Dave, I have to ask, where do you find the time to audition all the gear you recommend or poop on? Do you have some extended listening secret source for extremely high end gear?

I usually go to at least one audio show a year, but it's hard to get too clear of an idea of who's doing what because almost nobody pays any attention to getting their hotel rooms to not sound like complete ass. Audio shows are certainly convenient, but the best way to audition is still either through big dealers or the companies themselves if they'll let you visit the factory and check out their reference rooms.

I don't know if Vapor Sound does that, but you can definitely drop by Daedalus and listen to whatever Lou is cooking up. PS Audio has been doing factory tours for quite a long time. I was there years ago when they still had Avalon Eidolons in their reference room, along with Martin Logan subwoofers. Not so good. I know Paul has WAY better stuff in there now, but PS hasn't really released anything that's made me want to go back. I've heard the PWD and I don't much care for their Power Plant stuff, and the amps they've been talking about for years still have yet to actually materialize. The GCC stuff they had back when I was there wasn't impressive.

dave,
ever read/rapped a knuckle on an ATC loudspeaker?

dave,
ever read/rapped a knuckle on an ATC loudspeaker?

I'd love to seem some data on the Voxativ Temptation and Ampeggio too.

I'd hardly trust JA's simple plastic-tape accelerometer readings, you need at least a 3-axis MEMS-based accelerometer to get anything close to an accurate picture of what is going on with the enclosures. Not to mention a seismically isolated anechoic test chamber.

LOL. Build one and maybe Purrin can start measuring. The data is what it is. Aside from the cabinet resonance issues, the M40 has serious problems with room interactions, and if your ear is a tiny bit above or a tiny bit below the tweeter, the FR completely falls apart. Other than that, it's great. JA has also commented that he'd rather listen to a competing product, which is not a comment he normally makes in his measurement sections. That's about as damning as he gets.

Don't the lower frequencies sound good with some low frequency decay? Isn't it going to sound too boring if you have a perfect decay there? I don't know... just basing on the cheaper kef x300a, I found the box to be well made but felt that it made you hear the drivers flaws more without that lively boxy colouration LOL. Maybe if the drivers were really badass then I may like a better quality box.

No. Depending on where the resonances are, it will cause coloration in different ways in the mid-bass and lower midrange region. All are generally negative. The best you can say about a slightly lively box is that the vibrations are benign enough to not be noticeable. The DeVore flagship on the other hand is actually designed to "sing along" with the music. IMO that's a very dumb way to build a speaker. Speakers are not guitars or violins. I don't want to hear the enclosure.

Boring bass has nothing to do with making your cabinet too inert. I always have a good time listening to Egglestonworks speakers, and their cabinets are very well behaved. They're definitely not as sophisticated as the big Rockports, and the MDF enclosures they use don't have the feeling of being made from solid rock like the Rockport composite shells. There's no obvious box coloration though. It's in the tuning. A Rockport is like a very fine wine, whereas E-Ws are more like a great microbrew.