Aaha I knew I would get flamed for this. I am putting measurements aside to see what people who have heard them think. I do think it's odd to talk about a product no one has actually heard or seen in person. To repeat, I am not invalidating the measurements.
I recently heard them in someone's home.
We listened to music rather than test tones, but I can relay a solely subjective impression that, of course, is not valid, so not looking for trouble.
Things they did well...under sighted listening conditions...
Many speakers need to be played at a certain volume to give me a certain feeling of hearing what all is on a recording. These did amazing at low level listening. Right from the get go, the images were present and stable and all the parts of the music seemed well integrated together, and it stayed that way as the volume went up up up. There was no notable strain at higher volumes...the drivers seemed perfectly happy. (You know how some speakers at high volume start to convey a sense of compression, or you hear the distortion increase, and the tweeters lose their clarity? These didn't do that.)
Imaging was a very strong point in their favor - which is part of a good room set up, etc. So, given the opportunity, these large things made a lovely sound stage.
The friend built his system around wanting to be able to hear his Grateful Dead concert tapes at concert levels, and the system can go that. There are great bass notes from a version of "Morning Dew" from the Berkeley Greek that were some of the cleanest sounding and real world loud I have ever encountered. It opened my eyes to how great some of those field recordings of the Dead can be.
They just didn't draw any attention to themselves as doing anything wrong.
We also played "Behind Blue Eyes" from Who's Next and it was the 'best' I have ever heard that some. I obviously have no measurement to go on, and was not in the studio to be able to compare how true they were to the studio monitor sound, but I didn't care. I was surprised how the system could present that song in a way that struck me as more pleasing than every other time I have heard it.
Then, he played some 'recent' LZ remaster set that was crazy dynamic and the speakers stayed out of the way and let LZ shake us around. Again, sometimes louder is hashier or things start to fall apart on many systems, this gave the impression of no effort and like it could do this all day. That's totally silly and not objective, but it was a distinct listening vibe.
We played Kind of Blue, Folk Singer (Muddy Waters,) and Beethoven's 6th. Hearing an orchestra that sounds full scale loud is a visceral experience.
So, the flaws in my approach: nothing measured, no instantaneous A/B/X with anything else, just from the standpoint of visiting someone and hearing their gear without knowing bit/sampling rate, or anything else. It was fun.
We drank a 1995 Peter Michael Mon Plaisir chardonnay which we also used only our senses to enjoy, and had some delicious snacks.
The preamp was an Ayre and the amp was a Parasound something. He had a computer and record player, too. The record player was a VPI with VPI arm, cartridge was that gold colored Dynavector...the Karat something. I forget what the DAC was, which is OK, they all sound and measure about the same, anyway.
If someone asks if you wanna go hear a pair, don't put your nose in the air and complain about their looks or price, just go see what it is that person put together for you to hear. (To paraphrase Groucho, sometimes take the cigar out of your mouth!)
Cheers.
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