The Moabs in my room replaced Talon Khorus that were I think about $16k when new back about 20 years ago. The Talons replaced $2500 Linaeum Model 10 speakers from a small company in Portland, OR. Had JBL L7 before that. A hideously awful speaker in hindsight. Not one good thing to say about it, except that it will play real loud.
Also some time in there a guy trying to sell his Vandersteens brought them over thinking I might bite. This was when I had the Linaeums, and it was not that close. The Model 10s had terrific tone and threw a simply wonderful deep wide 3D sound stage. Vandersteens (sorry, forget the model) weren’t even close. My best audio bud at the time and also a dealer agreed. He had no skin in the game.
Until years later he got me a demo deal on the Talon. Which I bought not because of the deal but because they were the best sounding speaker I had heard that I could afford back then. Was still pretty happy with them right up until I got the Moabs.
Moabs are in a whole other league. The only comparison with anything else is imaging, where they are "only" a little better than the Linaeums. That’s not a knock, those had just spooky good imaging! In every other category the Moabs are totally better in every way. Tonally more open and natural, cohesive, and way, way, way more dynamic.
In fact, this is not in my system but there’s way more expensive Wilson’s here in Seattle that don’t do for me what my Moabs do. Maybe its the electronics, don’t know. Only two other speakers I have ever heard that I would consider, Eggleston Works Andra and Avalon. Don’t recall which Avalon it was. Eggleston was wonderful but wouldn’t touch a sub-90 dB speaker with a ten foot pole! Avalons were expensive but oh did they sound good! Don’t recall what was in that system but do remember it being fairly similar to mine at the time.
Those are all that have been in my room since I don’t rotate components much. So the speakers I have heard, mostly were there for years. They were heard with different components. Consequently I have a really good idea what was the speaker and what was related. Moabs are so much better than any of these others, probably even much better than the Avalons, it is hard to describe adequately.
Would be nice to have something else in the room to compare them to. More than anything though what I would like to compare them with are Moabs with all Be tweeters, Encore, or Ulfberht. Everything else I have a feeling will come up short.
