I haven't been on Audiogon for a bit, and I've had my Moabs for about ten months, and I have been thinking about what I might say about them, for months. I come from a background of "living in" the local upscale stereo shops for months at a time. In recent years, I find it embarrassing to do that, but I didn't mind spending my free time, in my twenties and thirties, taking up all of the time of the salespeople. They didn't seem to mind much.
My previous speaker set was the Vandersteen 2ci's. They were lovely, just beautiful in soundstaging.
The notion that Moabs are somehow aggressive is wildly off, or I would do some serious review of room dynamics, amplification, etc. If you are working with any kind of decent recording, you aren't going to face glare, nor aggression in the Moabs, unless the music needs to hit...
I would avoid any critical response to the Moabs that leans into name calling. The China critique is misleading, if it's intended to imply that they are cheap in how they sound.
I think the aesthetic piece is very personal, and I have been IMPRESSED at the various reactions to Tekton speaker aesthetics. I found them novel and interesting, from the start, and a little hypnotic. I actually find them to make a very interesting "statement" about the role of sound in my life, within my living room. I've never heard anyone complain of the aesthetics of the Vanderesteen's I owned, but they were boring in comparison to the Moabs, in MY view.
Sonically, I can sit in amazement over good recordings, just constantly drawn into the subtlety, surprised by the percussive realism, intrigued by the soundstage nuance. The Moabs reveal layers. I love the layering of sound. I've recently been listening to Jack Johnson's "Sleep through the Static" and I can't get enough of the sensitivity that Johnson has crafted, which the Moabs communicate, effortlessly.
The Moab issue that brought me back to Audiogon, today, which I arrived at over the last few weeks, is this... that I no longer have the Moabs on order, that I won't be seeing those towering boxes wheeled in from the truck, after waiting longer than I thought I should have had to, that I won't set them up and find myself initially troubled by the bass response, which I would then dial in over the coming weeks, that I won't be "discovering" the treasure that my gamble was testing. Yes, I find it a bit troubling that I have the "answer" to my sound adventures of the past decades, so there is no real reason to look for something better. That "hunting" instinct is alive, in me, but I've nowhere to go (sonically), unless I want to shell out MUCH more, and I know that while there may be new possibilities and discoveries that my happiness is more about actually listening, actually sitting down, actually discovering more about the ocean of sound. The Moabs are not holding back... ...and I'm relishing the results of my risk taking...
Best regards to all of you. Enjoy your free-time. Listen strongly.
