Cornwall IV are decent in stock form but not great, IMO. However, if you’re willing to put some effort and $1,500 or so into them, they become great. Change out the capacitors and resistors in the xover according to the Don Sachs recipe in the long thread thread on this board. Damp the horns and woofer baskets with Dynamat or similar. Upgrade the binding posts to WBT NextGen. None of these mods is complicated or difficult if you can solder and desolder. Because I have a hardwood floor, I adhered Herbie’s Giant Gliders to the bottom corners with carpet tape. Altogether it was maybe 15-20 hours of work because I’m slow, hyper-careful, and minimally skilled.
If I had not done these mods, I would have returned the speakers to MD precisely because of the criticisms mentioned in this thread. Highs were a little aggressive and ragged, tonal balance was tilted up while the bass was inarticulate. I was not satisfied at all. After the mods, combined with a good 300B amp, I have no criticisms worth mentioning. I swap in two other amp/speaker combos into this system, both costing much more. The CW/300B combo is my fav.
It’s weird to buy new speakers and have to perform surgery for them to become acceptable (at least to me). I definitely get that. The Voltis might be as good or better out of the box. But I love these speakers now. They do everything I want in a horn/SET system without going too huge.