The best speaker you ever heard?

Apogee Scintillas - I've never heard anything come close other than Apogee Divas and Apogee Duetta Signatures. The Scintillas are the only speaker that had me believing I was hearing a live performance even though the great monoliths were standing before me.

The four or more tally list:

7 Sonus Fabor
6 Wisdom
5 Apogee
5 Quad
5 Avalon
5 Martin Logan
5 B&W
4 Piega
4 Dunlavy

Audio Limits, I'd love to hear them. My Scintlla does the thunder and whisper exceedingly well too.

Fcrowder, I hear you. Frankly, the only amp eater made by Apogee is the Scintilla, my speaker. The Diva needed to be bi or even triamped. That can be expensive. The Duetta Sig is easy to drive.

The 1 ohm Scintilla is the best sounding Apogee, save maybe the FR. That's according to most opinions.

I was disappointed in the sonic results using conventional amps for all the reasons you point out.

I'm in heaven now. Amp design has finally caught up with the Apogee.

That old, "Source first," axiom must come to rest. No golden ear front end has ever overcome the deficiency of other components. Besides, the title of this topic thread is, "What best speaker have you ever heard." In my case, I bought the best speaker I ever heard, and have constructed a system around it.

Patpong, I like your approach.

Ultraman? I don't know if I should feel too old, or too young.

A wise comment, Mapman.

Tvad, my system sends live orchestral music recordings to hair raising dynamic range, yet will do far less justice with amplified rock music. There, the live music is going to be blared out to the stadium audience in massive horn loaded speakers systems with truck sized woofers.

Actually, for the sake of my ears, I stopped going to concerts decades ago.