I cannot help you with any comparison but your mention of Dahlquist speakers brings back memories. In college, a small military school, my roommate had a pair Dahlquist DQ-9s with an NAD amp, Nakamichi tape deck and Bang and Olufson turntable. This was a pretty big deal for a dorm room system. It was my first real experience with hi-fi and the DQ-9s were awesome in out little cell-like room. I suspect they would have sounded much better in a less confined space.
We used to obsess over high end cassette tapes and all the settings on the Nakamichi for recording from vinyl
I saw my old roommate last year and asked him about the speakers and he no longer owned them.