Magnepan announces the 20.7

The best speakers in the world?
Apparently, the same guy, Steve Guttenberg, CNET, praised so much about the Tannoy Kensington on May 1, 2010 while he also praised the Magnepan 3.7 on Dec 29, 2010 as the best sounding speakers.
Which one is which one; and it all depends on the advertising dollars, right?
Is there anyone out there can comment on the two: Magnepan and Tannoy.
Disclosure: I own the Magnepan 3.6 and currently listening to the Tannoy, if for a change.
I have Magnepan speakers for the last 20 years and never have any intention to change until now.
Please advice

There's an awful lot of gushing in speaker reviews! Part of that I think is just that there are lot of good speakers out there these days. Part of it is that some reviewers have tin ears. :-) But that of course is just my personal explanation of why some people have the temerity to disagree with me.

Anyway, since no speaker is perfect and they all have different strengths and weaknesses, it seems to me that the only way you can make this decision is by listening yourself. Clearly, the .7 Maggie are highly regarded by the critics, as well as the people who have bought them. And it seems that the Tannoy is highly regarded as well. For the kind of money we're talking about, I'd go out of my way to hear them both (the Tannoy and the 20.7, I mean, since you have the budget).

I've seen so many debates with people who insist that the speakers they own are great and everything else sucks -- while some speakers are obviously better than others, there really is a lot of personal taste involved in the choice as well.

Despite the hyperventilating expect an incremental improvement, as I predicted with the 1.7 and 3.7.

Doug, I'm trying to understand why people are having such different reactions to their auditions of the .7 series. I wonder how much of this comes down to semantics. I'm asking myself "At what point does an incremental improvement cross the threshold and become something more?" Can you provide more specifics about your audition of these speakers?
I auditioned 3.6's with some pretty decent Electrocompaniet equipment. Yes, they sounded very good. I was struck by how similar they sounded to my 1.6's. The 3.6's had more at the frequency extremes, and the presence of the ribbon tweeter certainly added much over the 1.6's. These were demo's that were well broken in, driven by a decent front end, and in my judgment were worth considering as an upgrade given the modest cost of swapping my used 1.6's for demo 3.6's. I would have called the 3.6's an incremental improvement over my 1.6's.
My audition of the 3.7's came 4 weeks later, in a different store, and my reaction was very different. I won't recite all the improvements, it would just be a repeat of what you have read in the reviews. I placed an order the next day and have had them in my home for 3 weeks now. The 3.7's in my home perform consistent with my expectations based on my audition, and I remain extremely pleased. I had no problem justifying a 5K investment on the 3.7's vs a 2K investment on the 3.6's. For me that does not constitute an incremental improvement but something much more. For me, the 3.7's were more than an incremental improvement over the 3.6's and my 1.6's.

Part of the problem I think is that "incremental" is a relative term. What's huge to one person is small to another. But I'd say in the case of the 3.7's, the typical reaction seems to be more in keeping with yours -- the improvement is more than incremental. But I've heard someone else say as Doug did that he thought it was in incremental change.

One thing that's true, the .7's have major changes -- quasi-ribbon rather than wires, single-pole crossovers, improved power response, better midbass. So technically, there's a much bigger difference between a 3.7 and a 3.6 than a 3.6 and a 3.5. Magnepan has made it clear that they weren't going for an incremental improvement on the 20.7 -- Wendell Diller was quoted as saying they wouldn't release it until they could make a significant improvement.

But even if the difference is bigger than it is for the typical new model, there's still going to be an element of subjectivity in the description. It's entirely possible that two people will hear the same exact sonic changes, and one person will say "nice but incremental," while another will say it's the best new thing since sliced bread.

Ultimately, I think the only thing we can do is listen ourselves, as you did.