Eggleston, Merlin, Jean Marie Reynaud????

I also want to say that I have heard the VAC Avatar Super and it is indeed super.

pluto, do you have a $$ figure you are trying to stick to? reason being, you can spend surprisingly little and have a joule / merlin setup. the joule electra vamp integrated is a great integrated and a superb match for the tsm's. i bought my integrated vamp on audiogon for $1000. it is ridiculous what they are going for compared to what you get. jud stopped making them because he was losing money on them. and they sold for $3500. pick up one of those and a used pair of tsm's and you've spent about $2,500. i cannot think of a better speaker / integrated match for $2,500. but the point is it's not just great for the money, it's great by any measure. it's the sort of thing that can make a guy scratch his head when he looks at his 5 figure otl amp. i think that setup is one of the "secrets" with the tsm's.

in fact, i'll go one further. take the vamp integrated, tsm-mm, and mate it with the parts express sub. that's what i plan to do. my room can handle a sub though so keep that in mind. i plan to setup my tsm-mm in the same room as my vsm-mm speakers (in place of) and do a little comparison. integrated vamp, tsm-mm, parts express sub v. vsm-mm, joule vzn80 otl, joule lap-150 pre. huge difference in price. huge difference in enjoyment??? i will probably play with the sub with the vsm's as well. by design, there are things the tsm-mm cannot do that the vsm-mm can but i expect it to be a super setup.

bobby has said on more than one occassion that the tsm-mm actually betters the vsm-M (not "MM") from 50hz up. keep that in mind when thinking through what level of performance you are getting with the tsm-mm versus other things you are considering.

i also have the merlin vsm-mm's with the superbam and they are the best speakers i have ever owned. i went from paradigm studio 20's (still a fave in many ways), to dali grand coupes, to amphion xenons and have gotten off the upgrade highway with my merlins. they are clean, punchy and not the least bit fatiguing. my xenons went down to 28khz and the merlins do not, but to my ears, i'm not missing any bass--at least not in a musical sense. i am running mine with channel islands d200 amps and a modwright preamp. when i hit the lotto i will go with some joule/berning stuff but for now my ears can't tell the difference.

I have the Fontaines with an Opera Audio Consonance a120 Hybrid Integrated and I love the sound. My room is so huge I have to replace the a120, but the sound quality is great. The a120 uses a Sovtek 6H30 in the line stage for a dreamy sound, but solid state power adds a very nice punch. Great combo IMO.

You should really hear the TSM's, we're just die hard Merlin fans but does not mean it's the speaker for you, the VSM doesn't take up any more footprint really over the TSM but oh, oh, oh! There must be somebody near you with a pair of these.