The Worst Speaker you have ever heard.

avant gardes paired with audio note.

i have been listening to quads for so many years that my ears are not receceptive to cones, or horns

I know what you mean! The mid range quality on the Quads is tremendous....

On the low end, any Bose Acoustimass I have ever heard sounds on par with most higher end computer-audio speakers in the $250 range.

On the high end, Wilson Maxx (the new ones, whatever number they have) driven by Halcro/Meridian left me cold. Unbalanced, thin, dispersed, totally unacceptable for a $150k system.

Then again, on one visit to Denver I heard some of those huge Focal JMLab $85k beasts driven by Boulder amps and it was also crap sound quality for the $200k that dealer was asking.

I've heard plenty of damn good systems in the $50k range, for some reason the sound quality seems to start deteriorating when you go much above that!

I'd also give a dishonorable mention for Musical Fidelity's amps from around five years ago - they could make any speaker sound harsh, brittle, and overly analytical. I haven't bothered to listen to them since.

b&w Nautilus series and most speakers with Fostex full range cone.

03-01-03: Zaikesman

The worst $$K speaker I've ever personally encountered from a 'major' manufacturer came from Velodyne, of all companies.

I'm probably going to make some enemies saying this, but I've never heard a good speaker made by a subwoofer company, and I've never heard a good subwoofer made by a speaker company. On the same note, I've never heard a good speaker or sub made by a television company.

To answer the original question, anybody who has worked or shopped in CE in Western Canada should recognize this name: Nuance. Enough said.