High Performance Audio - The End?

@fleschler , my comment never said the Moabs sound better than the Von Schweikerts. There's a reason i had the Schweikerts and they are designed by some very competent guys. But, you pay for it dearly. If you have a large treated space and did justice to it, they are in a class of their own. I gave them to my son as a housewarming gift and have not heard them for 3 years. In essence, my comment was trying to emphasize that the Moabs are an absolute steal at 4.5k and play ball against a lotta stuff that costs magnitudes more. There's a reason my buddy shed his Wilsons for it.

I am extremely thankful to guys like A.Jones, Eric A and maybe Danny Richie too for coming up with stuff at charity prices that could bring more music lovers into this (especially the newer generation). Either way, It's time for this tiny group of silly old pompous goats running a phallus measurement contest in forums like these to move on in life. 

@prof,

So if it’s the case that audio gear isn’t necessarily too good for the product, but that careful and due consideration MUST be applied before any major upgrade to avoid disappointment then some kind of personal strategy might be advisable.

We certainly don't want products that exercise unwanted editorial pressures upon our desired musical message.


The initial premise?

’My overriding first criteria is that my system sound "organic" - wood like wood, flesh like flesh - rather than cold, sterile and having an electronic or metallic quality.’


Absolutely the first criteria I would automatically use to assess any driver from the one in my smartphone / iPad / TV / Hi-Fi system etc.

Far too many speakers seem to fall at this preliminary step. From the budget all the way to the highest of the high end.


Stage 1?

’It uses paper drivers/soft dome. Both those speakers just exemplify the "organic" sound quality I love.’


This is what my current Tannoy speakers provide in spades, as did my Rega’s and the previous Tannoy’s.


Stage 2?

’they were so rich, timbrally colorful, and relaxed.’

Hopefully this is what my next speakers will do even better than the Berkeley’s. Even cheap metal drivers can do good things with timbre, even if those might lack a certain refinement.


’Both use the similar looking Seas midrange/woofer [metal] drivers, so it’s hard for me not to intuit there is something about the quality of those drivers bringing something to the party.’


The promise of enhanced clarity without pain might mean a possible step up from the tried and tested organic paper drivers as used by Tannoy, Wilson, Sonus Faber, Rega, JBL, ATC etc.


From SEAS : "These cones feature extremely high stiffness along with good internal damping. SEAS Excel Magnesium cone drivers are world renowned for their high definition, low distortion and sound reproduction."

http://seas.no/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&id=49&Itemid=246

Visited a friend recently, who has a grand piano in her music room. Listened for about an hour, noticed what makes it sound real. Timbre at all frequencies, all notes. Percussiveness. Sustain, damping pedal effects, different sound played pianissimo to forte. Listened to her husband play a hammered dulcimer. Listened to a street jazz band without amplification, paying attention to cymbals, drum rim shots, the difference between a floor tom and a kick, etc.
Went home and equalized my Boston Acoustics A-150 speakers in my room, with thick curtains behind them, a throw rug under them, and a piece of wood under the front to lean them back, so as to more closely approximate time alignment. Very satisfying. All drivers are paper, except for the soft dome tweeter. My eq started with roughing it with a stereo 10-band equalizer, realtime analyzer, pink noise, and calibrated mic. Then, critical listening for several hours, with micro-tweaks.These speakers are stuffed full of Dacron pillow stuffing, and have automotive felt underlayment  from around all the drivers to the edge of the cabinet front, with the grille in place. I would not build speakers with this configuration, but it is what I happen to have at the moment. A Denon receiver, vintage nineties, drives them. Point is, well-recorded piano music (Sheffield lab, Mayorga) sounds pretty darn real. Startling, actually. My guitar, recorded with the same mic, sounds like my guitar, sans alteration. My wife's speaking voice, ditto. Acoustic jazz, much better than it has a right to sound.
Good enough for an entire evening of listening, with no fatigue.

deep_333,

By "By now, we know..." I meant that by now some of us have read your posts and relized that you do have very vivid imagination. We almost got worried it is sliding into illusion, delusion, and hallucination territory.

The Pioneer speakers I mentioned were, in fact, two different models. One was https://www.stereophile.com/content/pioneer-sp-bs41-lr-loudspeaker which I had not heard by the time I quoted this review to a friend of mine. He went on to buy a model up (floorstanding) with inscription A. Jones on the back, too. It was to be a guarantee of performance. My friend is not the one to change equipment often, closer to barely ever, but within a month those speakers ended up tucked behind some door never to be connected again. They are still there. Out of curiosity, I bought this speaker from Stereophile review. We thought that bigger model might have simply been inferior to standmount so it was cheap enough to compare for fun. They were donated to my mechanic’s garage, sitting high up under the ceiling. Admittedly, we did not try those speakers with tens of thousands of dollars equipment, but that is probably not what a designer would have expected when designing them. In any case, I do not doubt that Andrew Jones is a good speaker designer and I did hear two pairs of TADs (standmount and floorstander, I do not know model designation) that sounded wonderful. I believe he designed them, too but may be wrong. It is just that his venture into very low price speakers was overwhelmingly underachieving even for that price. Somewhat older and similarly priced Infinity speakers were a few galaxies above them. That Stereophile review is to a degree exactly 180 degrees away from reality 

@glupson, ah yes, the infamous "we"... the disgruntled glupson Jekyl and a glupson Hyde, the pair that keeps coming back...

 Alrighty then! Have a great time with your infinity speakers (galaxies above). My condolences on the stereophile review that fooled ya and made you flush 80 dollars down the drain! Thanks for sharing this great tidbit of information. I wish you both great luck on your future endeavors...