Which SPEAKER for the 21ST century?

needs to be 98 db or so when fin. I do love low powered tube gear

Yes I just asked Rick Craig about some help with design. All he said was that you are after sensitivity. I'm not sure exactly what that means. But i can see with your goal of 98db, he hit the nail on the head...hummm, so lets see there is alot going on here. Low power amps..Are these called SET amps? Single ended? What amp do you have? What's the benifit of a low power amp vs say a nice Jadis 60 watt?

I'm in agreement with avdcreations on this one. How about the arrival of active speakers with a digital amp? Further, why don't we have a system where you get *one* high-bandwidth connection (firewire/fibre?) that carries *all* audio streams. Then take this one connection and daisy-chain it to each speaker. Each speaker "knows" what channel signal to pluck out of the merged datastream, and amplifies the appropriate channel. Imagine, a single wire that come out of the back of the disc player and goes to all the speakers necessary.
I guess Meridian comes closest to this sort of thing...
Anyone know of any work being done in this direction?

Just got word from Rick at Selah Audio and Jeff at Sonic Audio(Accuton specialist). All Rick says is that your after sensitivity.(???) Jeff agrees with me about over-kill. Says that a 3 way with the R-3 is confusing to him. He's not sure how to work a xover for your proposal. From your statement that you feel you need a mid. That kinda tells me that a Ribbon+Midrange is possibly more interesting than the 25 lb.Raven-3 acting as midrange+tweeter. Ribbons in reference are the ESg2,3 Raven 1,2 Philips RT9, RSQ8P/11. It's the limited vertical dispersion thing with ribbons. So even though the R-3 gives a seamless mid/treble image, you still have the dispersion problem when you stand up. It's a trade-off. I get the feeling you are looking for some "body" to the mid section? Midrange + Ribbon

TacT might be the most ambitious all digital design.