I have heard the Magico Ultimates, set up with the Vivaldi front end and Avant Garde Amplification at Paragon Jeddah. Did nothing to convert me , into a Magico fan.statement speakers are just statement priced. They are a marketing prop. It is not so much as if SS amps are as good or not as good as SETs. Even if you assume they are not, a simple old Krell on a good speaker like big apogees should sound very good, or like Mike's system does, rather than how these many new statement speakers sound (and how many, buyers or otherwise, have really heard them). The fact that someone might like SETs and horns more or less is a different point. Even in SETs horns, statement speakers like Magico ultimate or Cessaros are not necessarily the best. They are at best statement prices. Almost no one has heard the Magico ultimate outside a poor Munich demo yet there is a respect for it like it could be the ultimate, purely due to statement price