Quality of Stereophile Class A speakers at 2K?

Sdcampbell, is right on.

I haven't looked at Stereophile in years--and seeing what comes up about them I'm not missing much. I thought their definition of Class A was "state-of-the-art." Class A restricted LF meant that definition minus that last octave of bass. I'd give those speakers a high strong C+. I'm not saying they suck, but they're not state-of-the-art when there's $1,600 ribbon drivers (Raven R-3) out there and lots of $500 tweeters (Scanspeak Ring Radiator, Focal TLR, Dynaudio Esotar, etc) that when well designed into a system can deliver the goods. I agree with alot of SDcampbells statements. You can do some good stuff with cheaper drivers, but you can't make'em outperform better drivers that were executed into the design with equal attention to detail.

To answer your question "but I wonder if speakers are getting much better for the money"

They're getting better, but the expensive ones should be getting better too, so the entire bar is constantly higher than it was 5 years ago. Stereophile is just stupid. Isn't even the Avalon Eidiolon using a $200 Accuton tweet, which is better than any of those speakers. Scan-speak Revelator at $220 is another good one.

I like Stereophile a lot - it's not what it once was, but it's still an enjoyable read and the price is right. The Recommended Components section, however, has gone from suspect to laughable. I'd love to see somebody try to put the "meaning" around the ratings - I can't imagine even Stereophile is trying to say that the $2K monitors in Class A truly outperform some of the $8K speakers they list in Class B. Those of us who have heard one of each often loudly disagree that that would be the case. I don't know how anybody could or would take anything meaningful out of those ratings other than that Stereophile liked the speakers they list in Class A.

They've always been so protective about their Recommended Components list - "we might make it available but we'll charge for it". With the way the ratings are now, that's comical.

Class A means it is worth a listen. For 2K I thought the celius sounded very good.
Tim

TAS is a lot more in line with their rating system

I still think Stereophile is fun reading - just more like fiction these days :)