Audio Note AN/E vs. DeVore O/96

I own DeVore O/93's.
At Axpona 2019 the room I kept returning to time and time again was the Audio Note room. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA3XvJcic5o
I believe Richardausten. Everything he says above mirrors my observations of the room at Axpona 
What astounded me was the the cheap kitchen table being used as an equipment rack right between the two loudspeakers. What happened to equipment racks being important? What happened to the rule not to place large objects between the loudspeakers?
My conclusion was that in the case of the AN-E's and associated equipment, and what they do so exceedingly well-tone and timbre-the isolation of components and placement of the equipment is not very important. Like my DeVore O/93's, the AN-E's did not image. As with my O/93's there was a large wall of sound. The driver integration of the AN-E's with the matching AN gear was much better than my O/93's. The sound was utterly majestic and magical. 
Hearing Mr. Belanger play his cello live and then his recording was illuminating. 
Though a bit of a digression, I found the price of the AN-E's much easier to swallow than the price of the electronics. If my memory is close to accurate, the simple-looking box-like CDP was about 20K and the amp or integrated amp (can't recall) was also in the same ballpark. 
And then to digress even more, let's not forget that there are two Audio Note companies, Audio Note UK and Kondo Audio Note Japan. https://www.audionote.co.jp/en/
I gather that Kondo does not make loudspeakers so I truly am digressing. 

 I’m not sure you can have it all with one system... maybe throwing a boat load of cash in to it, but even then I’m not convinced. I think a variety of gear to rotate in and out may be the only way.

Right on fjn04!
Every six months I rotate out my Devores for Spendor D7.2's. I love them both and they could not be more different. 

And I still find myself wishing I’d been able to hear the Devore O/96 in my room! You still like the O/93s it seems?

I do. I think. I am going on five months of having the Spendors in my system. In a month I will put the Devores back in and see what I think. I know you found the D7’s bright. My 7.2’s are not in my room with my system. I think I have a handle on them-they are airy and taut at the same time, a combination that the Devores lack. But they lack the oomph that the Devores have.
Last night I played a reissue of Stevie’s "Innervisions". I wish you could have heard "Living for the City". The snarl in Stevie’s voice was spine tingling. The back-up singers came in at the far sides. I am fairly certain the same track would not raise the hairs on the back of my neck with the Devores.
I have two turntables in my system, a TD124 and a 301. Some records sound better with one, others with the other. So it is with my two sets of loudspeakers.

@prof 
I intend to put the Devores back in this week and will report. 
In fact, I listened for quite a while last night more critically than normal in preparation for the swap. 
I listened to the Perspective2 Graphenes for an extended period of time at Axpona last year. The room was crowded and I never got to sit down despite returning to the room three times. Joseph is both popular and gets a lot of press buzz. So take my impression with a grain of salt since i never got in the sweet spot but I would classify the Joseph sound as very similar to the Spendor's which only makes sense since they have very similar design configurations. 
The sad truth is that by and large, 95% of the rooms with various loudspeakers sounded more alike than different. Another room that really stood out besides the AN room was the Volti/Border Patrol/Triode Wire Labs room. The latest S'Phile has a review of Volti's new and most affordable speaker, the Razz. I would love to hear it. The beauty of the Volti room was the unrestrained "aliveness" character and yet with much better integration than I usually hear with horns. 
Every design has a trade-off. The trade-off when the bass is taut with two 6-7" woofers is that the sound-to my ears-is just a bit hollow/thin. I believe it is analogous to a solid state amp with lots of negative feedback. A little bass slop is like a little euphonic distortion-it creates a sense of fullness. It has to be minuscule before it becomes more problematic than beneficial. My point being that the 10" paper woofer from SEAS in the O/93 coupled with a large mahogany front baffle creates a euphonic sense of fullness. 
Btw, and sorry for digressing, but people complain about the price of the O/93. They either don't know or forget that John Devore uses solid machined copper posts, silver wire, and though he keeps the particulars to himself, he reports the use of "exotic" crossover caps and the entire crossover is handbuilt and hardwired, and the individual drivers are carefully matched. That and the artisinal cabinet construction account for the price. 

Since this is not a note about Audio Note, I apologize. This is for @prof 
I put my O/93's back in, in place of my Spendor D7.2's. 
I played two albums that I had just listened to last night. 
Car Seat Headrest's "Making a Door Less Open" was more enjoyable through the Devores. I heard voices more clearly. The percussion sounded both more realistic and more propulsive. There was imaging but it is a different, more subtle form of imaging. Less hi-fi, less contrived in a studio gimmick manner. The Devores sere more tactile and Will Toledo's voice conveyed more emotion. I was ready to declare the 
Devores clearly superior to the D7.2's. 
But then I put my reissue of Stevie Wonder's Innervisions on. The Devores were good, but not as revelatory as the D7.2's. The snarl in Stevie's voice, the spine tingling nature of the back up singers in "Living for the City" were MIA. The overall sound throughout the album lacked the textural clarity and sounded just a bit distorted/fuzzy compared to the Spendors. 
Certain traits remained consistent throughout. The Devores put out a wall of sound and the Spendors were more polite and restrained. I am convinced that John Devore modeled his Orangutans for the type of music he loves-synth/industrial/percussion heavy techno. The Devores are more fun. They are more alive. But they can be a bit course. The Soendors are a bit too polite but always manage to behave without fault. They just lean a bit toward the hi-fil artificial side of sound reproduction. 
I can not choose one over the other. It simply depends on the choice of music and which trade-offs are dispensable at any given moment. 

Sorry about my typos. I need to use my readers when typing on my laptop and don't. When at the office I have a much larger screen. 
I think I have learned more from this experiment about audio than any other transition or shift I have made over the many years I have been at it. As John Atkinson said at the conclusion of his measurements of the Volti Razz in this month's S'Phile, TINSTAAFL. There is no such thing as a free lunch. 
Both recordings I used last night are extremely well recorded and well-pressed on vinyl. Both were played on my hot-rodded 301 with Reed 3P and VdH Crimson Strad XGW. Something I forgot to mention is the electric bass on the Car Seat Headrest album-through the Devores the electric bass had so much more texture and bite. The Stevie Wonder album is typical of it's time period-highly produced in a conventional studio. With all the studio gimmickry involved, it played to the strengths of the Spendors. 
I would throw out a guess that with modern rock recorded digitally and often in home studios or little better, the Devores are a loudspeaker suited to "modern times". Fiona Apple's "Fetch the Boltcutters" is due to be released soon on vinyl. I have heard the advance release stuff. It is bound to sound better through the Devores. And to bring this discussion back to the Audio Notes-funny thing-has anyone ever heard AN-E's playing rock? At Axpona, it was nothing but classical and jazz each time I visited the room.