most advanced speaker in a rectangular wooden box?

British brands : Spendor, Harbeth, Graham, Stirling Broadcast, Audio Note. These manufacturers realized long ago that there’s nothing wrong with wide-baffle monkey coffins if implemented correctly. IMO, many of them can go toe-to-toe with the exotic stuff from Magico, Vivid Audio and the like. This is especially the case when it comes to recreating the natural timbre of stringed instruments. They also tend to be less fatiguing.

Some can’t comprehend how this is possible because they focus on measurements and marketing jargon. Instead they should rely on their ears. The proof is in the listening.

^Any speaker is fighting the laws of physics. I've heard monkey coffins that can make some planars sound like a distorted mess.

@sonance,

If a speaker has inferior sound, regardless of materials/design, it's not advanced in my book. The whole purpose of advancing speaker design is better sound. If speakers containing beryllium tweeters, carbon fiber woofers and built-in amps sound no better than a plywood box and paper cone, then they're not more advanced, they're a failed attempt.

From all my speaker auditions, including Magicos and the like, I concluded that speaker advancement hit a wall about two decades ago. Some newer designs can be more revealing or dynamic, but they totally fail in creating realistic tone or timbre, or they're fatiguing to the point that a 30 minute listen results in a headache. How is that more advanced?