Huh, Had good experience with those very same brands you mentioned, Celestion, Kef, B&W's etc.
Sounds like mostly British makes, are you based in the UK btw?
Interesting story on Celestion speakers. There was a Doc who was based in the UK but also owned a very very big house in Colombo. This is going back to 94/95 if I remember correctly. So during the UK winters he would take long leave and head to cmb to keep warm... then when winter was over, he would head back to England. So on one of his trips, he shipped across his highly prized Celestions, they were beautiful cabinets, made from Veneers though, some special maple blonde colour. Anyway, he ordered four Audiolab monoblocks to drive the Celestions, with a matching AL preamp. He had not heard of CJ as yet, and was intrigued by the sound from the first note. Anyway, we were offering CJ at the time and installed just one CJ power amplifier with a matching preamp. It was a SS MF2300 and the PFR. The PFR was CJ's first SS remote controlled preamp. This single combination of just a pre-power stereo version, mind you no monoblocks, blew the four AL monoblocks out of the country! It was so powerful and musically engaging he couldn't believe it! The Celestions were sounding mighty fine! So he returned the entire set of amplifiers to the UK dealer and then things went south on the Celestions! The cabinets started to peel off and warp. It was so severe that the drivers started getting affected as well. And so he returned those Celestions back to the same dealer in the UK. Must have been a very obliging dealer, or perhaps our chap was his family doc! Who knows... At the end, Celestion HQ wrote to the Doc with a full apology stating that their speaker cabinets were not tropicalised...go figure! Hence, the nature of the bad cabinet warping and veneers peeling off... they couldn't offer any solution.
On the plus side for us, he ended up ordering the Paradigm Studio 100's and that's all she wrote!
Those brands were very respectable back then, especially the Kef's. I've heard the new Kef Blades extensively as they're offered here, not bad at all, quite pricey though. B&W's are highly regarded down unda, many of our folks hail these as the ultimate! Paying high prices in $Aud, the top line diamond series can go for over 200grand!
Well I guess it's always what one prefers, and what someone's willing to pay, even though we may not perceive it as good quality sound or value... However, that's their preference and as long as they're enjoying it, I guess that's all that matters.
Panel type speakers are always more open, there's no doubt about it, and it's merely physics! However, sometimes what I've heard or thought I've achieved was great may not be regarded that great for others. So I'm always willing to learn and try new things with the existing gear. Luckily this time round, with a little help from a few professional chaps, I've managed to achieve a significant level of improvement, which I thought was not possible since I thought it was fine to begin with..., and so my quest continued! It was well worth the effort.
There's something magical that I've found with Quads and stats in general, and that is for late night sessions, not waking up the rest of the household, I can drive the stats at the lowest softest possible levels and still experience breath taking performance! It's immediacy and delicate tones that come across so effortlessly, I find totally engaging and highly addictive. I really don't get that sort of engagement with any other type of design, and there are some speaker designs where you have to crank things up a fair bit just to get realistic soundstage and scale but then it gets too loud. I certainly don't care for such levels. Afterall this is "recorded" music and not live! There's absolutely no point in trying to recreate a live event when the entire chain is recorded playback... I just don't get it when people make such claims.
Just enjoy the original recording in whatever shape size or form, and a system that can capture and reproduce exactly what's on the recording will be enjoyed the most.
Cheers to stats! And enjoy those fine tunes!
Best, RJ