I heard a Wadia-Ayre frontend playing to the Nearfield Accoustics Pipedreams-Wow!!! I don't which was more incredible, the $80k price tag or the 144 drivers that had me looking for Natalie Merchant hiding somewhere in the store. In regard to speakers,the Pipedreams are as real as it gets.
The ultimate system? Cost no object
If you could pick, the best of amp, pre-amp, digital or analog, cables, speaker cables and speakers...combo that come's close to the real "thing".I listened, few years back in Vegas (CES)VAC, Spectral, Avalon, in Spectral room, at the "Golden Nugge" How anything, can be any better?