The Worst Speaker you have ever heard.

Wilson X-1 series I. The longest most boring one hour listening session ever. No cabinet resonances--can't complain there. But nothing really spectacular ever stood out. Soundstaging and imaging were only mediocre--my little Thiels did a better job on the Q sound material (as did the avalons). Not even worth $10K. "most over-rated, over-priced, over-hyped speaker"

Klipsch Epic series II. $100 in dynamat smoothed out and deepened the bass nicely, and the lower midrage opened up a bit. But the high frequencies still scraped your eardrums (classical sounded horrible). I've never like anything by klipsch. The units maybe worth hearing (that I haven't) are the old school line: klipschorn, chorus, forte, etc. But for the most part they suck.

In addition to the df-661 there were/was the LD2,LD3, and possibly an LD1. I've heard the LD2--mixed emotions about'em. Cabinets like bricks though-you're right. There's better stuff today.

I thought the wilsons were setup wrong myself, but the dealer told me dave wilson came and personnaly set them up himself--and if the designer can't setup his own speakers right then he probably can't design them right either. Regardless it makes no sense to me why a dealer would display and drive thier $70k speakers with inferior gear (incidentally they were running off an SS audio research amp/MIT cables/and Theta gear upstream)--but I thought the whole point of selling the product in an audition was to set it up properly so people can actually hear what its capable of. I think the dealers are more to blame than some of us posting (assuming these products are better than we heard). All in all, I don't think its tough to ouperform a Wilson though. After the x-1 was "product of the year" in '95 with stereophile, in next months issue the reviewer auditioned the JMlabs Grande Utopia against the wilson and stated he liked the Utopia more--one month and the $70k speaker is obseleted by a better looking and sounding speaker at $5k less in thier own pages--all from the golden eared reviewers. The TAD model 1 at $40k would outperform the x-1 and the Maxx. http://www.tadaudio.com/home/model-1.html