Stereophile review of the $30,000 tekton speakers

I would rather listen to apple earbuds than Tektons. Period. 

You drove all the way for an audit and yet...you couldn’t take one decent amp and dac (that you know quite well) with you.

Instead you heard it on some thrift store half broken receiver.

100 db is a piece of cake for double impacts. I used to have them many years ago. The break up you speak of is non-existent. What you probably heard was everything else that was broken in some craigslist guy’s chain.

(Try a 100db on a Harbeth or Devore or some other crap, watch it fall down the drain)

I took a long day trip to listen to a pair of the standard double impacts advertised on craigslist. The imaging was good and the bass adequate and overall fairly balanced, the setup was not the best for sure so they might have impressed more had they been set up properly. Still you could get a sense of the goodness that was there. And they were not bad...but with the factory tweeters, listening to music I know was recorded well, I could hear cone breakup or something that mimics that in the treble. Admittedly I was well over 100 db but typically not exceeding 105 db on peaks. The amp was a yamaha receiver of about 75 wpc so it should have not been distorting at those levels. The sony cd player was not a great unit either. But from my perspective I spent a full day on the road to listen to these speakers and because the person. selling them didnt take the time and trouble to provide decent source equipment that couldn’t be called out for being deficient, the test was a crap shoot and I did not buy them. That may be unfair to the speakers but I wasnt willing to bet 2500 dollars on the off chance the distortion I was hearing in the treble was caused strictly by the source equipment. With no other opportunities to hear these or a related model speaker from Tekton without committing to purchase them sight unseen and unheard, my search for speakers that put a smile on my face continues.

I agree with @deep_333 . This weekend I was at my son’s house listening to Double Impacts with a newly rebuilt Plinius SA-100. I know we approached and/or exceeded 100 db a few times. No issues whatsoever for these speakers.