Vandersteen Speakers.. Are All Other Speaker Makers Doing It Wrong ?

No.  Vandersteen is one of my top 5 faves, but there are always trade offs. 

Audition a pair of JBL STUDIO 698's.  I think they match up favorably against any Vandersteen you put up against them. You can spend many thousands less,and still be happy!

I have a a lot of respect for Vandersteen. Driver/frequency integration is fantastic. The bass EQ is an enticing feature, although certainly not full proof in the case of acoustic phase issues. Every audiophile should hear them. Since they are so well marketed, finding a demo is relatively easy.

While some may be sensitive to and able to tease out their step response I am tuned off by the muffled note attacks and to a lesser degrees their limited dynamics. I have auditioned them many times but found something else that has its own pros and cons.  

I want the chord pluck to give me shivers. 

@ovinewar1 

as the pirates say

shiver me timbres.

🤔

To my understanding Dahlquist was the first with that type of speaker design. I owned them many moons ago!

Dahlquist DQ‑10

One should always be wary of pronouncing “firsts,” but, appearing in the early seventies, Jon Dahlquist’s DQ‑10 was to my knowledge the first dynamic speaker to employ multiple drivers in an open-baffle configuration (except the acoustic‑suspension woofer, which was enclosed) staggered for proper time‑alignment and phase coherence, in an attempt to realize the openness and freedom from boxiness that Dahlquist prized in his beloved Quad ESL-57s—with the added advantages of deeper bass and dynamic extension well beyond the Quad. (The physical resemblance to the Quad was both mandated by the design and an intentional homage.) Far from flawless (including conceptually), the DQ-10 was nevertheless a ground-breaking design that preceded dozens of subsequent speakers (perhaps most prominent among them models from KEF, B&W, Spica, Thiel, Vandersteen, and Wilson) continuing up to the present day. Few large, full-range dynamic speakers before or for some time afterward equaled its openness. Paul Seydor