Rate these on order of importance:

Eldartford, while your suggestions don't fit the given paramters and I don't necessarily agree with your priorities, I think you are on to something. It's interesting how often more is invested in pre-amps with a more generous budget.

1, 5 , 2, 4, 3.

One week and still no consensus.

Interesting, that those that stuck to the given paramters couldn't agree.

Bingo, shut the site down. We actually have 2 audiophiles who agree.

Eldartford, you don't agree that Jmcgrogan2 and Subaruguru agree? Ha! I suppose your right, I'm wrong by default. Other forums beg to agree to disagree. Here on Audiogon, we disagree to agree. All in all very disagreeable. Ha!

Nrchy, we've been down this path before. While speakers can't improve the signal it recieves (digital correction excluded) they are the most likely culprit to intertwine with a room in such a way to distort it more than any other resonably performing component. And by the same logic no component can improve what was put on the recorded medium (equalization(?) & digital correction excluded) to begin with. There seems to be more consistantcy of performance amongst other like components than speakers. You may disagee with the opinons of others, but, that alone doesn't make them "incorrect".

Nrchy, of course I can't disagree. From the postion of the listener, it doesn't matter where the corruption comes from. I just think it's more likely that the most corruption will come from the speaker/room. How many components other than speakers measure worse than 20-20k Hz +/- 3 db? I think it fair to guess, not too many. Yet most speakers, even highly touted very expensive ones can't manage that in anechonic chambers, never mind the wildy unpredictable rooms that most audiophiles have to contend with. Hence the challange to find a speaker whose foibles irritate the least and radiate in such a pattern not be have the room further excasperate the corruupted signal forced into it. Even this argument doesn't make me correct, as I suspect you've already decided. Hey, there are many paths to the same destination.

Marco, I'll be the first one to say that we haven't found measurment techniques that can truly identify the complete listening experience, especialy speakers. As compelling as they are, I didn't mean for my "argument" to be soley based around those specs. The point was that unless you believe that all the other components all share the the same deviations, speakers/rooms demonstrate the greatest variablity in the audio chain. I think that holds true whether you want to measure it or not. As for your choice of systems, I think a better comparison would be "Close-N'- Play" through "Unsound's Reference" vs. "Albert Porter's front end-rig through the "Close-N'-Play's built in speaker. How about we make it real. While I would never actually recommend this, but, what the heck were playing here. Albert's front-end rig through your choice of new $200 speakers vs. my choice of $200 CD player through my choice of new speakers that cost the same as Albert's front-end rig. I'll take the latter. Thanks, but, you can keep the ear plugs.

Do we have match? If Rsbeck is just stuttering, Abe_av might be in agreement. 12 days and 62 posts later.

Marco, agreed!