Good points made here by all. And yes, I can hear the difference. I traded Thiel 7s once for a pair of Dynaudio Contour 3.0s, thinking I needed to downsize, and within 6 months regretted I gave up the Thiels, so I replaced the Dyns with Thiel CS6s and am happy again, have been for almost three years now. And four months ago I added Vandersteen 2Ces to my second system. And no, I am not bashing other speaker manufacturers, bashing is not what I am about here. But I can hear the difference, call it a curse or whatever, but the clarity and accuracy of the source and amp conveys the truth of the music to me and that's what I like. That's how I get lost in the music and forget the gear. It's just how it works for me. I do hear the inaccuracies in other designs. I have enjoyed other speakers but eventually I hear the smear in time and the little things in the timbre that make them inaccurate in the time domain. Could I do this double blinded A/B? I don't know, it would be fun to try. But brittle, dry and lifeless are not what I would ever call Thiel or Vandersteen speakers. That's silly because it's just simply not true. But I still maintain that future eveloution of speaker design will take this into account, and manufacturers will strive to make speakers that are accurate in the time domain. Hey music is about this as much as it is about dynamics and frequency response. And speakers that give you what the partnering amp (and pre and phono and CDP etc) sends is simply what I want to hear, or at least as close to it as possible. So if I spend hard earned bux on components that in the end, screw up a part of the harmonic content, by design, e.g. speakers that invert the midrange driver relative to the woofer and tweeters because of phase angle deivations caused by a third order crossover, then it's not or me. Engineering and art strike a fine balance in this hobby. For me it's a fair target to try to hit both to reach a satisfying musical experience. Go to a music instrument museum sometime and look at all the early versions of the woodwinds and horns, there's a good reason why the current designs have "landed" where they are, art and engineering striking a logical balance.
Maybe we should be asking other manufacturers that don't seem to care about the time domain. Too expensive to engineer? They don't think it matters? Not enough expertise in electrical and acoustic design? All of the above? Why hasn't anyone asked the so-called "top manufacturers," like Wilson, Revel, Sonus Faber, JM Lab, B&W, and others why they don't do this? Could it be that only Thiel and Vandersteen are "wrong?"
