to deliver the emotion of the music - you don't get that cold, pixellated sound that a lot of lesser, detail-focused speakers are prone to deliver - in my experience, Wilsons, for example.
Of course, the other crucial advantage of GMAs is the phase-coherent alignment - this, I think, is what the 6moons review is talking about when it speaks of that feeling of having swallowed the pill and going down the rabbit hole - the really uncanny sense of musicians being "in the room" - usually their room, rather than yours, depending on the recording. Once you calibrate the drivers, the image just "snaps into place," and you realize why most other speakers "sound like speakers" rather than live music - the drivers aren't lined up precisely! Another surprising benefit of this is that once the drivers are aligned, the phase coherence seems to be largely preserved from a wide range of listening positions in the room - it's nice to be in the "sweet spot," by I'm very content to sit off to the side on the couch many nights.
Another point - I've never been able to judge the quality of various recordings, while also having a good time doing it, anywhere near to the degree that I have with the GMAs. That's one benefit of a supremely revealing speaker that's still in the mid-efficiency category - they deliver the detail without the nastiness.
