Vandersteen 5a or Eggleston Andra II

I bow to your ultimate moral superiority and keen insight Chad, and in all my sobriety, too. hic... I happen to like both speakers, as I noted.

I could not care less what surprises you, Dev. I am only surprised that you continue to insist in your "another league" fallacy. My original "offer", if you want to cal lit that, was the idea of assembling 20 folks for a fair trail comparing the Egglestons and the Vandys and my assertion that few to none would find the Egglestons in "another league" as you continue to asserted. I am game for that at ANY time though, as I thought I made clear above, I am not going to waste my time responding to your fully erroneous assumptions regarding how I and where I heard those speakers. Am I surprised that you didn't understand? no

A good friend has the Vandy 5's with Dartzeel gear along with EMM source, really nice system. In my opinion I prefer the Eggleston's and feel that they are just in another league over all, more musical and over all more convincing.

Please. This is either yet another overuse of the term "another league", or there is something wrong, somewhere, in the system with the Vandys. I have no issue with someone saying that they prefer the Egglestons, but to claim they are in another league is just plain silly.

Just for the record, I didn't send any emails on this subject. I have heard the Egglestons and the Vandys in THE SAME SYSTEM and their respective "leagues" were definitely the same. Now, given matches and/or mismatches of components, one of these pairs may sound better than the other in that particular system to a particular set of ears. In fact, I have heard the Egglestons take the edge in one system while the Vandys were clearly superior in another. All I am saying is that this comes down to preferences and sage component matching.

Offering the "different league" statement, one would expect to find one speaker besting the other in all settings and by a significant margin. And, I'll wager my system that if you assembled 20 folks without an agenda and did a blind test, this would not be the case, at all. Fine that you like the Egglestons, but I still say that claiming them to be in a different league than the Vandys is just plain silly. But, whatever, I mostly responded again such that others would not think that your claim of receiving emails from unnamed sources did not include me.

I don't care what you believe, Dev? Anyone who actually knows me and doesn't wildly guess and speculate knows that I don't say that I've heard something when I haven't. I've likely heard more pieces of audio equipment than you'll ever see. You saying you don't belive me is equivalent to calling me a liar, which I wholly resent. Funny how people will say something online they wouldn't have the guts to say in person. Further, I am lost as to how a review of a McCormack upgrade would reflect an agenda about Vandersteen speakers or against Egglestons, which I've said I've liked (outside of the McCormack and the K&K phono, it is the only pieces still left in my system).

Talk about nonsense - check your mirror. Oy.

Go ahead, you can have the last word - continued nonsense, most likely.

Chad, get in line at the end of the drive. My boys are home from college.

Virtually all of your assumptions regarding my listening experiences are wrong, but I don't have the time, energy, or desire to go into it further, this being the last I will comment on this matter. I did, do, and will take issue with your "different league" statement and that is that, in my opinion, but I still believe that very few others, if any, will agree that these two speaker sets are in different leagues.

Mothra, your "salt" suggestion is right on the beam, and well taken. Funny how those who should be in an asylum are the first to suggest "meds" to others.

Oz, what you have read is correct, at least in some instances. The "slots" for spades on the 5's I had were such that I had to slice just a sliver off the silver spades on my Ridge Street Audio cables (it was easy with those). Other spades will fit fine but, for instance, the Kimber spades on a set I run in a vintage system would NEVER fit. So it is a consideration in that if you have exisitng cables with wide spades, you'd have to get them reterminated (which could be a real issue with some cables). Someone told me that Richard had addressed this in newer models, but not from what I've seen - maybe on the newer Quatros. (?) As a side note, your sytem has come a good long way on a couple of years thee, Oz. ;-0