Being that alot of people like the older contour series better then the new one (myself inluded) I'd hold off on statements like XX is better then YY because it has some new transducers. Speaker manufacturers have to make 'upgrades' to keep selling their products, but usually they are just tweeking the sound, it's mostly hype. In general, I find the older contours to be a bit sweeter and perhaps a bit more forgiving to bad recordings. I'm hoping they would bring back some of that magic w/ the focus range.
