"
So why am I feeling smug?

None of them sounded better than the Linkwitz Orion based
system I have at home. My electronics are pretty pedestrian
compared to the stuff I was listening to, but if you accept
the possibility that all decent CD players really can sound
alike, then the real difference is in the loudspeakers.

http://www.linkwitzlab.com/orion_challenge.htm


The Orions have the same 3-D imaging that the very best
cost-no-object systems I heard at CES. They have a wonderful
warmth and naturalness that is a real pleasure.

You may be feeling smug and your speakers will do some weird imaging things
that you may like - but they are utterly incapable of recreating the sound
of a real acoustic source as it would sound if it was in the same room. (Yes
I have a friend who has a pair so I know them well).

They have a power response that has severe and extreme discontinuities, a
midrange driver that literally rings like a bell with breakup modes well
above the passband response level, bass drivers that are slow and muddy
(probably due to severe hysteresis in the roll surrounds) and the mixed
order crossovers alter the quality of the sound too as they are incapable of
reconstructing the time domain response of the input signal even if the
speakers were taken out of the equation!

I am glad you enjoy your system, but that does not equate to accuracy or
correctness or even my definition of high fidelity let alone high end - just
because it plays some things well or sounds nice to you.

John Matheson