Have you ever tried a pair of speakers and said this Is the last thing I will ever need.

Great question you have posed.  I have said the very thing about many many speakers I have had in the last 10 years, but at some point, I got the "itch".  I have had Spatial Audio Hologram 4 Turbo S speakers for a year now and I like them more every day I listen to them.  I wish I could meet a women that I like as much as these speakers! 

This his happened to me a few different times in my life.

 First when I was 16 I heard a pair of cerwin Vega vs 120', loved that slamming bass and in your face highs, paired the speakers with Nad 2200 amp. It's funny how a decent amp will take a mediocre set of speakers bloom to a certain degree.

As an adult I fell in love with a pair of mirage m1's. Paired with a big classe amp, proceed pre amp and nice cables, I loved the big detailed sound and the amazing sound stage.

Now I realize the mirages, although exciting and very fun to listen to, are not the last word in high end. 

The speakers I most recently had to have was a pair of Sonus Faber Lillium. While I don't have 70,000 to buy them. Maybe some day I'll get a gently used pair. 

Each pair I listed, I felt like I couldn't live without one time or another.

 For 35 years my speakers were K-horns, and I assumed they would be my speakers forever. My kids used to joke that I would leave one to each of them, but I would answer that I would be buried with them. Then I moved to Arizona and couldn’t find a house with a single room that had 2 corners on the same side. The open plans which now dominate the residential market are an abomination, but living in the street isn’t an option as there are no corners there either.

Right now I’m running a pair of Wharfedale Diamond 10.2s in my main setup, a pair of 10.1s in my bedroom, and assorted others here and there (e.g., powered Behringers for my piano, powered Edirols for my computer), but I keep looking. The trouble is, there’s nowhere to hear the ones I’d really like to hear: Harbeths (P3 and Monitor 30.1), Klipsch Heresy iii, maybe a modern Klipsch like the RP-250f, the Paradigm Signature series, Vandersteen, some of the more exotic brands like Zu and Salk, maybe something I’ve never heard of. I have tried Magnepans, the little MMGs, but didn’t like them much, especially the tiny, unfriendly sweet spot.

The last hi-end audio store in Tucson closed last year – and they didn’t have much on display anyway. Now there’s Best Buy and . . . Best Buy, where the ambient sound level is so high you can’t hear the few speakers they have on display, and of course they don’t carry any of the models mentioned above. I listen to mostly vocal music – choral, small a cappella chamber groups, lieder – I was a member (tenor) of the London Symphony Chorus. So deep bass is not crucial – voices don’t go below 80 Hz – though I do like a Mahler symphony from time to time.

So the answer to the OP’s question is: K-horns, there’s nothing like them, at least nothing I’ve heard. And if you can’t have them, or like me can’t keep them, the quest never ends.

 

Great question.  I'm relatively new to the HiFi scene and still on a steep learning curve being only 5 years in.  However after hearing various really expensive speakers (certainly more than I can afford) at HiFi shows and local dealers here in Melbourne Australia I reckon I will be keeping my newly acquired KEF Blade 2s for quite a while.  Same goes for the Ayre QX-5 Twenty / AX-5 Twenty combo I have upstream with Cardas Clear cabling (speaker & power cables, interconnects and jumpers).  Still can't believe how standing the AX-5 amp on myrtle wood blocks noticeably improved SQ despite having the amp already on a Quadraspire SVT bamboo rack.  Thoroughly enjoying this new obsession of mine and thankfully so is my wife!

After over 59 years since I bought my first "Mono" Player--many incarnations ( too many that sucked both sonically and the wallet!)have been and gone form my abodes
Now though I've settled with what I feel is a fine balance of musicality/involvement/and value for the $(bought S/H as no longer available )especially in a domestic living environment such as an Apartment or similar.

The Sonus Faber Guarneri Homage

I still marvel at what they can produce for the size and cost--indeed a Tour de Force RIP Franco Serblin.

Des